Gisèle Pelicot was for many the hero of 2024 for her courageous decision to waive anonymity in a horrific rape trial so as to turn the shame on her husband Dominique and the 50 men he had met online and enticed to rape her while drugged by him. I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again, by Pelicot’s daughter Caroline Peyronnet (writing under the pen name Caroline Darian) is the first book to emerge from the case.
Though originally published in 2022, it remains current even after the sentencing of Dominique Pelicot and his accomplices, largely because it draws on much the same overwhelming documented evidence that the trial did.
The book covers the first 13 months after Dominique Pelicot was charged with the offences on November 2nd, 2020. Told in diary format, interspersed with direct addresses to the father Darian will no longer have any contact with, the book is an uncomfortable read, albeit one with great immediacy. She recounts her guilt at not being more insistent about getting second opinions from doctors about her mother’s continuous fatigue and spells of dizziness and memory loss as a result of the drugging she was being subjected to.
[ Dominique Pelicot will not appeal guilty verdict in mass rape trial, lawyer saysOpens in new window ]
The detail with which Dominique Pelicot planned and facilitated the rapes is chilling, and also makes a mockery of his accomplices’ claims that he had deceived them. Darian is also convinced, with good reason, that she too was drugged and raped by her father, though this was not included on the charge sheet, much to her distress.
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Unfortunately, Darian is let down at times by her translator, particularly in the use of the term “chemical submission”, an overly literal translation of the French “soumission chimique”. While it does have a tempting succinctness, it is not a term used in English and is frustratingly vague. There are a number of other instances in the text where the translation similarly lacks suppleness.
You also wonder will people willingly put themselves through such a harrowing book – it’s hard not to feel queasily intrusive while reading it – but it is Darian’s story to tell, and she is entitled to whatever catharsis doing so provides, not least because she hopes to highlight the prevalence of sexual violence by sedation within couples, which she says is far more frequent than people think.
