Gisèle Pelicot's daughter thought mum was ill - but the truth was far more sinister

Gisèle Pelicot told her daughter Caroline Darian to sit down in a quiet spot - because she had to tell her child her father was an evil sexual predator who had raped her

A daughter who thought her mum was experiencing blackouts due to illness was horrified to find out they were as a result of her ex-husband's campaign of rape.

Caroline Darian, 45, felt she had missed signs - including Gisèle Pelicot's blackouts - her mum had been abused and she had believed "ignorance is culpable". However, Caroline's dad Dominique Pelicot kept his manipulation of his ex-wife so well-hidden it went on for years, during which time he drugged and raped her and invited dozens of strangers to do so at the family home.

Speaking after Dominique was jailed for 20 years, Caroline said: "She [Gisèle] was having a lot of blackouts. She would sometimes seem incoherent on the phone." Once, Darian's son called his grandmother to tell her about his rugby tournament, and she started repeating herself nonsensically. Darian took the phone from him and asked : "Mum, what day is it?" Gisèle couldn't reply.

Caroline and her brothers, as well as Gisèle herself, had worried she had Alzheimer's. The siblings had booked neurologists and scans, but the tests always came back normal. Fearful, Gisèle had stopped driving, pinched herself when she took the train to Paris, worried she'd miss her stop ; and was convinced she would be diagnosed with a brain tumour.

Dr Laurent Layet, the psychiatrist who first examined Pelicot after his initial arrest, said he seemed "clean and polished". But the psychiatrist sensed a "dissonance" in Pelicot's behaviour, as if he was hiding something more serious - and told police he was worth closer inspection.

When Gisèle, now 72, told her family what her partner had done, Caroline "felt herself lose control". Her mum had told Caroline, then a communications manager, to sit down in a quiet spot - and she immediately feared the worse for her dad's health.

But Gisèle, of Mazan, southeastern France, informed her daughter police had found evidence Pelicot had drugged his wife then filmed her, unconscious, being raped in her own bed by him and dozens of strangers. Speaking to The Guardian Magazine, Caroline said: "It was like being hit by a wave. It was a cataclysm. All my foundations collapsed."

This conversation happened in November 2020 and now, four years on, Pelicot has finally been jailed for his vile manipulation. His hearing in Avignon was the biggest rape trial in French history, for which Gisèle decided to waive her anonymity. The grandmother was embraced by the world as a feminist hero for her bravery and refusal to be shamed, as the trial made global headlines and the family was thrown into the spotlight.

After sentencing, she told reporters: "I want men and women to live together in harmony with mutual respect and understanding." However, her daughter now faces the "crushing double burden" of being the child of both victim and perpetrator - and the mental torture of not knowing what her father did to her.

On Pelicot's computer equipment, police had found a deleted folder called "my daughter naked" and recovered two pictures of Darian, then aged roughly in her 30s, taken at different times, asleep on her side in the foetal position, wearing beige underwear with the duvet pulled back. When police first showed her those pictures, she initially didn't recognise herself.

Speaking to The Guardian Magazine, Caroline added: "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?... You can't imagine the sadness and the loneliness. I've got a part of his DNA.

"It's difficult to be the daughter of the biggest sexual criminal for the past 10, 20, even 30 years, and at the same time be the daughter of an icon like my mum? I don't know if it's better to be the daughter of Gisèle or worse to be the daughter of Dominique Pelicot. I'll have to live with that."