Gisele Pelicot's anguished daughter criticises rape victim mother in new book: 'Her silence says a lot'
Caroline Darian said her 72-year-old mother was not willing to believe her accusations against her father.
Gisele Pelicot, the victim of one of the most disturbing case of mass-rape in recent history, was praised for her quiet dignity after her husband was convicted of drugging her and inviting dozens of men over the course of a decade to rape her. But she has now been criticised by her own daughter for letting her down during the French trial as she refused to support her claim that she too was a victim of her father, Dominique Pelicot.
In her book, So That We May Remember, Caroline Darian said her 72-year-old mother was not willing to believe her and this acted as a “point of no return” in their relationship. Darian, 46, has claimed that her father was a serial rapist who had more victims apart from her mother and these cases have been unsolved by the police.
‘I was abused by my father’
Her father Dominique Pelicot had taken pictures of her sleeping in underwear that Darian told the court was not her own. 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 wrote in the book.
While Dominique Pelicot has repeatedly denied having sexually assaulted his daughter, Gisèle Pelicot declined to answer when she was asked if she agreed with her daughter's accusations.
‘I feel alone’
“It’s as though the ground opened up under my feet. 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. 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," she wrote in the book.
While Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in jail, 49 other men were sentenced to between 3 and 15 years in prison for raping or sexually assaulting Gisele Pelicot, who refused to stay anonymous to let the trial to be held in public so that “shame changed sides”.
