France: Gisèle Pelicot and daughter Caroline Darian speak to each other again

Gisèle Pelicot and her daughter Caroline Darian are once again in close contact with each other. Both told the US magazine “The Cut” on the sidelines of an awards ceremony by the women’s rights organization Equality Now. There they were jointly awarded the “Trailblazer Award”.

The trial against Pelicot's ex-husband Dominique had strained their once close relationship. “We both needed time to process the suffering,” says Darian about the break. She broke off contact to “go her own way”. It was “not a lack of love,” but a different state of mind: “My mother was in the positive phase of reconstruction. I was still in the anger phase.”

Gisèle Pelicot was repeatedly drugged, abused and offered to rape strangers by her then husband Dominique for almost ten years. In 2024 he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

During the course of the criminal proceedings, Gisèle Pelicot became a feminist cult figure, a fighter for women's rights and sexual self-determination. Her sentence “Shame has to change sides” went around the world.

Pelicot's daughter Caroline Darian suspects she was also drugged and abused. Unlike her mother's case, there is no clear evidence of this. The police had found two photos on Dominique Pelicot's computer that showed Darian sleeping and half-naked, wearing underpants that were not hers.

There is “no question” that her father also drugged her, Darian said in an interview with SPIEGEL in January 2025. At the time she said of her mother: “The thought that I too was a victim is probably hard for her to bear. It’s very painful for me, I can’t say it any other way.”

Six months later, Darian told the British Telegraph that the two were no longer in contact. "The truth is that my mother and I don't speak to each other anymore," she said at the time. Her mother was the only one who could have convinced her husband to reveal the truth: “She was supposed to help me in this courtroom.” Darian “can never forgive her” for not doing so. Never.”

Today, however, the relationship is “as it was before the tsunami,” says Darian. They are “closer connected than before.” She lives in Paris and her mother travels around the world. We talk on the phone almost every day or every other day.” Her mother is trying to convince her to move forward. Gisèle Pelicot told her: “You won’t get all the answers. That's life, Caroline. Go on.”