Posted in France in 2022, it has just arrived in the country “And I stopped calling you dad”, Caroline Darien’s personal testimonydaughter of Gisèle and Dominique Pélicot, protagonists of the history of abuse and horror that last year moved the world.
Written as a newspaper, The narration begins on November 2, 2020, when the police reveaarrested for a complaint of abuse in a supermarket. There he had tried to film below the polleras of three women. But what the authorities found in their archives, was much more shocking and terrible: images of his sleeping wife (then he would know that he had been drugged), violated by her husband and by many other subjects in agreement with him. The final investigation threw chilling figures: around 70 men abused Giséle, paralyzed thanks to a cocktail of somniferous and anxiolytics. A torture that lasted for about 10 years and that brought several consequences, from gynecological pathologies to forgetfulness, dizziness, constant confusion and physical weakness, symptoms for which neither doctors nor the patient found a reasonable cause.
The story that Darien tells (which changed the paternal surname for a word that combines the names of his brothers) is the course of the impact on the family, of the effort to protect the mother and process a devastating revelation. The suspicion of having also been drugged and raped by his father, is part of the doubt that most destabilizes Caroline. The text ends just when the judicial stage of instruction ends, to The wait of the process that was held in 2024 and in which the main defendant was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Throughout the trial, Gisèle became a symbol of dignity and resistance. Caroline, meanwhile, promised an awareness struggle on violence against women. In particular, in terms of the danger of the so -called “chemical submission”, much more common than is known, by which drugs are used that cancel the will of the victims to abuse them.
Here we reproduce some fragments of the book, which reveal details of the drama that the father’s behavior supposed for the family. A proof that the impact of abuse hurts the entire environment of the victims.
Three scenes
“Thursday, December 17, 2020. The relationship with my mother is more relaxed. He cannot imagine that I could also have been the victim of my father. It is something unacceptable to her, and I understand her. But I also get angry that I am unable to consider my doubts, to accept my anger and my pain. My mother does not stop telling me that it does not subject me to so much nervous and psychological tension. Officially, there is no chemical submission tests in me. Neither a trace of touching or rape. And yet that does not reassure me. I also know that he is deeply injured and that he does everything possible to stand. He has activated the ‘survival mode’. He has been accommodating, to protect himself, to a kind of numbness, while I fight my own demons with all my strength. Between two homework meetings, I keep my mind occupied by putting some order at home. I order, classify, clean and try to make the dark question disappear that stalks at the bottom of my mind. Did my father have? […]
I open the bedding closet. My eyes perch on the drawings of a sheet. I recognize them. A game bought just before Tom was born. I am paralyzed and I fall on your knees in the parquet. So one of the two photos taught by the Carperas Police in November was taken in my house. I recognize the sheets. My father photographed me at home, in my bedroom, and that was in 2013. Doubts are over. His second dam was me. ”
“Friday, January 1, 2021. On this first day of the year 2021 I think of my father. For the first time I feel compassion for him. I imagine it in your cell. Is it cold? Hunger? Who are your cell partners? How do you not be able to ride a bicycle, with what you liked? The next step for me will be to ignore these questions with indifference. Stop feeling concerned by my father.
I miss my mother, I don’t know anything about her from Christmas. I decide to call it. To the third phrase I pronounce, I can’t contain myself. My mother does not take long to cry too. There are no words for what we are happening. The only thing I can articulate is that I want to be by his side. After more than two hours of talk, we promise to always remain united, she and me. Without judging us. ”
“Tuesday, March 2, 2021. Céline and Barbara, David and Florian’s wives (N.de La R.: His brothers), respectively, have been cited at a police station in the Parisian region, a logical continuation of my audience with the instructional judge in December. Each of them will spend an interview of more than two hours. Once again, horror invades our lives.
During the last ten years, my two sisters were photographed naked, without them knowing, in some of our family gatherings. At home, or in my parents, my father had installed cameras in a burst mode in the bathroom and in the bedrooms.
He also made céline photomontages, with indecent photo feet. She started when she was pregnant, in 2011. As for Barbara, she discovers intimate photos taken during the last summer at my parents’ house. In some you see my father masturbating with his underwear.
My father hung these photos on the Internet. The unbalanced sex will have loved them. Said episode marked a turning point in the judicial procedure. Céline and Barbara are constituted as a civil part and ask Caty (N. de la R.: Their lawyer) to defend them.
My father did not forgive any woman from our family.
In the following days, eighteen men suspected of raping my mother were imprisoned. For security reasons, my father was transferred to another prison in southern France. Sexual criminals are subject to accounts. They represent the lowest of the prison caste. How will my father face that penitentiary transfer? Will you be able to adapt? Of course. He has represented the family farce for more than four decades. ”
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