Giséle Pelicot bravely waived her right to anonymity after being drugged by her own husband and raped 92 times by strangers he invited into their bedroom between 2011 and 2020

Giséle Pelicot’s daughter has revealed she thought her mum had Alzheimer’s before discovering the heartbreaking truth about the 72-year-old.

Mum-of-three, Giséle, bravely waived her right to anonymity after being drugged by her own husband and raped 92 times by strangers he invited into their bedroom between 2011 and 2020 in France.

Her daughter, Caroline Darian, 45, who has accused her father of raping and abusing her too – which he has denied – has written a book about the tragedy and spoke about her confusion surrounding her mum when her father, Dominique, first started drugging his wife.

Talking to hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley in a candid TV interview – in which she discussed trying to find the right words to tell her son his grandad is a monster – she said: “My two brothers and me, we were really afraid because we knew that there was something wrong with my mum. Sometimes we had my mum on the phone… She had incoherent behaviour over the phone, she talked in a different way… She didn’t seem in her right mind.”

Giséle Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, has written a book after the unimaginable tragedy her family have faced

Revealing she thought Giséle had Alzheimer’s, Caroline, who also gave a damning statement on her relationship with her mum, continued: “We thought about brain cancer, we thought about Alzheimer’s, we thought that maybe she was starting [to have] dementia… She was here without being here.” In a truly horrifying case, which sent shockwaves around the world, Giséle was unknowingly sedated and sexually abused dozens of times at her family home in Mazan, a commune in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France.

Her husband, 71, was sent to jail for 20 years last month following a landmark trial in France. He had kept evidence of the abhorrent acts, storing 3,800 photos and videos of his wife being sexually abused on a USB drive, called ‘abuses’. Chillingly, there were also images of his daughter, Caroline, which were saved as ‘around my daughter, naked’. As well as being sentenced for drugging and raping his wife, Pelicot was also found guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.

Dominique Pelicot pleaded guilty to drugging his wife and allowing dozens of men to rape her ( 
Image:
Supplied)

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison ( 
Image:
Supplied)
Caroline shared her reaction to the revelation of her father’s crimes on This Morning, saying: “I was devastated… I realised that I didn’t know my beloved father.”

Saying she never suspected her parent before his arrest, she continued: “Believe me, I was so close to my father, I was the only girl daughter of this family… I trusted him 100 per cent. I never saw him staring at a woman, never ever.” She added: “So, when we discovered that as children, all our worlds collapsed, all our foundations fell down.”

Speaking about the images of herself, which were shown to her by police, she said: “I was in a state of a shock…You have to realise the reality of what you are seeing but it’s too much, it’s too violent, it’s crazy.”

Addressing the current allegations in which Caroline has accused her father of drugging and raping her too, she said: “I knew right from the beginning but you know in France, this is the public prosecutor’s officers who lead the complaint and right from the start they decided to focus in on my mother because all the evidence [was] on the table.

She continued: “I know that he drugged me and probably did a lot more. So, I decided during this trial, because I understood I was an invisible victim and I’m the daughter, so I need to get the truth.