Caroline Darian in First U.S. Interview Since Her Father Dominique Pelicot’s Shocking Trial

Thank you all for joining me on the Oprah podcast for this special episode. Before we start, it's important for those of you listening or watching to know that this conversation is around sexual assault, and it may be very challenging to hear.
And most importantly, this is absolutely not an appropriate conversation for young children.

So today I'm speaking with Caroline Darion, who traveled here to California from her home just outside of Paris.

And this is her first American interview.

In 2020, 67-year-old Dominique Pellicot, reportedly a devoted grandfather, father, and husband, was arrested near where he lived in the south of France. He was caught filming up women's skirts at a supermarket.
He was released while awaiting charges. Police seized Dominique's two phones, a camera, and a video recorder, plus several other devices from the home he shared with Giselle, his wife of nearly 50 years.
Dominique Pellico confessed to his wife Giselle about that supermarket incident, but nothing could prepare her for what was to come. Giselle and Dominique were then summoned to the local police station, she assumed to discuss her husband's case.
Instead, police privately informed Giselle that for nearly a decade, her husband had been recording her on his devices and drugging and raping her. During that time, Dominique had also invited more than 70 local men, strangers he recruited from chat rooms on the internet, to rape his wife as she lay unconscious.
He stood by and filmed it all. In total, police discovered more than 20,000 photos and videos on Dominique's devices in a folder labeled abuse.
After Giselle met with police, she called her three grown children, Caroline, David, and Florian, to tell them the shocking truth about the father they thought they knew. Caroline courageously shares her family's unimaginable ordeal in her gripping memoir, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again.
So welcome, Caroline. Thank you for having me here today, Lupap.
You traveled 24 hours to get here to do this interview, so I deeply, deeply appreciate that. I have to say, reading your book, I Will Never Call Him Dad Again, was, what is the word? It was shocking and it was infuriating and so, so, so, so disturbing and so many unimaginable occurrences.
I mean, just unimaginable. And every time I turn the page,

I'd say, it can't get worse. And then it would get worse.
And then I heard that you said that this was writing of this story was an opportunity for you to actually state, a way of surviving for yourself. And my intention is to invite everyone who hears us to learn something as a society so that in Caroline's mother's words, shame must change sides.
And reading your book, as I was saying, I kept thinking it can't get worse. And every time it did, I have to say, I am in awe of your courage.
I think a statue should be built in honor of your mother. I think what she has done for women in the world, regardless of what kind of challenge or difficulty or atrocities that women have been through, that her being able to stand up for the Pelico name gives the opportunity for every other woman to look inside herself and stand up.
And I think for you, Caroline, to be willing to speak the truth of your life and this horrific story is just an act of victory and triumph. And it shows that you are a mighty woman.
You are a mighty woman and so is your mother. So I thank you for writing this book.
I mean, I can't imagine. Well, I actually can imagine because in the telling of the story, you tell us how many times you had a breakdown.
But you say that for you, this became a question of survival. Thank you so much, Oprah.
I'm really touched by your words. I really wanted to write down this story because I wanted to show to the many people that whatever you live in your family, you are not responsible of what happened.
And there's always something more positive to share with the more vulnerable people. So I really wanted to make something useful and to go beyond this terrible legacy.
Yeah. Well, four years ago, let's go back to four years ago, you were living a life that you called a simple and ordinary life.
I know many women around the world can relate to this, and certainly here in the United States, you had a home in the suburbs. You had a really good job that you enjoyed, a husband and a six-year-old son.
You were very close with your two brothers and your parents, who had retired to this picturesque village in the south of France.

So take us back to November 2nd, 2020,

the day all of that all came crashing down.

And I will have to say,

I really appreciate in the book how you reflect back to ordinary things

like the kids in the pool

and the moments at the grocery store

and just ordinary simple things

that are going through your life. And then this horrible thing happens and nothing is ever the grocery store, and just ordinary, simple things that are going through your life,

and then this horrible thing happens, and nothing is ever the same again. I used to say that I had a quite normal life, you know, a normal life.
I was the daughter of my two parents, beloved parents, who were so close from each other. We were really a united family.
I was also but I'm still close

from my We were so close from each other. We were really a united family.

I was also, but I'm still close from my two brothers, David and Florian. And we were living in a, yes, in a normal life.
We were so, so happy. and I thought that I had a solid, cheerful, protective and reassuring dad.
I thought also that they were happy together. They were living, they lived together for about 50 years.
And yes, I had a husband. I used to work.
I had a great job. You were doing such ordinary things.
I like how you start in the book talking about you were teaching your son to put on the mask. Yeah, because we were in the middle of the lockdown.
Yes, yes. And yes, we're just preparing our son with my husband to go back to school.
And that day, November the 2nd, 2020, all my life and my childhood, in a way, collapsed. Because I thought I knew my dad.
So it started with a phone call. And it started with a phone call the evening of November the 2nd.
And I remember I'd worked all the day from home because we were in the middle of the lockdown. And I received this call from my mom and I thought that everything was okay.
And she told me, you have to sit down, Caroline, because I had to say something really difficult to say over the phone. So you have to sit down and I just want to be sure you are not alone and you are with your husband.
and she told me, I just discovered this morning at the police station where I stayed almost five hours, that your dad used to drug me before I was raped. And I was raped by a dozen and dozen strangers, unknown people.
And at this time, you know what? I still remember, you know, this tipping point of my life. I still saw on the clock on the oven you know know, that it is 25 past eight in the evening.
And that everything changed in a second. And I just realized that my life will never be the same.
Could you even take it in, Caroline, when she's saying, I'm at the police station and I just found out that your father has been raping me and other men have been raping me.

