Caroline Darian remembers the day and time she received the phone call from her mother, Gisele Perico, that changed everything. It was 8:25pm on a Monday in November 2020.
In an exclusive interview with BBC News, a partner network of CBS News, Darian said: “That morning, she discovered that (her father) Dominic had been drugging her and raping her by various men over a period of about 10 years.” He told me that he knew that.” “It was like an earthquake. It was a tsunami.”
Just over four years later, a French judge would discover Dominique Pericot and the dozens of men he had invited attempting to assault Gisele. guilty of aggravated rape. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his crime, the maximum allowed by French law.
BBC
Gisele Perico gave up her anonymity and appeared in court with her head held high every day, becoming a symbol of courage in the fight against sexual violence.
In 2020, after receiving a phone call from Gisele, Darian and his two siblings set out to support their mother, who was living with their father in the south of France.
Darian then received another call from the police.
Officers showed her two photos they found on her father’s computer. The image showed an unconscious woman lying on a bed wearing only a T-shirt and underwear.
“The officer said, ‘Look, you have the same brown mark on your cheek…that’s you,'” Darian said. “That’s when I saw those two photos differently…In every photo of my mother, I was lying on my left side, just like her.”
Darian believes her father drugged and assaulted her, just like her mother Gisele, but he denies it.
“I know he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse. But I have no proof,” she said.
There is no evidence of what happened to Darian, she said. “How many victims do this happen to? They don’t believe it because they don’t have the evidence. They don’t get listened to, they don’t get support.” spoke.
Darian said Gisele was traumatized by the knowledge that a man she trusted had drugged her and raped her more than 200 times, and that the same thing may have happened to her own daughter. He said he was struggling with the idea.
“It’s hard for mothers to integrate everything at once,” Darian says.
She now advocates for other victims of so-called chemical subjugation, but says the practice is underreported because most victims and survivors have no recollection of it happening. It is considered.
“Looking back, I don’t really remember the father I thought was my father. I look straight at a criminal, a sex offender,” Darian said. “But I have his DNA, and the main reason why I’m so passionate about invisible victims is also, for me, a way to really distance myself from this man… is completely different from Dominic.”
Darian says it’s a “terrible burden” to be the child of both the victim and the torturer.
“He should die in prison,” she said. “He’s a dangerous man.”
