Dominique Pelicot, the main accused in the Mazan rape trial, assured Tuesday that he had “never” touched, drugged or taken intimate photographs of his daughter Caroline Darian who, very angry, accused him in court of lying.
Questioned at length by one of the lawyers for the civil parties, Antoine Camus, concerning two nude photos of his daughter found on his hard drive, the septuagenarian replied several times, mechanically, “I have never touched my daughter.”
He denied having taken a photo of Caroline Darian, 45, in which she appears naked and lying on a bed in a “quasi-foetal” position reminiscent of that of his ex-wife Gisèle Pelicot, drugged and then raped without her knowledge by dozens of strangers between 2011 and 2020.
“No, that’s not me. That picture lying on the bed, that’s not me,” he said, angering his daughter, who was sitting next to her mother, across the room but facing him: “You’re lying,” she told him twice.
Earlier, she had briefly left the room, with a determined step, saying “I’m going to throw up right now.”
Mazan rape trial: Dominique Pelicot details his “difficult” childhood and claims to have been raped by a nurse at the age of 9
“My daughter is like my grandchildren, they are jewels, we don’t touch them,” said Dominique Pelicot who, appearing irritated by the lawyers for the civil parties on the incestuous nature of the intimate photographs of his daughter but also of his stepdaughters, said “What should I do, what should I say, what should I cut off an arm?”
When asked why he had not taken pictures of his two sons, he nevertheless replied to the magistrates of the Vaucluse criminal court: “I am not attracted to men.”
Since the facts were discovered in 2020, Caroline Darian (Editor’s note: her pen name under which she published a book in April, “And I stopped calling you dad”) has been convinced that she herself was sexually assaulted by her father or even strangers, using the same method he used on his own wife, whom he overpowered with anxiolytics before raping her and having her raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the internet.
She has since become a figure in the fight against chemical submission.
Mazan rape trial: Dominique Pelicot declares himself to be “a rapist like those in this room”
Asked about the shocking statement by Caroline Darian who, during her hearing on September 5, described the man she now calls “Mr. Pelicot” or her “father” as “one of the greatest sexual criminals of the last 20 years,” he did not want to elaborate: “She says what she thinks, she may be right, she may be wrong. I am in a bad position.”
At the beginning of the trial, Caroline Darian had already left the courtroom in tears when the presiding judge referred to photomontages in which she appeared naked. The photos had been found on her father’s computer, in a folder entitled “Around my daughter, naked”.
“He only delivers part of the truth when he is put against the wall,” she accused.
An aspect recalled by Me Camus who, concerning the possibility of sexual assault on Caroline Darian, said to Dominique Pelicot: “it’s a shame, there is no proof. That’s the whole tragedy of your daughter.”
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