Dozens and dozens of men have been raping.

Could you, I don't even know how you even take that in.

So what did your brain do?

Did you collapse?

Did you scream? I screamed a lot. I cried a lot, but I, you know, instinctively understood what I

saw over the past years when my mom, you know, had this incurrent behavior, she was talking in a strange way. You would see lapses in her memory.
Yeah, I would lapse in the memories. Like, you know, she was doing amnesia.
She didn't remember some of our conversation about the phone the day before. I mean, you know, so I told straight away, I told her, but mom, this is the main reason why you are like this, because you were drugged.
You were drugged, mom. And this is the way you found out, I mean.
Okay, so she found out because she had been brought to the police station with your dad. Your dad had been accused of filming underneath the skirts of other women.
So she thought she was going to the police station to witness that or support that or be there for that occasion, correct? Yeah. And the morning of November 2nd, they have to tell my mom that he was arrested.
arrested and that... The way you describe it in the book is so really incredible.
They take him into a room. They put your mother in a room.
She is sitting there, Giselle Pellicot, and she is being asked all these questions about what is your relationship with your husband and what kind of a man is he? And she's feeling, you know, you're being invasive and why are you asking me these questions, correct? And then they show her the photographs. Yeah, they show her seven different photographs with seven different men while she was abused.
And what is in those photographs, Caroline? You saw my mom drugged, that being raped by different men each time. And they have to tell her that there's so many others.
There's pictures, photographs, but also videos. And the reason why they have these photographs is because they, the police, had confiscated his computer.
And had originally been investigating him because of the two women that he's charged with filming under their skirts. And then they found all of these pictures and videos that your father, the man you will never call dad again, had been taking for years of your mother.
Coming up next, Caroline Darion reveals how her own father systematically recruited more than 70 men from nearby towns to rape her unconscious mother inside their home for nearly a decade. She shares the details she uncovered next.
Welcome back to the Oprah podcast. I'm speaking with Caroline Darion in her first U.S.
interview. A reminder, this conversation contains discussions about sexual assault and can be triggering for some viewers and listeners.
This interview is not appropriate for children at all. Caroline's father's reprehensible crimes made international headlines last year.
In her new book, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again, she uncovers how her own father regularly drugged her mother Giselle so that she would pass out. And then over the course of nearly a decade, her father used chat rooms to invite more than 70 strangers into their home on separate occasions to film them raping his own wife, Caroline's mother.
So those of you who are not familiar with the story, Caroline's father went on the internet to some website and invited men into their home, into the marriage that he had been with Giselle Pellico for now 50 years, 50 years, and invited men into the home to come and have sex with his wife, to rape her on a regular basis. This was happening on a regular basis because I read in one of the reports that several of the men had been back five and six times.
Some of them went several times. Some of them went only one time.
But my mom was raped more than 200 times. She was raped more than 200 times during 10 years by more than 70 different men.
By more than 70 different men. And 50 of those men stood trial.
Yes. So how did your father drug your mother? And how did you, your brother, David and Florian, how did the children in the family not sense that something was wrong? My father was used to use some prescription.
Prescription drugs, yes. Medicine coming from the family cabinet medicine.
It was sedatives, anxiolytics, or even, you know, painkillers. Okay.
And he were using those medicines, you know, within the food, even within a glass of wine. He would crush sleeping pills.
He was mixing, you know, all of these substances. During the trial, Dominique confessed that he regularly crushed prescription sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medications into Giselle's meals or her favorite dessert, raspberry ice cream, which he would bring to her in bed.
The drugs caused Giselle to have frequent blackouts, insomnia, and bouts of amnesia. She suffered hair loss and also lost 22 pounds over the eight years.
As Giselle's memory lapses continued, Caroline and her brothers became increasingly concerned that their mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Despite several doctor visits and a brain scan,

no cause was ever found to explain these episodes.

No doctor or family member thought to test her blood for drugs.

He actually had a formula that he would tell the other men about

because he was also teaching them how to drug their wives. Yeah, and he also gave those, I was going to say, recipe to some other men, and they replicated the same process.
Yes, to rape their wives. To rape their wives, yeah.
To rape their wives. And so you write on page 27,

what depths of dishonesty does it take to have maintained all these years the tranquil illusion

that everything was normal? So I know your mother even felt like your father doted on her. Didn't

you all think he doted on her?

He loves her.

This is a great marriage.

You know, even my mother told to the police station, to the policeman,

that he was a great guy before, you know,

discovering the truth and the reality of his real personality.

And the fact is that we lived with him,

a side of him without knowing, you know, we knew his face A because there's, I think, there's two faces within Dominique Pellico. A face A, which is a good guy, a good neighbor, a good husband, a good parent.
Yeah. And another one, which is a real manipulator.
And he was doing, you know, he was coexisting with these two faces at home, and we never saw... So he would dote on your mother, he would make meals for her, he would always, when he was around you...
He was really protective with her, he was, you know, they were really close from each other, and so we never saw him.

I never saw my dad stare at a woman.

I never saw my dad, you know, having a strange behavior with some woman.

Or even seem interested in other women.

No.

Or flirting with other women or anything.

Never, never, ever. You felt that they were devoted.

And in the police station, when she first arrived, when they asked her, what was your relationship? She said her husband was a great man and a great neighbor and all those things. How would you describe him as a father to you growing up? He was really, he was taking care of me.
He was close to me. He used to bring me to school to encourage me, you know, within my studies.
We used to get a lot of conversation, different kind of conversation. I thought he was a good father.

