Ex-wife of ‘Monster of Avignon’ criticised by daughter for abandoning her as fellow victim
Gisele Pelicot, whose husband drugged and raped her and recruited dozens of men to rape her, has been criticised by her daughter for not backing her claim that she was also raped by the 72-year-old.
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Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison in December for the decade-long abuse of his wife, while 50 other men were also convicted for raping or sexually assaulting her.
However, Gisele has now been criticised by her daughter Caroline Darian who has claimed her mother was reluctant to believe she was also raped by Pelicot, her father.
In her new book ‘So That We May Remember’, published on Wednesday, Darian says her mother, 72, let her down during the three-month trial held last autumn in Avignon, southern France.
She describes her mother’s reluctance to believe her as a “point of no return” in their relationship, saying: “It is an abandonment too many.”
Darian, 46, describes her father as a sexual predator and claims he is a serial rapist who left a trail of victims in cases so far unsolved by the police, which he denies.
The book outlines a deep rift with her mother over two photos that Dominique Pelicot took of Darian asleep in underwear that she told the court was not her own. Darian says she believes the photographs were taken after she had been drugged, like her mother.
“These two photographs knocked me over … I am sure [there] are others. I know that I was sedated and abused by my father, but I cannot prove it,” she writes in the book
Questioned about her allegations, Dominique Pelicot repeatedly denied having raped or sexually assaulted his daughter.
During the trial, Gisèle Pelicot was asked whether she agreed with her daughter but declined to answer.
“It’s as though the ground opened up under my feet,” writes Darian. “Her silence says a lot. I thought we were a united and tight-knit clan … and I am hit by this implacable reality in the face: my mother does not want to believe me or to hear me.
“The pain runs right through me. I have spent four years trying to be there for my mother, cherishing the bond that counted so much for me. I feel alone facing a wall of desolation and no one seems to understand.”
Darian says psychologists had warned her that her relationship with her mother was unlikely to survive the trial.
“I nevertheless had a lingering hope. I was her only daughter. She could not let go of my hand and especially not in this courtroom. But I am forced to accept that that is the case.”
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Gisèle Pelicot waived her right to anonymity, allowing the trial to be held in public so that “shame will change sides”.
Darian does pay tribute to her mother whose testimony, she says, was “dignified, calm and strong”.
“Those who were at the trial discovered day after day this strength of character, this rectitude, this ability not to flag,” she writes.