Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse

At 20:25 on a Monday evening in November 2020, Caroline Darian received a call that changed everything.

On the other end of the phone was her mother, Giselle Pellicott.

“She announced to me that that morning she had discovered that (my father) Dominic had been drugging her for about 10 years so that different men could rape her,” Darien told Emma on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Barnett recalled in an exclusive interview.

“At that moment, I lost my normal life,” said Darien, now 46.

“I remember yelling, I cried, I even insulted him,” she said. “It was like an earthquake. A tsunami.”

In December, Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison after a historic trial that lasted three and a half months.

More than four years later, Darian said her father “should die in prison.”

Fifty men recruited online by Dominique Pellicott to rape and sexually assault his unconscious wife Giselle have also been jailed.

He was caught by police after upskirts in a supermarket and investigators took a closer look at him. On the seemingly harmless retired grandfather’s laptop and phone, they found thousands of videos and photos of his wife, Gisele, being raped by a stranger while she was apparently unconscious.

As well as putting the issue of rape and gender-based violence in the spotlight, the trial also highlighted the little-known issue of chemical submission – drug-assisted assault.

Caroline Darian has battled chemical drugs throughout her life, but the condition is thought to be under-reported as most victims have no memory of the attacks and may not even realize they have been Drugged.

In the days after Giselle’s fateful phone call, Darien and her brothers Florian and David traveled to the south of France, where their parents had been living to support their mother, as she learned — as Darien now puts it — her husband was “one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 or 30 years.”

Soon after, Darien herself is summoned by the police – and her world is shattered once again.

She saw two photos they found on her father’s laptop. In the photo, an unconscious woman is lying on a bed wearing only a T-shirt and underwear.

At first, she didn’t see that the woman was her. “I was living with the dissociation effect. It was hard for me to recognize myself from the beginning,” she said.

“Then the policeman said, ‘Look, you have the same brown mark on your cheek… that’s you.'” I looked at the two photos in a different way at the time… In all of her photos, I lay like my mother on the left. “

Darian said she was convinced her father also abused and raped her – something he has always denied, although he offered conflicting explanations for the photos.

“I know he drugged me, possibly for sexual abuse. But I don’t have any proof,” she said.

Unlike her mother’s case, there is no evidence of what Pellicott might have done to Darien.

“How many victims are like this? They are not believed because there is no evidence. Their voices are not heard, they are not supported,” she said.

Shortly after her father’s crimes came to light, Darian wrote a book.

I Will Never Call Him Dad Again explores her family’s trauma.

It also delves into the issue of chemical submissions, where commonly used medications “come from the home medicine cabinet.”

“Painkillers, sedatives. It’s medicine,” Darian said. As is the case with almost half of chemical victims, she knows her abuser: the danger, she says, “comes from within.”

She said she was left devastated after discovering she had been raped more than 200 times by different men, and struggled to accept that her husband might also have violated their daughter.

“It’s difficult for a mom to integrate all of this at once,” she said.

However, when Gisele decided to open the trial to the public and the media to reveal what her husband and dozens of men had done to her, mother and daughter came to an agreement: “I know we went through something… … It’s scary, but we have to get through it with dignity and strength.”

Now, Darien needs to learn how to live knowing she is the daughter of both a torturer and a victim—a “terrible burden,” she calls it.

She could now not recall her childhood with the man she called Dominic, except occasionally to fall back into the habit of calling him father.

“When I look back, I really don’t remember who I considered my father. I looked the criminal in the eye and he was a sex offender,” she said.

“But I have his DNA, and the main reason why I focus so much on the invisible victim is also a way of keeping a real distance from this man,” she told Emma Barnett. “Dominic and I are completely different.”

Darian added that she didn’t know if her father was a “monster” as some have suggested. “He knew exactly what he had done and he was not sick,” she said.

“He’s a dangerous man. There’s no way he’s getting out. No way.”

It will be years before Dominique Pelicot, 72, is eligible for parole, so he may never see his family again.

Meanwhile, Team Pellicott is rebuilding itself. Darian said Gisele was exhausted by the trial but was also “recovering… and she’s doing great.”

As for Darian, the only issues she’s interested in right now are raising awareness about chemical submissions – and better educating children about sexual abuse.

She draws strength from her husband, her brother and her 10-year-old, her “loving son,” she says with a smile and love in her voice.

Darian said the events of that November day made her who she is today.

Now the woman whose life was shattered by a tsunami that November night is trying to just look forward.

“You can watch the full interview for ‘Pelicot Trial – A Daughter’s Story’ on BBC 2 or iPlayer on Monday at 7pm. If you are affected by some of the issues raised in this film, visit bbc.co.uk/actionline ‘ Get help and support details.