But in the end, you know, I know now, since 42 years old, that is probably one of the most important sexual criminal in France. And that is a whole lot to have to reckon with.
The father that you've known to be the devoted husband to your mother and to be there caring for you and always interested in you. and then to realize that there was this whole other side of this man that you didn't know about.
So I realized that a few days you write in, I'll never call him dad again. You write that you were called to the police station a few days after your mother and father had been there and she had recognized that, first of all, how did she react in the beginning? Did she, I mean, there's a picture of her body, you know, lying there in the bed or wherever she was placed and she can see that she's out of it, that she's drugged and it's one man after another man after another man.
How did she even take that in? I think she lives a kind of a disassociation. Disassociation, sorry.
Because it was a real shock for her. Those of you who are listening to us or watching, you know, hopefully you won't have to go through something as horrible as that.
But you know, when you go through something that is shocking, when you have been betrayed, it feels like it strips you of everything you thought you knew. It strips you of your own identity.
Because here I was a person who believed all this time that you were a certain way. So what does that say about me that I couldn't see that? You know, it just causes people to question themselves.
Did that happen with you? Me, I live kind of a post-traumatic stress disorder. Absolutely.
Okay, so let's go back. The police called you back to the station, and what did they show you? They had to show me two pictures of me, almost naked, with a paint, a beige paint, which is not mine, laying on the left side, like my mom.
She is on almost all the photographs and videos. And I had to recognize myself.
At first, you didn't recognize yourself. It was so difficult to me to realize that he did what he did.
To your mother? To my mother, but also to me, you know? Yeah, when you're looking at... Okay, so you're brought back to the police station station and the police show you pictures that they've taken from your father's computer of you in a pair of panties that you don't even recognize.
I don't recognize them. And you are knocked out.
You don't recall even where or how that could have been. I don't have any recollection of where those pictures were taken that day.

I mean, it was November the 3rd. So the day after the revelation with my mom.
So almost 24 hours after. And I had to sue my father because I saw myself.
But it took me like 15 minutes to realize that it was me on those two different pictures. They got a two different place with another pen, which is not mine.
so I live like a tsunami

because I realized that my mom was not the only victim of this family. It was also you.
It was also you. that leaves me speechless because to recognize first of all the day before that your father has been calling in strangers to rape your mother and drugging her for over a decade and then the next day to be called in and to see pictures of yourself drugged, immediately your thought goes to, did he also rape me? Yes.
To me, I saw this woman on those two photographs, and I deeply, I'm deeply convinced that first I'm drugged, and then that he probably raped me. He denies raping you.
He denies, and over those past four years, and even during this trial, he refused to tell the truth. And he said a different version, but we don't know the main reason why he took those pictures and told.
What does he say? Because my thing is, if you see the pictures of your mother knocked out, and obviously she was raped because he filmed everything. He obviously didn't film himself or anybody with you, but there are the pictures.

Why does he say he took the pictures of you,

knocked out and drugged? He said that he didn't remember

taking those two pictures.

Oh.

And why does he say he drugged you?

He said that he did not meet on the photographs.

He said that he never touched me, he never raped me, he never drugged me.

But there are those two pictures. You know what I mean? The pictures were in a file, and the file was labeled something.
What was the file labeled? The pictures were in a file labeled. My daughter, naked.
they found that

the two photographs

which was deleted

two months before he was arrested. Oh.
Through this IT expertise. Oh, so an IT expertise found those photographs that had been deleted.
It's a lot. So he tried to actually get rid of those photographs.
A week after our interview, Caroline filed a legal complaint against her father, accusing him of drugging and sexually abusing her over a 10-year period when she was in her 30s. Caroline says she filed with the prosecutor as a message to all victims that you must never give up.
Later, they found pictures of your sister-in-law. Is it your sister-in-law? You had two sister-in-laws.
I have two sister-in-laws, yes. And the two sister-in-laws, he had been taking pictures, nude pictures of them coming out of the shower or...
In their own bedroom, even when one of my sister-in-law was pregnant, you know, and none of the women of this family were spared.

Yes, no woman in this family, this immediate family, was spared.

What was your mother's reaction when you told her that they had found photos of you in your father's files?

She wasn't able to react. She was kind of locked in the silence.
She was not able to support or even to help me. and I think that's you know the consequences of this

post-traumatic stress disorder.

She was not able to help me, even to believe me, you know.

Yes.

Because she wasn't at the police station with me at that time.

So, and my brother had to tell, to tell her, but man, it's really Caroline on those two photographs.

But, you know, she was, she was lost. From reading the book, I know things might have changed since you wrote the book, but from reading the book, it appeared to me that your mom still did not believe that your father sexually assaulted you, that she could wrap her head around the fact that she had been raped by all of those men and that he had called them in for years and she was drugged.
But there was something about her not being able to accept that it actually happened to you. And at one point, that became a great tension between you because she said, you know, why do you keep, you know, talking about this or fixating on this? I mean, he wasn't mean his whole life or he was good for a part of your life, is what she said.
You know, I think it's difficult for her and for her mom to realize that you were not protective enough. I mean, that you did not protect your daughter in your own family.
I think it's a difficult ordeal to face for her. But we are in a different position.
I mean, for her, I think it's probably easier to consider that she is the only victim of Dominique because, you know, she decided to live with him. He was her husband.
But, you know, realizing that he might have, you know, sexually abused her daughter, I think it's impossible for her. It's a kind of an auto-protection process.
So what did this do, Caroline, to the relationship between you and your mother? Because at one point you write in the book, one brother was siding with the mother and the other brother was siding with you. What did this do to the whole family? Because no one wanted to believe that this had actually happened to you, even though you have the pictures.
You know, we have to leave our, you know, reconstruction differently. And from, I mean, separately.
Still, I mean, she, I understood that she is not able to realize, and I have to respect that. because, you know, I mean, I understood that she is not able to realize and I have to respect that because, you know, I don't have any father, but I still have a mother.

