“Your father is incapable of such a thing”

The Dominique Pelicot case is a case of incest

The case of Dominique Pelicot shocked the world. Pelicot was arrested for filming “up skirts” of women at the supermarket which lead to his arrest and the confiscation of his computer and phone. The police discovered, when searching his devices, thousands of images and videos of him raping his drugged, unconscious wife, Gisèle Pelicot, as well as him instructing many strangers to rape her as well. The police also discovered his many posts online where he described his violence in detail, detailing the drug cocktail he used, the strategies he used to avoid detection, and speaking about his wife in violent, degrading terms. He shared videos of the rapes and solicited other men to take part in raping his wife. He did this for over a decade.

The way this case has been taken up by the media is through the primary emotion of shock. The violence is shocking and it is especially shocking that such extreme violence was carried out for so long, and involved so many perpetrators, without detection. Caroline Darian, the daughter of the Pelicots, has become an activist, raising awareness of the practice of chemical submission, and how to notice signs that you may be being drugged without your knowledge and awareness. Chemical submission is terrifying precisely because it can be so covert. Unlike other forms of sexual assault, it can happen completely outside of the victim’s awareness. Darian and other activists raising awareness about chemical submission urge women having unexplained symptoms of confusion and memory loss and/or unexplained vaginal trauma to ask for toxicology screening from their doctors. This is incredibly important work because chemical submission remains largely unknown and we have no idea how frequently this type of sexual violence is carried out.

What I want to draw attention to here, is the narrative that Dominique Pelicot was a perfectly normal family man and that there was absolutely no indication that he was capable of anything like this. Part of the reason this case is seen is as so shocking is because of how such extreme and extensive violence was able to remain hidden for so long. Raising awareness about the signs of chemical submission is an important part of noticing and intervening on this type of violence. I want to suggest, however, that there were other signs that we can also learn to notice and identify. This is not, in any way, to put any blame or responsibility on the victims, but to encourage a cultural reckoning with patterns of violence so we can better notice and intervene. The case of Dominique Pelicot is not only a case of chemical submission and mass rape; it is also a case of incest. The incest element of Pelicot’s violence has been largely suppressed and not reported on, which prevents us from understanding the violence and situating it within what we already know about incest and how it works. As with chemical submission, incest leaves clues, and we, culturally, have a responsibility to be able to identify these clues.

Before going further, I want to emphasize that I am writing about violence that did not happen to me, and I want to do so with humility and respect. This is not my story. I encourage everyone reading this to read Caroline Darian’s book, translated to English as I’ll never call him dad again. Caroline Darian has told her own story about the violence she, her mother, and other members of her family have experienced, and you should prioritize reading her own words about what happened to her. You should also look into the important advocacy work she is doing on chemical submission.

After Caroline Darian and her brothers went into the police station to learn about the unbelievable violence their father had been covertly carrying out against their mother for years, Darian was called back to the police station for another meeting. She was shown two photos of herself taken some time when she was in her 30s, found on her father’s computer, where she appears to be sleeping on her side in her underwear. The underwear she is wearing in the photos is not her own. The position she is in is not one she sleeps in. She is a very light sleeper and in the photos the lights are on, something she is unable to sleep through. Her father took and saved the photos. It is very obvious that Dominique Pelicot drugged, undressed, dressed, posed, and photographed his daughter. This, already, is sexual assault and incest. Knowing what Pelicot did to his wife, it is clear that he probably also raped his daughter and could have allowed other men to rape her as well.

Darian became an official victim in the case but the violence against her was noted as an afterthought. Because there was such extensive evidence of the mass rapes of her mother, and no photographs or videos of Darian being assaulted, the focus of the case remained on Gisèle Pelicot. Darian was left with the question of “if” she was assaulted by her father. I want to point out that even questioning whether she was assaulted by her father follows the pattern of incest in which what actually “counts” as incest is forever receding into the horizon. Culturally, we always wait for more evidence, for some future line to be crossed, before we can assert that incest has really happened. Yet that line we are waiting to be crossed is always moving further away. Incest is not seen as real until we know for sure that genital assault has taken place (and even then we can continue to argue, debate, and doubt it). Drugging, undressing, dressing, and posing your daughter is itself an extremely violent, incestuous sexual assault. Secondly, it is extremely obvious that Pelicot did more than that, even if we don’t have photographic evidence of it. Of course a man who did what he did to Gisèle Pelicot did the same to his daughter who he drugged and posed. In I’ll never call him dad again Darian writes that she had unexplained vaginal tearing in her 30s which required surgery. It is obvious that Darian was raped by her father and yet this continues to be treated as an unknown. This follows the pattern of incest.

