The daughter of the deranged Frenchman on trial for drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her believes she too was a victim of the sick scheme – calling her father ‘the worst sexual predator of the past 20 years’ .
Caroline Darian, 45, took the stand in court in Avignon on Friday against her father, 71-year-old Dominique Pélicot, who is accused of spending years filming men raping his wife, Gisèle, 72, while she was drugged unconscious.
The distraught daughter identified herself as the naked, unconscious woman who appeared in two photos on Pélicot’s computer. Thousands of others depicted various men, including neighbors, abusing Gisèle.
“I immediately realized I was drugged in that photo,” said Darian, who wrote a book about the ordeal, “and I stopped calling you daddy.”
A judge previously told the court that the images were kept in a file entitled: “Around my daughter, naked. Darian testified Friday that they were captioned “the slut’s daughter.”
Darian described the crude comment as “beyond its inaudible vulgarity” and said, “The caption makes me want to throw up.” Le Monde reports this.
The mention of the images in court earlier this week caused Darain to storm out of the courtroom with twitching eyes.
In one of the photos, Darian appears ‘in someone else’s underwear’.
The woman suspects she was drugged and brutally raped by strangers in the same way as her mother, an accusation Pélicot has denied.
“How does someone like me heal, do I hope to have a normal woman’s life, a normal sex life?” Darian asked the court. “How do you rebuild yourself from the ashes knowing that your father is undoubtedly the worst sexual predator of the past twenty years?”
Pélicot has not been charged with abusing Darian, but has been charged with violating the privacy of her and her two stepsisters for “taking, recording or transmitting” a sexual image of her without their consent.
Darian appeared in court several times this week alongside her mother, who police suspect was unknowingly raped at least 92 times by at least 72 different men.
They believe they have identified 51 of them, all of whom are also being tried and could be sentenced to twenty years in prison if convicted. Among them are a firefighter, a prison guard, a nurse and a journalist.
Officials say Pélicot recruited the rapists through a website and ordered them to undress outside the bedroom and leave at the slightest sign that Gisèle was awake. In these forums he allegedly admitted to giving his wife powerful sedatives to render her unconscious before the abuse took place.
The case came to light in 2020 when the sick woman was filming women’s skirts in a shopping center.
Pélicot faces 50 years in prison if convicted of rape.
Pélicot has also been charged in a separate case with the rape and murder of a 23-year-old real estate agent in Paris in 1991, which he denies, and with attempted rape in 1999, which he admitted after a DNA match.