And it's interesting, you do write to and say it so beautifully.

I forgot the phrase about how you are the daughter of both the victim and the perpetrator. Yeah, yeah.
Next, Caroline Darion tells me how her father managed to keep his dark secret hidden from his family, the police, and everyone else for nearly a decade. She also describes what it was like for her own mother to face 51 of her rapists during the grueling trial.

Stay with us.

Welcome back to the Oprah podcast.

I want to remind you that this conversation contains discussions about sexual assault.

It may be triggering for those watching or listening.

This interview is not appropriate for children.

I'm speaking to Caroline Darian, author of the new book, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again,

in which she shares her family's unfathomable ordeal. Her own father spent nearly a decade drugging his wife, Caroline's mother, then inviting men to come into their home to rape her unconscious body on camera.
So after seeing the photos of yourself, it became too much to bear

and there's no one listening to us or watching us right now who doesn't understand that your brain just can't even... You're first trying to process, my mother has been raped by 70 different men.
That's on November 2nd. And then on November 3rd, you're brought back to to the police station you see pictures of yourself and now you've got a process what happened to me and it was too much to bear and you ended up just having a breakdown what does a breakdown feel like can you share with us what is happening when you break down I felt abundant like an orphan.

Abundant by my father because it was the worst betrayal.

You know, discovering that you don't know

who you raised you.

Yeah.

And I felt alone about myself,

you know, without any support from my mom

because she was unable to be there for me.

So, it's a lot of loneliness.

So you went into hospital for how long?

Almost 72 hours.

Yeah.

Almost 72.

Just to sort of get your brain straightened out.

So that I can sleep.

But you know, the worst thing that they had to sedate me, you know, at the hospital for, you know, for me being able to sleep. And this was exactly, you know, the modus operandi that my dad used, you know, to rape my mom and me.
And, you know, I was in the hospital, you know, amongst different GPs and so on, and I realized that the only way to care of me, to take care of me was to sedate me and to give me some pills, some sleeping pills. Yes.
So which was, you know, like quite... Also triggering.
Triggering. Yes, yes.
And so I was there and I realized that there are no real support from, you know, the victims who are suffering for chemical submission. We need to get a special support in that case.
So it was really tough for me. Chemical submission occurs when a perpetrator uses drugs to make someone unconscious or incapacitated in order to commit a crime against them.
Although chemical submission is not new, Giselle Pelico's case drew renewed attention to the method being used specifically to perpetrate sexual assaults. This type of crime has been on the rise for 20 years in France.
In the United States, this crime is referred to as drug-facilitated sexual assault. It is also on the rise here in America, but difficult to prosecute due to lack of evidence.
You talk in the book how you and your mother were not supported as rape victims should be. You're told this information and then just left on your own.
I got the impression from your story, though, that at times the police were sympathetic because they couldn't even believe what they were pulling up. They couldn't believe themselves.
That's the impression I got from the book. Correct me if I'm wrong, that this man, Dominique, the man you'll never call dad again, had done this to his wife.
It's the worst case in France, and even the policemen didn't see that kind of story before. Yes.
Nobody had ever even heard of this before. Never, never ever.
It was for them, it's the... Coming to a nice little French neighborhood, suburban home, the men would park down the street.
Can we talk for a minute about the 50 men accused?

They know that there were at least 70,

but they were able to identify 50 of the men from the tapes

because Caroline's father had one condition for the men.

He didn't charge the men to come in and rape his wife. He only insisted that he be able to film it.
And therefore, all of those men who raped Giselle Pellicol over a period of more than a decade, all of those men are on tape. And they ranged in ages from 26 years old to 74 years old.
And they come from all backgrounds. One was a sales manager.
I heard one was a journalist. There was a firefighter.
They're all fathers and grandfathers. And one of the perpetrators I heard was also one of your mom's neighbor, right? Yes, they were like the good men, the good neighbor.
The good neighbors. They were well inserted within the society.
They were some job with some role and responsibilities. They were dad, grandfather, and all of that.
And one of the men was HIV positive. Yes.
And he came several times. He came seven times.
He came seven times? Seven times. And was HIV positive and obviously never said he was HIV positive.
So your mom did not contract the disease. She's a miracle.
That's a miracle. That's a miracle.
And he didn't use a condom? No, never, ever. None of these men were

using condoms? None of these men. So wouldn't your mom have, you know, vaginal infections or urinary tract infections? Weren't there always something going on with her? She had some gynecologist

troubles.

Yes.

But you know,

as a GP,

when you saw

a

GP

when you saw a woman who is 78 years old, you don't even think about that. In 2019, when Giselle told Caroline that she'd been bleeding heavily from her vagina.
Caroline brought her mother to a

gynecologist. The doctor detected an inflammation of her uterine passage and prescribed some antifungal ointment and left it at that.
So at one point from prison, I think your father wrote a letter to his brother. He wrote a letter.
Your father writes a letter to his brother saying that life is too hard

and Caroline's anger

is making... He wrote a letter.
Your father writes a letter to his brother saying that life is too hard

and Caroline's anger is making it worse.

