BIOGRAPHY
I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again: By Caroline Darian, the daughter of Gisèle Pelicot,
Bonnier, $32.99
Caroline Darian’s book is a must-read.
Her name is Caroline Darian. At least that’s her pen name, her surname a combination of the names of her brothers. I urge you to buy her book, I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again. Darian is the daughter of extraordinary human being Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who rejected anonymity to bring light into the violent corners of our existence as women. Her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, will spend a maximum 20 years of imprisonment after he was found guilty of drugging and raping his then-wife, Gisèle, and allowing other men to rape her while she was knocked out in a phase of abuse that lasted nearly a decade.
Darian herself is also a survivor of two of her father’s weapons in his arsenal of abuse. I’ve read a thousand stories of survivors and written about them myself. And yes, it’s crucial we understand the experience of those with lived experience. But too many fall into the category of what’s called trauma porn, or as Alisa Zipursky describes it: “The exploitative sharing of the darkest, creepiest, most jarring parts of our trauma specifically for the purpose of shocking others.”
Not this book by Darian, 45, a marketing executive for an international insurance company. This book is not about the trial, which only ended last year. This is about the drip drip drip of information from the police and prosecutors revealing the abuse her father meted out to Gisèle and others and the spiralling impact on the family.
Yes, there is a lot of frightening detail about what happened to Darian’s mother, to Darian herself, to others. But is there a single soul who has avoided reading those horrific specifics about this trial? There are accounts in this book which never appeared in Australian media reports but which are terrifying. They will make your heart stop and want to hold your daughters and granddaughters tighter than you imagine possible, safe from threats in every shadow. They will also, I hope, make you want to reimagine how we defeat rape and sexual assault in our own country.
Darian is perfectly clear about the ludicrous stereotype of rapists – they are not unusual in any way, not the monsters of our imagination. These are ordinary men, men who appear to be loving husbands, fathers, grandfathers, who are rapists and abusers. She writes: “I have tried, without success, to unearth and understand the true identity of the man who raised me. To this day, I reproach myself with having neither seen nor suspected anything … I’m still haunted by the image of the father I thought I knew. It lingers on, deeply rooted inside me.”
Caroline Darian, the daughter of Gisèle Pelicot, at the Avignon courthouse, in southern France, in December.Credit: AP
But Darian has some solutions for change to protect and restore victims. I love this so much. Yes, it’s important for us to read and know the stories of horror, but it’s also important for us to have hope. She has set about raising the profile of what she calls “chemical submission”, which she says is the preferred weapon of sexual predators, and founded a charity M’endors Pas (Stop Chemical Submission: Don’t Put Me Under) to campaign for better overall support for victims and systematic training for all professionals concerned.
“No reliable statistics exist concerning its use. In 2020, the year my father was arrested, nobody was talking about it,” Darian writes. “Chemical submission is present at all levels of society and is deployed against a wide range of victims: women, sometimes men, and even children, babies and the elderly … but who is aware of the risk of being chemically subjugated by a spouse, lover, relative or friend [who is familiar] … with the contents of the family medicine cabinet?”
