Gisele Pelicot’s daughter said she would now only exchange short pleasantries with Gisele if she saw her in the supermarket – saying she feels like ‘the forgotten victim’ of the horror trial
Gisele Pelicot’s daughter revealed she no longer speaks to her mother after she stood by her side at the heart-wrenching rape trial.
The ‘Monster of Avignon’ trial saw Gisele supported by her daughter Caroline Darian as her father, Dominique Pelicot, 72, was sentenced for organising the mass rape of his wife. Caroline believes she is also a victim of abuse from her father – but claims Gisele never fully “believed” this.
Caroline told The Telegraph she and her mother are not on speaking terms, as she felt “abandoned” by her mother during the horrific trial. The mother-of-one also explained a difficult conversation she was forced to have with her son, 11, to explain he would no longer be seeing his grandmother.
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She revealed that on several heartbreaking occasions, her mother told her to “stop making a spectacle of yourself” in the courtyard outside the trial. She said Gisele could not, or would not “believe or hear” her allegations that Dominique had also raped her.
During the investigation into Dominique, police found 20,000 images and videos of Gisele being abused on his computer, as well as images of Caroline naked, and in underwear that did not belong to her in a deleted file called “My Daughter Naked.” Within this secret file there were two images of Caroline, in her 30s, sleeping in beige underwear.
When shown this by the police, Carloine claimed that she did not sleep in this position, and she had not seen that pair of underwear before – nor would she have gone to bed in it. This led her to believe she had also been raped by her father.
There is no suggestion Gisele knew about her husband’s vile inner world. Caroline said Gisele struggled to acknowledge fears she had of her father’s potential abuse towards her. Gisele told her: “Your father is incapable of such a thing.”
Caroline and her brothers Florian, 38, and David, 50, begged Dominique to tell the truth about the photos, but he denied any wrongdoing. Caroline said it was only her mother who could persuade her father to confess to the alleged crimes against her, but that she chose to remain silent.
“And that, I can never forgive her for, never,” she said. She said that following the trial she feels like a “forgotten victim” as her mother became the subject of a global conversation.
“Gisele was certainly raped. She was chemically subdued, of course. The only difference between Gisele and me is that for her, there is proof. For me, it’s an absolute tragedy,” she said.
Caroline said despite Gisele’s international recognition, “my mother isn’t an icon – not to me.” Caroline said her mother had chosen Dominique as a husband, but she had no say as to who her father was and this made her pain “two-fold.”
Caroline claimed if she were to bump into her mother at the supermarket today, she would say only a short hello and goodbye.