He then writes to his brother, try to calm her, meaning you, down.

What was your reaction when you read that letter?

First of all, he's not even supposed to be writing letters from prison,

is what I understood in the beginning, contacting the family.

No, he was not able to do that, but he did.

And, you know, I was so angry.

You know, the anger that I feel toward him is so hard.

I mean, it's so strong.

I realized, reading this letter, that, you know, he is a real manipulator. He's a liar.
He's playing a role. He played a role probably all of his life.
And all that time, did you feel, so he really wasn't my dad? He was just playing a role as a dad. Is that what you ended up feeling? I don't know.
I think, you know, in the end, I don't think he was really happy in his own life. Obviously.
And he blamed this on the fact that when he was nine years old I think he was sexually assaulted yes this is what he told and that at 14 he was forced to watch a gang rape and so he then created a life where his own wife was gang raped you know I think I don't know if it's the truth, to be honest with you. I don't know if it's the truth.
I heard about this story when he was nine years old, but after, you know, I don't give any credit. Yeah.
And lots of people are raped at nine years old, in 10 and 12 and 14, and they don't grow up and do this. You know what it already is? Whoever you are, you choose who you want to be in your life.
Yes, yes. And he had a chance to get a nice family.
He was loved. He was loved.
By his wife and his three children. He was grandfather.
I mean. Which is what most people are looking for is is to know that they are loved.
And I know at one point, your mother tells you that your father is in a bad way in the book you write, I'll never call him dad again. Your mom says to you that Dominique is in a bad way and she somehow feels that she has failed him in some way.
And on another occasion, she actually packed him warm clothes and personal items. What did you think of that? Did that feel like betrayal to you? That your mom is now betraying you? I think she was in a denial.
Yes. for her, having to look at him as he is in reality, it is too tough.
Well, this is the thing. She made a decision early on in the trial, and you all can read about the trial.
She made a decision that she was going to, first of all, take this to trial and let it be an open trial, not through closed doors, because she wanted to shift the shame. That's why she deserves a statue in her honor, that she wanted to shift the shame and not have the shame be on the victim, even though this horrible, shameful thing had happened to her.
She's saying, I'm not going to bear the shame. The shame should be on these, this journalist, this firefighter, the, all these men who are known as every man in the community, they should be carrying the shame.
I won't carry the shame. And I love that she took that upon herself.
With the help of phone records and more than 20,000 videos and images taken from Dominique Pellico's computer files, the police were able to track down 50 of the more than 70 men suspected of raping Giselle. Last year, one of the most shocking rape trials in modern history, 51 men, took place in Avignon, France.
Giselle Pellico took the stand to explain that she waived her right of anonymity and made her name and the horrific images public to stand up for other women who suspect they've been drugged and raped. She said she wants society to change the way it deals with rape and to shift the shame from the victim to the perpetrator.
For this extraordinary act of bravery, Giselle became a hero in France and around the world. That's why she deserves all of our praise, because she said she also, when was asked, why wouldn't you change her last name after divorcing him? Because she divorced him

last year, wasn't it? Last year.

She was divorced since the very first day of this trial.

Okay. Since September the 2nd.

So she divorced him

and

still wanted to carry

the name because

she has grandchildren

who will carry that name. And she said

that she wanted that name not to be a name of shame, but a name of honor. And that's why she was standing up for herself so that the grandchildren could carry that name and that would be a name of honor.
I just think that is magnificent that she was able to do that. To me, my mom is a hero.
I mean, she's a hero. And in France, but I think everywhere else, we just have to be grateful for what she did.

Yes.

Because, you know, she walked in this court every day during four months to face all of these men, including Dominique, showing up all of these videos.

While they showed these videos. And they showed the videos every day.
And all the men testified, 50 men testified. Yeah, 51.
51, 51 meaning Dominique, yes. Yeah, and...
Can you all imagine that? I mean, we were just hearing about it. I was reading about it in the New York Times, but I didn't realize that they were showing the tapes in the courtroom every day and that she had to sit there and witness that every day.
And she went really every day, eight hours a day. Yeah.
And she showed up really, she's strong. And the message behind is if she is able to do that while she is 72 years old, for all the other victims, invisible victims, they can do the same.
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's not just victims of sexual assault.

I mean, it's everything.

It's anybody who has been afraid of standing up.

I just don't sexual assault. I mean, it's everything.
It's anybody who has been afraid of standing up. I just don't know anything that is more courageous than that because you've got the whole world looking at you and saying, why didn't you know? I mean, even the family, you tell the story in I'll Never Call Him Dad Again.
You tell the story of her being at the dinner table and your brother witnessing her falling out of the chair and your father saying what about that? He said that she was really tired, that she was really active because he spent 15 days with her children. So he was just telling them, telling him to Florian that she was tired.
And we believed him because we trusted him. So he had drugged her.
He drugged her this evening. Yeah, that evening.
And Florian and his wife and his children was about to leave the house and to go back to Paris. So, you know, he did everything perfectly.
It was every time well organized, you know. It was manipulated.
Manipulated. He had a real rhythm.
He had a pattern to it. Yeah.
Yeah, he had it down. Exactly.

Yeah.

