“A destroyed family”: Florian, David and Caroline, the three children of the Pelicot couple, returned one last time on Monday to the explosion that constituted for them and their children this decade of rapes orchestrated by their father, on their mother, by men he recruited on the internet.
“In my opinion, [ce procès des viols de Mazan, ndlr.] it is the trial of an entire family, which has been totally destroyed”, affirmed, in a firm tone, the eldest of the siblings, David, 50 years old, before the criminal court of Vaucluse, Monday afternoon: “And “It’s very complicated to explain to your children that they won’t see their grandfather again.”
But “my family wants and will continue to fight and above all hopes that in the future, we can erase, make the man on my left disappear in our heads”, he continued, speaking of his father, Dominique Pelicot, sitting in the dock: “Today, we no longer have any photos from the family albums.” Throughout his testimony, he described him as “this gentleman”.
“What I expect from this trial is that the decisions you will be required to make will be commensurate with our suffering. That these men who are behind my back [les coaccusés]”, this man who is in this box, be punished for the horrors and atrocities that they committed on my mother”, insisted the fifty-year-old, before addressing his father directly, straight in the eyes: “If you still have a little humanity, you hear? [Je voudrais que] you tell the truth about the actions you had on my sister, who suffers every day and who will suffer all her life, because I think you will never tell the truth!”
“The devil himself”
“And on my son too,” he added, referring to the exchanges between Dominique Pelicot and one of his grandchildren, whom he allegedly asked to “play doctor”. “Nothing at all!”, his father shouted to him from his box. “Relax, it’s me who’s talking, you’ll talk later!” David retorted, before adding, addressing the court: “He’s been putting on a show for two months. .it’s unbearable!”
Previously, David Pelicot had described “the tsunami” experienced by the family when, in the fall of 2020, they learned of their father’s actions. And how, in the space of two days, the children had moved all the belongings “from this house of horror” where the events occurred, to Mazan, in Vaucluse.
“We all fell from the 38th floor. Even today we ask ourselves questions,” then confirmed Florian Pelicot, 38, the youngest of the siblings: “I have a lot of gratitude for still having my mother alive. But still a lot of misunderstanding about why he did that.” And calmly asserts to his father: “You always said that our mother was a saint, but you were the devil himself”.
Caroline Darian, convinced of having been drugged and raped by her father
Caroline Darian, 43, the daughter of the Pelicot couple, considered herself “the forgotten one” in the Mazan rape trial, saying she was convinced that she too had been drugged and raped by her father Dominique, like her mother Gisèle: ” The only difference between her and me is the lack of evidence concerning me, for me it is an absolute tragedy,” she explained before the Vaucluse criminal court.
Heard from the first week of the trial, which began on September 2, Caroline Darian [son nom de plume – inspiré du prénom de ses deux frères – sous lequel elle a publié un livre en avril, “Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa“, ndlr.]45, repeated that she was “trying to rebuild herself” because her life had been “on hold for four years”.
In the fall of 2020, the couple’s three children learned of this decade of rapes orchestrated by their father, on their mother, whom he drugged with anxiolytics to offer to dozens of men recruited on the internet. But, on the files stored in Dominique Pelicot’s computer, investigators also discovered images of Caroline naked, taken without her knowledge.
In some, she appears asleep, sometimes wearing her mother’s feminine underwear. Since then, she has been “convinced” that she too was drugged by the man she calls her “progenitor”, with the nagging doubt of having also been raped in her sleep. Facts that Dominique Pelicot persisted in denying on Monday.
After attending the first weeks of the hearing, in September, Caroline returned to the Paris region, where she works and lives: “I asked to return to the clinic, to hope to find inner peace, because I know that I cannot will never have my answers (…) You will never have enough love for your daughter,” she told her father on Monday.
This trial is also the historic trial of chemical submission in France.
“In your disgusting files, (…) you do not look at me as a father looks at his daughter, but in an incestuous way. But you will never have the courage to tell the truth,” she insisted. “If I manage to get through it, it’s because I am committed through my association [M’ endors pas]” aid to victims of chemical submission, “because Gisèle Pelicot is 1% of victims”, according to her.
>> Lire : Chemical submission mostly happens with loved ones
“For me this trial, (…) it is also the historic trial of chemical submission in France. I work behind the scenes, I challenge the public authorities. But at what cost? That of my mental health , at the cost of my survival and my personal repair,” she said.
“I will not give up, I am committed to the end: as long as we have not succeeded in obtaining measures [sur cette question des soumissions chimiques] in France, I will continue to mobilize on the ground”, concluded Caroline Darian.
sjaq and afp
