'My Mom Is A Hero,' Says Daughter of Gisèle Pelicot Following Father Dominique's Rape Conviction

As Caroline Darian tells it, it started with a phone call from her mother on the evening of Nov. 2, 2020.

Gisèle told her daughter she needed to sit down.

“I just want to be sure you are not alone, and you are with your husband,” Caroline told Oprah Winfrey on The Oprah Podcast about what her mother Gisèle Pelicot said. “And, she told me, I just discovered this morning at the police station where I stayed almost five hours that your dad used to drug me before I was raped, and I was raped by a dozen and dozen of strangers, unknown people.”

“That everything’s changed in a second,” she continued. “And I just realized that my life will never be the same.”

In December 2024, Caroline’s father Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years for drugging his wife of 50 years and then videotaping more than 50 men raping her for nearly a decade from 2011 to 2020.

Fifty other men were convicted for crimes including aggravated rape, sexual assault and child abuse imagery, and received sentences ranging from three to fifteen years.

Dominique was also found guilty of taking indecent images of Caroline and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.

Gisèle, 72, waived her right to anonymity during the trial, saying that she wanted “shame to change sides” for abuse victims around the world.

“My mom is a hero,” said Caroline, author of the memoir I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again. “We just have to be grateful for what she did. She walked into this court every day to face all of these men, including Dominique.”

The case came to light in December 2020, when two women came forward after Dominique was caught filming up their skirts. Gisèle was asked to come down to the police station where she was told by police that they discovered thousands of photos and videos of her unconscious taken by her husband, who had documented the assaults after recruiting neighbors and strangers through the internet.

“Some of (the men) went several times,” says Caroline. “Some of them went only one time. But my mom was raped more than 200 times during ten years by more than 70 different men.”

Her alleged attackers included firefighters, masons, gardeners, prison guards, soldiers and journalists, between the ages of 26 and 73 years old.

“There were dads, grandfathers,” she said.

One of the men was HIV positive.

“He came seven times,” Caroline told Winfrey. “(Dominique) actually had a formula that he would tell the other men about because he was also teaching them how to drug their wives.”

During the trial, Dominique admitted to the abuse and regularly crushing drugs in his wife’s food — including in her favorite dessert, raspberry ice cream, per The Telegraph.

The day after her mother was brought to the police station, police asked Caroline to come by where they showed her two semi-naked photos of her found on his laptop. 

“I don’t have any recollection of where those pictures were taken,” she said. “I live like a tsunami because I realized that my mom was not the only victim of this family.”

Coming to grips with what happened has been agonizing.

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“I thought that I had a solid, cheerful, protective and reassuring dad,” she said. “I thought also that they were happy together.”

“I think there’s two faces within Dominique Pelicot,” she continued. “A face which is a good guy, a good neighbor, a good husband, a good parent. And another one, which is a real manipulator…I thought he was a good father.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.