And the men knew where to come. And he would tell the men, don't wear any cologne.
Don't smoke. Don't smoke.
Wash your hands. Wash your hands and warm your hands before you come in so that your cold hands don't disturb her in the way that she wakes up.
And so she would come out of this stupor of being drugged and not have a memory of anything that had ever happened. But you know, most of the time, this is what happened for all of these victims.
Because, you know, chemical submission is an underestimated health public issue in France. And most of the time, the victims do not have any recollection or even no memories about the sexual assault.
When you go over all of the evidence against your father with your family lawyer, you're struck by... I was struck by it too you you didn't use the language in the book but i was just i was struck by the crude language your father uses it's really your word to the other men when he's talking on the internet about his wife He calls her lots of really bad names.

He uses the word slut a lot when referring to her. I read that someplace else.
You did not put those words in the book. Why did you choose not to include the language that your father had used to describe your mother? Because the story is tough enough.

It's a kind of a shame to me.

I didn't want to write those words.

It humiliated her.

And I didn't want to write down those terrible words in my book.

Because I wanted to share my own story.

I mean, our family story,

but at my own condition with my own condition.

Yeah, I got that.

This is a message of hope.

Yes, I got that.

You know what I mean?

Of course I do.

So I just didn't want to put those words.

But you know, when I read that he was using such crude language,

I did say, why didn't you use words? But I thought, wow, so does he hate women? Does he hate women in general? Or did he just secretly hate his wife? What is your answer to that? That's a really good point, Obra. Because, you know, to me, I think he's really,

I think he has a clear detestation for all the women.

I think he hates women, the position, you know, the position of the woman,

and I think it's related probably with his own mother,

in his own family, I don't know,

but he does not have any respect. Certainly no respect for women.
Or just that woman. I mean, you know what is so hard for...
I mean, I'm sure it's troubling for you too. Devastating.
Is how in one breath... Because it sounds like when he says, you know, Giselle is the love of my life, that he actually means that.
When he's saying that to his brothers or whatever, that she's been the love of my life, there's one part of him that believes that. Do you believe that? No.
You think that's a part of it? I think he believes himself, and, you know, he's so split in two. Okay.
No, I think he believes what he say. But it's not tangible.
No, it's not tangible. You couldn't possibly love somebody and do that to them.
No, no. In court, did he explain why he did it? Did he say it was a part of a fantasy? It was a part of a...
What is his explanation for why he did that to your mother? He didn't give, you know, a lot of explanation. You know what? We don't even know the inaugural act, meaning the first time that he started to drug her for helping her.
We do not know, even after four months of this trial. He wouldn't tell the truth.
He didn't, I mean. And I think he didn't tell the truth, but I think he wouldn't tell the truth.
He wouldn't tell the truth. He wouldn't tell the truth.
I think he's going to die with a lot of secrets, dark secrets.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Have you, Caroline, come to terms with not knowing what really happened to you? Or do you think you know what happened to you? Are you, has that been resolved for yourself? I know that I was drugged. You know you were drugged.
I know. To me, it's a deep conviction right from the start.
Well, you know you're drugged because you can see yourself in the picture. So I'm drugged on those pictures, so I know it happened.
But the real question is why? And when you know the criminal past of Dominique Perico... Didn't he say he just wanted to look at just wanted to look at you? He didn't say anything.
Oh, okay. Anything.
So I will I will I will have to live with that doubt all my life. Next, as my conversation with Caroline Darion continues, we speak with a mom in Minnesota whose case is eerily similar.
She discovered videos on her husband's flash drive that would upend her marriage and her life. In her first American interview, I'm speaking with Caroline Darion, a French woman coming to terms with the vile actions of her father, which she details in her new book, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again.
I think it's important for all of us to note that Caroline's family's case made global headlines because it was so extreme and her father was caught with over 20,000 pieces of evidence. Authorities told us that these types of drug-induced intimate partner crimes are on the rise but are extremely difficult to detect and, of course, to prosecute.
And so before this interview, I asked Caroline if she would be okay if we invited Jenny Thiessen to our conversation. And she said, yes.
Jenny now joins us from Minnesota. Hi, Jenny.
I know you've been watching and listening and can relate to Caroline's story. You were married, I understand, to your college sweetheart for 12 years.
And then you made a shocking discovery. What was it? Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
I'm really grateful to be in this conversation with the two of you. Yeah, so I was traveling for work, and it was a quick trip, so I grabbed a backpack from our closet.
It happened to be one of my husband's, but we both used it and packed it, went on the trip, did all the travels, came back and was going through each pocket and pulling the toiletries out. And in one of the pockets, I discovered a flash drive that wasn't one I had seen or neither of us had used.
And so I plugged it in and I discovered that there was eight videos on that flash drive and six of them were of my husband videotaping his co-workers. He was a vice president of a bank and they had a single stall employee bathroom and he was recording his co-workers going to the bathroom.
And then there was two additional videos on there of me getting out of the shower and then one of us having sex that I was not aware of. And what was your immediate reaction to that? Honestly, this sounds awful, but it was my golden ticket.
It was throughout our marriage, there was so many red flags and there were so many things that I discovered and found, but he always had a way to blame me that it was my fault that he did this or it was my fault that he did that. And for the first time, I had something that had nothing to do with me.
There was no way, I was not there. I was not videotaping his coworkers.
So this was the first time that, as it sounds so silly, because there was no reason to have an excuse for all of the other things, but it was truly, it was shocking. And it was also my way out.