Heartbreakingly, Gisèle Pelicot’s reaction to the discovery that her daughter was also a victim also follows the pattern of incest. She said to her daughter “Your father is incapable of such a thing. I just can’t believe it… Because if I could, it would destroy me utterly.” Incest is a family system. It is not a discrete relationship of perpetration and victimization that plays out only between the incestuous father and his daughter. It is a pattern of intergenerational trauma that impacts every member of the family. All the adults in an incest family play a role in perpetrating the dynamic, even if they are also being victimized. All the children in an incest family are victims, even if they aren’t the ones being directly sexually abused. In patriarchal incest families the father (and sometimes also the grandfather) believes he has a right to sexual access to all the women and girls in the family, including his partner, his daughters, his granddaughters, his nieces, and even the partners of his sons. This belief in his right to sexual access can be extremely overt or extremely covert (or anywhere in between) but there are always signs that we can learn to identify. Incest does not need to include physical sexual assault. It can be carried out in many ways, including sexual comments, leering, voyeurism, invasion of privacy, and boundary violations of various kinds. The dissociation and denial that is necessary for incest to be carried out exists in all members of the family, including direct victims, indirect victims (the other children who witness the abuse), and enablers. It is a very common incest pattern for the wives/mothers in patriarchal incest families to insist that the father is not capable of incest, no matter how much evidence there is that he is in fact capable of it. This denial is a fundamental part of how incest functions.

The incest that I experienced in my family is dismissed because the sexual assaults my grandfather committed against me and the other children (licking our faces, simulated making out, forced kissing, mouth penetration with his tongue), as well as his constant sexual comments and threats, were seen as “normal” and “harmless.” I always assumed that the extreme denial in my family was a result of the “minor” nature of the sexual violence I experienced. In fact, this denial is a feature in all incest families, no matter how severe the violence is. My mother openly admits that all the men in my father’s family “played” these types of sexual “games” with the children, and that this behaviour was totally normalized. Then, in the next breath, she attacks me and calls me delusional when I report that my father was showing clear signs of considering molesting my sister. She insists that my father is not capable of that, even though she just said that incest and sexual abuse were completely normalized and acceptable in my father’s family, and he has done nothing to face or break free from those patterns.

In the case of Dominique Pelicot the insistence that he is not capable of sexually assaulting his daughter is glaring. A man who drugged and raped his wife for over a decade is clearly capable of anything. The fact that he drugged and posed his daughter makes it clear without a doubt that he is capable of incest because drugging and posing your daughter is incest. Seeing the exact pattern of denial in the Pelicot case as in my own family shows me that the denial in my family has nothing to do with the sexual abuse being “minor.” It clearly does not matter how extreme the sexual abuse is. It is a pattern of incest that we insist that perpetrators of incest are not capable of perpetrating incest.

I also want to point out that the second part of Gisèle Pelicot’s response to her daughter’s victimization also follows a common pattern in families of patriarchal incest. She said “I just can’t believe it… Because if I could, it would destroy me utterly.” I have spoken to countless survivors of patriarchal incest whose mothers dismissed and/or repressed their daughter’s speech about the incest by focusing on their own emotional experience. So many mothers in patriarchal incest families respond by defending that they were “good mothers,” by becoming extremely emotional and overwhelmed, and/or by covertly or overtly demanding that their child step into the parental role and take care of their feelings rather than being the parent themself and taking care of their sexually abused child. Because Gisèle Pelicot is the victim of such extreme violence, I think many would be uncomfortable pointing out that she is actively taking part in patterns of patriarchal incest by focusing on her own feelings, denying her daughter’s experience of violence, and trying to repress her daughter’s speech. Yet this is exactly what she is doing. Darian writes that her mother said to her “You’re forgetting that he wasn’t always the devil incarnate. He did so much for you. For your brothers too. I was happy with him by my side. I loved him so much. I want to remember the good times.” It is extremely revealing to see these standard incest patterns of minimization, repression, and denial carried out in a case as extreme as the Pelicots.

