The Oprah Podcast
Oprah and Caroline Darian: First Us Interview Since Her Father Dominique Pelicot’s Shocking Trial
17 Mar 2025
Chapter 1: What is the shocking story behind Caroline Darian's family tragedy?
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 Felice, 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.
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 Pelican name
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Chapter 2: How did Caroline Darian's family discover Dominique Pelicot's crimes?
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 incoherent behavior, she was talking in a strange way. You would see lapses in her memory. Yeah, with lapses in the memories. Like, you know, she was doing amnesia. She didn't remember some of our conversation about the phone the day before.
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 a drugman. And this is the way you found out.
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 this morning of November the 2nd, they have to tell my mom that he was 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 in why you're asking me these questions, correct? And then they show her the photographs.
Yeah, they show her seven different photographs with seven different men where she was abused. And what is in those photographs, Caroline? You saw my mom drugged, 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. 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.
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