I hear when you file for divorce, your lawyers told you to take a closer look at your home computer. And what did you find there? Yeah, so through our marriage, there was lots of consensual photos.
and when I clicked through all of the photos on our laptop there was double the amount of non-consensual photos and videos and I was tasked with clicking on each single one like Caroline's story folders and folders and folders deep um and came across a video

of my vagina and i clicked on it and i discovered that he was underneath the covers with the lights

on and he was penetrating my vagina with a dildo and my legs were limp and he crawls through the covers. He stops penetrating me.
He crawls through the covers and pans in on my face and my face is on my pillow. My mouth is open and it is clear that I am incapacitated.
As he panned the wider image out my son was laying on the same pillow as me in the video while he's raping me. He's raping you and you are drugged and this was used during your court case.
We also asked Caroline ahead of this time if she's okay for us to show this so can we're

going to roll this tape okay and you tell us what are we seeing here this is actually we're in willa and this is another of many times where he is checking to make sure that i'm passed out and as you see, I am clearly incapacitated. Do you recall any of this? Do you recall any of this at all? So actually that instance, absolutely none of the, when I am out cold in any of these, I do not, just like Caroline's story, it's so relatable.
I do not. It's out of body is the only way I can describe it.
But that specific instance, when we were in Anguilla, we had gone to a bar. We were scuba divers, so we weren't cocktailing it up.
And I had ordered a pina colada and I needed to go to the bathroom. So I told my husband, you know, hey, watch my drink.
I'm going to run to the bathroom. And I came right back and I took a sip through the straw and on my tongue through the straw, there was this toxic poisonous taste and it was a half of a pill and it was disintegrating on my tongue.
And I said, oh my gosh, I've been drugged. Please, you know, help.
I've been drugged. And he looked at me and he took his, the palm of his hand and he slammed it on my knee.
And he said, Jen, calm down. I said, calm down.
You want me to calm down? Someone just drugged my drink. Like you can see the pill.
You could actually tell it was broken in half because it still was intact. And he said, calm down.
It must have been, and he goes into his shirt pocket. The other half of my Ambien must have fallen out as I was reaching over the bar to grab something from behind the bar.
Oh. And I remember going, that is crazy.
That does not make sense. None of it does, but also I'm on vacation.
I'm with my husband. Right.
Who I trust. But I remember in hindsight, so seeing that video just went, well, this makes sense.

Yeah.

And I wanted to say to everybody, we're showing the video with your permission not to exploit the story, but just to see how it happens. I remember when I saw it for the first time, I'm sure you felt had similar feelings.
it's just so vile and creepy and disgusting that someone you're sleeping next to every night whom you trust could do that to you. Exactly.
This is supposed to be the person who protects me the most, my greatest protector. And here I am in bed next to them.
Yeah. And they are putting me in harm.
Well, you will see yourself many times over and I'll never call him dad again, because you're, I have to say that when we saw this story that became a global story, I think a lot of people were thinking, oh, well, that could never happen here in the United States. Not only did it happen, it's like right there in the heart of Minnesota.
So thank you so much for sharing your story. Thank you, Jenny.
Thank you so much. It's really important to get your testimonial and to make understand that the case of my mom and our family is not an isolated one.
And I'm really grateful. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Have you healed from this? Have you healed from this? I don't think healed's the right word.
I continue to move on. I'm a single mom.
I do my best. But it's still ongoing.
We're eight years post-divorce and I'm actually in court tomorrow again for our post-divorce, still fighting for the safety of myself and my kids. Ginny Thiessen was first told that her ex-husband, Matthew Heger, would be charged with a felony which could put him in prison for up to 15 years.
However, the felony charge was dropped because of a little-known marital rape loophole in Minnesota law. Despite being found guilty of a variety of crimes, Heger served less than 30 days in jail for the crimes he committed against Jenny and his former co-workers.
Although it was too late for her case, Jenny fought for a bill in Minnesota to remove any protections for spouses who raped their partners. In 2019, Governor Tim Walz signed the bill into law.
Okay, so the wrong word is heel. I would agree with that.
Have you been able to carry on in a way that your life feels like it's still hopeful and that you will be able to one day put this behind you? You're not defined by it is what I'm trying to say. Amen.
Absolutely. I am not defined by this.
This will not define who I am as a person. Absolutely not.
I think as a parent, it is most important to show my children strength and positivity and also speaking out. What do you say to your children about this? Because, you know, in Caroline's case, she and her brothers were older.
They're adults with their own families and children. But when you have teenage children and this is their father who has done this despicable, disgusting thing to you and you are fighting in the courts, not only fighting in the courts, I want to say you got the marital rape laws changed in Minnesota.
How do you explain this to your children? Yeah. So when this all started, they were five and nine.
And so at a very different life point in their life. And I ended up, I did change the law in Minnesota.
There was a loophole on our books that said at the time that if you were married or cohabitating at the time of offense under the subheading of incapacitated, that you could not be charged. And so I did change the law and there was a lot of press around that.
So I ended up having at nine years old with my daughter and of course working with therapists, the sex talk and a talk about rape pretty much in the same breath. And for my son and for both of them, it was around boundaries.
And the analogy that I used with my son is if you're pushing someone on a swing and they say stop, you stop. You honor their no.
You honor their stop. You honor the boundary.
And for my daughter with the rape conversation, it was about owning your body. And your body, you have the rights to your body, whether you're married married in a relationship, you own the rights to what happens to yourself and you get to choose.
So that was a big part of the conversation I had with her at the time. Well, thank you for standing up for not just yourself and your daughter, but for all the daughters.
Thank you. Thank you, Jenny.
In your book, you include a hypothetical letter to your father. Can you read us an excerpt from that? Okay.
The hardest thing for us, your children, is to admit that you never knew who you were. You, from where we thought a good, honest, loyal man, betrayed us, shouldn't sacrifice us to your dark side, thinking you were smart enough to play by your own rules and not get caught.
I keep telling myself that you must have lost all love and respect for us a long, long time ago, in order to be able to inflict such horrors upon us. You demolished the one family you had, giving no thought to how much we might prize

it.