Many wives/mothers in patriarchal incest families are themselves being victimized. This does not prevent or negate the reality that many of them also take part in the incest dynamic by encouraging or demanding denial and dissociation. We need to be able to hold both truths at once. Incest is a cycle that repeats over generations. Perpetrators and enablers of incest were once victims of incest. The perpetrator, enabler, and victim roles are not mutually exclusive. In I’ll never call him dad again Darian writes “I know that my mother has been through worse than me….” I think the assumption that Gisèle Perlicot is the primary victim and “has been through worse” because she was assaulted so many times by so many men is actually false. I don’t think sexual trauma can be weighed only by how often one was assaulted. I don’t see the point in comparing trauma and deciding who had it “worse” but I will say that being sexually assaulted by your father is traumatic in a different way than being sexually assaulted by your husband. There is actually nothing more traumatic than being drugged and sexually assaulted by your own father.

The way that the revelation that Darian was also drugged and assaulted was responded to follows the patterns of incest, but the patterns of incest were visible within the Pelicot family long before Pelicot’s devices were seized by the police. It is important that these patterns of incest are named explicitly. We live in a culture that practices widespread denial and dissociation about incest. We all know families where incest is taking place and we are all trained to brush the obvious signs under the rug. Not all incest families include chemical submission and mass rape, but all incest families produce and perpetuate the cycle of incest and intergenerational trauma. If we become skilled at noticing and intervening on these signs we will be able to put an end to a huge amount of violence, including extreme cases like the Pelicots but also the more mundane and normalized (but also severely traumatic) forms of incest that exist all around us.

Despite the repeated representations of Dominique Pelicot as a normal family man who no one could ever suspect of such violence, Caroline Darian writes in I’ll never call him dad again that she witnessed domestic violence by the time she was nine. She writes “My father grabbed the collar of my mother’s blouse, hauling her off her feet and slamming her against the bathroom wall.” Domestic violence against the wife/mother is a red flag for abuse of children and sexual abuse within the family, as these are all interrelated aspects of patriarchal domestic violence and misogyny. The existence of physical abuse within the family does not necessarily indicate incest, but it should be considered a risk factor.

In another section, Darian writes “[As a child], I discovered that my father had been secretly taking money from the kitty I’d saved up while working summer jobs. He was shameless when I confronted him, telling me that he was within his rights and that he’d pay me back soon enough. When I looked at the other families around us, I realized that ours was somehow upside down, that it wasn’t normal I had to play the parent to my father.” This is abusive behaviour, and the entitled and proprietary way he justifies stealing from his daughter indicates that he feels his daughter and her belongings are actually his. The parent/child role reversal in which the children are expected to parent the adults is also a common pattern in incest families.

In the early 2000s, Dominique Pelicot sexually propositioned Gisèle Pelicot’s close friend and godmother to one of their sons. The friend told Gisèle “You have no idea who you are living with. You’ve got to open your eyes. Your husband isn’t the man you’ve always taken him to be.” Gisèle Pelicot responded with anger and denial, ending the friendship. Dominique Pelicot denied the accusation and even threatened to “beat up” the friend for the accusation. While this, on its own, doesn’t indicate incest, it does indicate patriarchy, misogyny, and sexually invasive behaviour. Sexually propositioning your wife’s close friend fits within the pattern of patriarchal incest in which all the women of the household are thought to be sexually available to the patriarch, in this case including friends who frequent the household. Threatening to beat a woman up is a huge red flag for domestic violence. Dominique Pelicot also insisted that the friendship breakup was final, which indicates controlling and isolating behaviours toward his wife.

In 2011, Florian, one of the sons of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, and his girlfriend, were living with the Pelicots. Darian writes “One day [Florian’s] girlfriend walked in on my father masturbating behind his computer in his office. He’d left the door wide open.” This is incest. Knowingly leaving the door open and masturbating is intentionally sexually invasive behaviour. This kind of incestuous behaviour is extremely common and easily brushed under the rug as an embarrassing mistake. In fact, non-abusive adults are very capable of ensuring that they have privacy when masturbating. This is intentionally boundary violating sexual behaviour carried out within the family. It is incest. If this happens within a family, everyone should be aware that incest is occurring and that other forms of incest have probably happened or will happen. Adults who do this kind of thing should definitely not be allowed around children. When Gisèle Pelicot was made aware that this happened, she spoke to her husband about it and he responded with “violent indignation.” Both the patriarchal father’s angry defence of his sexually abusive behaviour, and the wife’s willingness to let this situation go are patterns of patriarchal incest.

Dorothée Dussy, a French anthropologist who studies incest has written that “incest occurs in a context where it exists already.” One of the greatest risk factors for incest in a family is whether there is already a history of incest within that family, and if so, whether the family members have had help facing and transforming the inherited patterns of incest. Amélie Charruault discussing Dorothée Dussy’s Le berceau des dominations: Anthropologie de l’inceste writes “In retracing the family histories of the prisoners interviewed, Dussy reveals that “incest occurs in a context where it exists already”. The majority of the 22 men interviewed in prison reported being aware of other incestuous situations in their family. Though they refuse to think that they acted in a way that imitated their past, seven men also reported having been sexually abused in childhood.”

Denis Pelicot, the father of Dominique Pelicot, was an abusive misogynist. Darian writes that “he had nothing but contempt for women and seized every opportunity to put them down.” She writes “When I was ten, [my grandfather] made a cutting remark about my knees, saying they were ugly. His words upset me, but it was the way he looked at them that made me queasy.” As a child, she noticed the incestuous way her grandfather looked at and spoke about her body. Darian then goes on to explain that Denis Pelicot replaced his wife with his foster daughter after his wife’s death. Dominique Pelicot’s father took a young woman who he had raised since childhood as his sexual and romantic partner. Dominique Pelicot was raised in a family of patriarchal incest. Not only that, but Darian explains that, as a child, her parents sent her to stay with her grandfather and his daughter-wife for weeks with no other adult supervision. This is incest. This shows clearly that the Pelicots are a patriarchal incest family, with all the standard dissociation and denial of patriarchal incest families, including the enabling of the wife/mother. While Gisèle Pelicot describes herself as having had a happy childhood, I am certain that she experienced some form of incest in her childhood. It is only the established patterns of dissociation and denial in incest families that would allow a mother to send her daughter off to a man who took his own daughter as a wife. Incest occurs in a context where it exists already.

When Dominique Pelicot was initially apprehended by the police for filming “up skirts” he told his wife that two women had complained about him to the police. He broke down crying and said he had done “something really stupid.” While he didn’t say explicitly what he was apprehended for, even one woman making a complaint to the police about your husband should raise red flags. Gisèle Pelicot “who feared he was about to say he had some terrible illness, was almost relieved by the tale.” Her reaction to the initial police involvement — seeing it as something minor — fits with the overall pattern of her downplaying and making excuses for her husband’s abusive behaviours, against herself and other women. While she had no idea the extent of his violence, her dissociation and denial fits the pattern of incest.

Later on in the investigation, the police discovered that Dominique Pelicot had installed hidden cameras in his home and had captured images of his daughter and his two daughters-in-law naked. This again reveals that the Pelicot case is a case of patriarchal incest in which the patriarch believes he has the right to sexual access to all the women in the family. The police also discovered that he had paired naked images of his daughter with naked images of his wife, making degrading commentary and comparing their bodies in a variety of poses. Another police discovery revealed that he raped his unconscious wife in his daughter’s home while his daughter was on vacation. The eroticization of boundary violations within the family is a hallmark of incest. Not only was he raping his wife but he was doing it in his daughter’s home in order to also violate his daughter. It could not be more clear that this is a case of incest.

