Caroline Darian tells The Guardian in a long interview what it’s like to live as the daughter of a known sex offender.
Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot‘s daughter Caroline Darian says The Guardian magazine in the interview believing that her father has drugged and raped her as well.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in December for drugging, raping his ex-wife Gisèle Pelicot, and arranging the rapes of his wife by dozens of other men.
50 accused men were sentenced to prison terms for sexual crimes. Rapists were at least 80 men over ten years.
Now daughter Caroline Darian talks in an extensive interview about the “crushing double burden” of being the child of both the victim and the perpetrator, as well as the mental torture when it is not known for sure what her father did to her.
Darian told the trial that he was completely convinced that he too had been raped.
– Father let me down in many ways, Darian tells The Guardian.
Darian, 45, had hoped that the father would tell his daughter the truth at the latest at the trial, but there was no confession.
During the trial, the daughter often shouted at her father “You’re lying!”.
Darian no longer calls Dominique Pelico her father. Life has had to start over and erase past memories. He says that he has destroyed all his childhood photos.
– But how can you start over when your father is the worst sex offender in decades, he asks.
There have been numerous videos as evidence of his wife’s rapes.
The police had also recovered a deleted folder from Dominique Pelicot’s computer, which was called “My daughter naked”. In the folder were two photos of Darian lying on the bed wearing a t-shirt and underwear.
At first, Darian didn’t recognize himself from the photos. His mind was trying to protect this from what happened.