Caroline Darian, the Daughter of Gisèle Pelicot, Is Fighting for Survivors Everywhere

Caroline Darian never expected to have a worldwide platform. In November 2020 she was a self-described “simple, normal woman” working in communications in the Paris area and raising her young son, Tom, with her husband, Paul.

But then Paul got a phone call from Darian’s mother, Gisèle Pelicot. She had something to tell him about her husband, Darian’s father, Dominique.

“My mother called Paul. Not me,” writes Darian in her memoir, I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again, which was released in the US last month. “She couldn’t bring herself to tell any of her children. But she knew she could count on Paul. She knew he could take it, no matter how bad the news.”

The news would not only change Darian’s family forever, but the entire world. As she would soon learn, Dominique was discovered to have been drugging her mother for years, and then inviting men to come rape her in her sleep. Once her husband and the men accused of raping her went to trial, Gisèle Pelicot took the extraordinary step of waiving her right to anonymity, so that the names and faces of the accused would also be public. As she memorably stated, in words that would become a rallying cry: “Shame must change sides.”

But while the Pelicot trial—which resulted in 51 men being convicted including Dominique— became an international symbol of the fight against rape culture worldwide, for Darian it was a gutting and life-altering personal tragedy. I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again is a diaristic examination of the months following Dominique’s arrest, with Darian sharing her raw feelings, emotions, and experiences on the page.

Now an activist with her own organization fighting for victims of chemical-induced rape, Darian is also seeking to prove in court that she was another of Dominque’s victims, filing a legal complaint last month (Dominique has denied sexually assaulting his daughter). And six months on from the watershed trial, she is seeking to shed a light on not just her family’s story, but the scourge of sexual abuse worldwide, which often doesn’t see the light.

“To me, it’s not only about one woman, you know what I mean?” Darian, who uses a pen name for her writing, tells Glamour via Zoom. “There are so many victims who have suffered from sexual abuse, and it’s not only about one hero, it’s about many heroes that we have to support…I don’t want to forget about the others. There are so many women, even children, who are really alone and sometimes abandoned by their own family. We have to become aware of that.”

Darian spoke with Glamour about her activism during and since the trial, her fight for justice, and what US readers can do to further the message.