What To Read

This week, Caroline Darian is making headlines as she files harrowing new allegations against her father Dominique Pelicot, whose 2024 rape trial shocked the world for revealing his brutal assault of wife Gisèle Pelicot. Darian has just released the English translation of her memoir, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again, the story of how she and her mother have bravely brought to light his unthinkable crimes.

In this exclusive excerpt, the 46-year-old is sitting down for a difficult conversation with her mother, just as the first salacious news articles about the case begin to break.

Read on for an excerpt from the book.

Friday, November 6, 2020

When I wake up, I can’t speak. My voice has vanished, just like my life before.

Over breakfast, I take out the file of financial documents I brought with me from the house in Mazan. It takes me an hour and a half, going back and forth between bank statements and loan schedules, to get an overview of the situation. It’s really bad.

The debts are huge. Mum can’t tell me how they were being managed. She keeps repeating, “He was in charge of all that. ” I lose my patience.

“What on earth were you thinking, trusting him with your finances? He was always terrible with money! He proved it time and again —think of all the times he left the two of you in debt, struggling to dig yourselves out of a hole.”

She shrugs it off. I don’t think she understands how far the perilous state of her finances will impact her standard of living.

I get on the phone to the banks. Things are as bad as I feared. Substantial loans were taken out, almost all of them in Mum’s name.

They’ve already been pursued for missing payments on several occasions. The most recent judgement, notified by a bailiff from Carpentras, has them paying an annual penalty of 14 percent interest on a huge loan awaiting repayment since 2009. I add up everything she owes. I stare in despair at the total I’ve written down.

When my mother says not to worry, she’ll take care of it, I can barely restrain myself trying to shake some sense into her. The more I learn about the way my parents lived, the more I realise how successfully my father had become her puppeteer and how meekly she had accepted it. Exhausted, I go and lie down. I see no way out of this nightmare.

I doze for a few hours. When I awake, my head is throbbing. It takes me a quarter of an hour to muster the strength to get out of bed.

Mum has been out for a walk. The short autumnal day is coming to an end. She seems relaxed, and I feel guilty about the way I scolded her. I promise to myself that I’ll treat her more gently from now on.

Paul nods towards the kitchen, slipping away and indicating that I should follow him discretely. I stiffen.

What is it this time?

He points to his laptop, open on the counter. I can tell he’s nervous.

“Read that.”

It’s an article from a news site called Actu17 that reports on criminal activity all over France. The headline screams at me: “Carpentras —he drugged his wife, brought in strangers every night to rape her, and filmed it all!

”When my mother sees it, she sags against Paul, who has to carry her to the nearest sofa.

I can’t protect her against this. An avalanche of similar articles online is inevitable. Paul knows it too —it’s his profession, after all. The regional press won’t be far behind. I have to warn my brothers so that they’re ready to face what’s coming. Another blow, when we’re still reeling from the first.

Florian is indignant. “This is scandalous! ”

We have no idea how to cope with this.

Who is this man who’s been hiding inside my father for so long? I once had a father who looked out for me, took care of me. Where’s he gone? Where’s the man who walked me to school, encouraged me on the sports field, pushed me to study, helped me with my projects, talked me through my career choices? Where’s the man who watched over and played with his grandchildren, basking in their love? How can you lead such a double life? How can you pull the wool over so many eyes for so many years?

Paul comes up to me. I slap him. For the first time in our life. I’ve no idea what I’m doing. I’ve gone off the rails. My mother tells me to get a grip on myself. I don’t even know where to start. My nerves are shattered. I lose control of my body as my muscles start to spasm. I cry out for help. Later on, Paul will tell me that this moment—this hysterical outburst —left him terrified.

An ambulance pulls up. A neighbour, concerned, comes to the end of her driveway. She says something to me but I can't hear her. I'm not really there anymore.

In the hospital, I spend half the night on a stretcher in a corridor and the other in a bed. Twice, a doctor comes to see me. They should never have let me walk out of the police station in Carpentras, left to my own devices. If some kind of therapeutic support had been put in place, it would have stopped me falling into this abyss, kept me out of this hospital. When will the justice system learn that a victim's need for support and protection doesn't stop when an arrest has been made and charges brought? How can we tell traumatized individuals to go back home as if all was well, particularly in cases of sexual assault? Why haven't those in charge realized that the the judicial system and the health system have to work hand in hand to ensure the safety of those who walk, trembling, out of a police station in the aftermath of a crime?

Excerpted from I'll Never Call Him Dad Again by Caroline Darian. Copyright 2025 by Caroline Darian, Published by Sourcebooks.