I loved you and respected you.

I helped you, as

any daughter would have who felt

grateful towards our father.

You never kept us

your end of the bargain.

You refused to be a real father

or grandfather and never

be able to forgive you.

And that's just something I have to learn to live with.

So how have you learned to live with it?

I'm fighting.

You know, I threw my self-body and soul into this fight against chemical submission. And to me, it's become, I think, one of the most important missions of my life.
I needed to make something more noble. The campaign is Stop Chemical Submission,

Don't Put Me Under.

In 2023, Caroline launched the movement

to stop chemical submission,

Don't Put Me Under,

to help rape victims who had been drugged

and to raise awareness of this issue

among medical professionals

and the general public. And what is the mission? What is the goal? The mission is to drive awareness about this health public issue and the mission is to say to all the victims, all the invisible victims, to speak up and to let them know that they have to come forward because they will be listened to, but also believe because it's really important for them to know that and to be supportive.
And one of the most biggest tasks that we have, you know, with our charity is to make understand to the government but also to the health professional that they have a key role to play. They have to be trained to better detect and identify those cases.
Yes, if somebody comes in and they're having blackouts and blackouts and blackouts. Blackouts, amnesia, weight loss, hair loss.
Yeah. Because there are so many consequences when you are a victim of chemical submission.
You can get traffic accidents, unwanted pregnancies. Yes.
Addiction and so on, you know. Yeah.
So it's really important to really raise awareness about this. Chemical submission.
So I was so struck how you write the book. I'll never call him dad again.
How you write about the two women in the grocery store. I mean, if the two women at the grocery store had never pressed charges against him for filming up their dress, none of this would have been discovered.
I mean, I worry and wonder what would have happened to your mom. She would just continue to have been drugged and eventually, what would all of those drugs have done to her brain? What would those drugs have done to her? She probably could have died.
Yeah. Yeah.
And nobody would have known. And we would have never known.
In December 2024, a French court found Dominique Pellico guilty of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife and orchestrating her rape by dozens of other men. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
All 50 of Dominique Pellico's co-defendants were also found guilty of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault, and received sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years. You say that for years now you've been trying to find a new way to exist, and during the trial you also asked, how are you supposed to rebuild yourself from the ruins when you know your father is the worst sexual predator of the past 20 years? How are you managing to rebuild your life? Your son was six at the time.
Now he's 10. Your son was really close to his grandfather.
You two, just like Jenny, had to tell your son about his grandfather being in jail and try to carry on with your life. How have you been able to rebuild? I'm a positive woman.
I'm a positive woman and I'm an active woman. One of the things which really helped me to go beyond is really the engagement that I have with this charity.
But I had a chance to get really well supported by my husband and by my son. And today, what's the most important things to me,

it's really my own family.

Because, you know, the one that I have before, it's over.

So one of the most important things and precious things to me

is really my husband and my son and also all of my friends.

How is your mother? How is she now?

I know she moved out of the house.

You all moved her out of that house shortly after all of this happened

and she moved to another area and another neighborhood

and is driving again because at one point

she didn't even feel safe to drive

because she didn't understand where the blackouts were coming from

or when she would have a blackout.

So I understand she's back to driving again.

But how is she?

She is safe.

She's a strong woman.

She's an independent woman. She is well supported by, you know, friends and family.
Do you all talk about this? Yes, we talked about this. How does she feel about this book? She read this book and she wasn't really comfortable right from the start, but she understood also that, you know, it was really important to me.
How is the family relationship? Are you all, would you say, not as close as you used to be? This certainly, from what you wrote in the book, didn't make you closer. So has it still created its distances amongst you and the family? I think this terrible story split art in two.
And so my mom and me, we are now rebuilding from our side because I can't think we can help each other. And so what's your message now

to people who either have experienced something like this or the reason why you wanted to share your story and to put it into words that would last forever is because you want people to know what, Caroline? I just want them to know that they can speak up, speak out. and there

I

I

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I

I

I

I

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I

I

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I

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I What, Caroline? I just want them to know that they can speak up, speak out. And they also have to trust themselves.
Know that they are precious. Yes.
Their voice is, are really precious.

And this is only altogether, whatever is in France, in Europe, or even in the US, you know, thanks to our genius testimony. Yes.
That we have to make things change. Yes.
never call him dad again. Hopefully nothing so egregious and despicable ever happens to you.
But I think what you said earlier in the hypothetical letter to your father is true. When you have been betrayed and severely betrayed by someone, the hardest thing for anybody who has experience that kind of betrayal is to admit that you actually never knew who you were.
And especially if it's somebody you thought was a good and honest person, and to have to admit to yourself, you know what? I just didn't know. I didn't know who you were.
And be able to forgive yourself for that and be able to, as Jenny said, to move forward. I thank you so much, Caroline.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for coming all of this way. And thank you, Jenny, Thiessen too, for joining us from Minnesota.
The book is I'll Never Call Him Dad Again. And as you have heard from this conversation, it is a riveting and a harrowing read.
It is available now on Amazon. And I want to take a moment to say, if you are or you suspect you are the victim of a sexual assault, if what we have said here today sounds familiar to you, blacking out and can't remember things and this doesn't make sense and all of that, the signals, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline.
There's the number on your screen. 1-800-656-4673.
Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen.