Gisèle Pelicot's Daughter Caroline Reveals Why She No Longer Speaks to Her Mom: 'My Mother Isn't an Icon' By KC Baker 48

For months, Caroline Darian stood by her mother, Gisèle Pelicot, as her father was tried and ultimately convicted of drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her over the course of a decade.

Now Darian, 46, who lives in Paris, and her mother, 72, who became a feminist icon for her courage in coming forward about her ordeal and facing her accusers, are no longer speaking, Darian said in an interview with The Telegraph.

“My mother isn’t an icon,” she told The Telegraph. “Not to me.”

Darian says she is upset that her mother doesn’t believe her claims that she, too, was drugged and raped by her father, Dominique Pelicot, even as she supported her mother for years, she told the outlet.

“And that, I can never forgive her for, never,” she told The Telegraph.

In 2024, Dominique, 71, was convicted of aggravated rape and other charges after admitting in court to drugging Gisèle with sleeping pills from 2011 to 2020 and allowing dozens of men to sexually assault her. Dominique was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his crimes.

Fifty other men were convicted of aggravated rape and other crimes in connection with the shocking case.

The men ranged in age from 26 to 74 and received sentences of three to 13 years, for a total of more than 400 years, NBC News reports.

Dominique’s cache of 20,000 explicit photos and videos were discovered in the fall of 2020 when police seized his phone camera and computer after he was accused of filming up the skirts of three women in supermarkets.

When authorities found videos and pictures he took of Gisèle being sexually assaulted, to their shock they also discovered photos Dominique had taken of Darian while she slept, including naked photos and photos of her in underwear she didn’t own.

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Dominique was convicted on charges of taking the photos without his daughter’s permission.

Darian told The Telegraph that her relationship with her mother disintegrated during the trial, when her mother scolded her for “making a spectacle of yourself” when Darian yelled “You will die alone like a dog in jail!” when her father was sentenced.

In 2022, Darian wrote a book about the case, And I Stopped Calling You Papa. 

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.