We think of incest as interchangeable with child sexual abuse but this is not exactly accurate. Incest usually includes child sexual abuse but it is not limited to it. In incest families where child sexual abuse does occur the abuse can continue into the children’s adulthood. It is also possible for incest to increase or begin as the children reach adolescence or adulthood. Patriarchal incest is about sexual entitlement to all the women in the family; it may or may not coincide with the overt sexual abuse of children. At the same time, there are reasons to suspect that Dominique Pelicot was a risk to children, and all children he had access to should be interviewed to look for signs of abuse. Discussing a case file in which Dominique Pelicot’s online communications were documented, Darian writes “The lawyer draws our attention to a exchange with a man who is proposing to offer up his wife for rape. Talking about what to do if any children happen to be present in the house at the time, my father says “just give them a jab with their dinner.”” Here Pelicot admits that he has no issues with drugging children. Drugging a child so that you can rape their mother is a form of child sexual abuse. We tend to think of child sexual abusers as totally preferential but in reality, many abusers abuse both children and adults. It is also noteworthy that several of the men who raped Gisèle Pelicot have a history of sexually assaulting children or of possessing child pornography. All of these men, including Pelicot, should be thoroughly investigated for other instances of abuse, including the sexual abuse of children.

Dominique Pelicot denies that he committed incest. He claims that he does not know how the posed photos of his unconscious daughter ended up on his computer. He claims the filming of his daughter and daughters-in-law was not due to sexual attraction but due to a desire to “lift the veil.” The reality is that filming your daughter or daughter-in-law naked is incest already, regardless of the reasons you claim to have for it. It is also obvious that he did far more than that. Denial and dissociation are some of the most fundamental patterns of incest. Even a sexual predator as extreme as Pelicot can maintain his dissociation and denial about the reality that he is an incest perpetrator. His wife and victim Gisèle Pelicot joins him in that dissociation and denial by attempting to deny her daughter’s victimization and repress her daughter’s speech. The police take part in this denial and dissociation by acting as if the sexual violence toward his daughter and daughters-in-law are an afterthought and not equally as violent. The police failed to properly investigate his crimes: all the women and girls he had access to should have received toxicology testing and genital exams (with their consent of course). The failure of the police to do this means that crucial evidence could have been lost.

We collectively join in this dissociation and denial when we speak of the Pelicot case as primarily about chemical submission, domestic violence, and rape. When we don’t understand it as a case of incest we erase a huge amount of Pelicot’s violence and the staggering impact of incest trauma on his victims. We also miss the reality that incest is a family system and that all members of the family must take this seriously and get support to ensure that the pattern is not repeated. We miss an extremely important opportunity for education about sexual violence prevention when we don’t talk about the clear and visible patterns of patriarchal incest within the Pelicot family. We all need to learn how to identify and intervene on these patterns.

I want to commend Caroline Darian for her profoundly courageous work of facing and transforming the patterns of incest and sexual violence within her family. Without her claiming her position as a victim of her father’s violence and without her writing the story of her family, we would not know that this is a case of incest. The incest patterns would remain unseen and unchallenged. Not only is she doing her own work to break free of the denial and dissociation she was imprinted with, and to heal from the impacts of her father’s abuse, she is standing up against the minimization and denial directed at her from her mother, the police, and the larger culture. She is also a responsible mother who changed her son’s middle name from Dominique to David (her brother’s name), spoke to her son in an age appropriate way about her father’s violence, and ensured that her son is well supported and in therapy. She is a cycle breaker.

The Pelicot case is a case of incest. Until we begin to collectively identify and intervene on patterns of incest, incest will continue. The extreme nature of the Pelicot case is disturbing but it is actually not unimaginable given what we know about Dominique Pelicot. The chemical submission and mass rapes are an extreme escalation of patterns and behaviours that have been visible and identifiable for a very long time. Dominique Pelicot’s violence could have been noticed and intervened on far earlier if the people in the Pelicot family’s life had literacy around the patterns of patriarchal incest and domestic violence. Yet even with so much available evidence, the incest elements of this case continue to be suppressed.

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