I'll Never Call Him Dad Again
Turning Our Family Trauma of Sexual Assault and Chemical Submission into a Collective Fight
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3.9 • 16 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
**International Bestseller**
"I am in awe of your courage...for you to be willing to share the truth of your life is an act of victory and triumph... You are a mighty woman. Thank you for writing this book." —Oprah Winfrey, Global Media Leader and Host of The Oprah Podcast
What if your greatest protector became your deepest betrayal?
When Caroline Darian received a call from the police, her world cracked in two. Her father—beloved, trusted, admired—had been arrested. What followed was a nightmare no daughter should ever face: the revelation that her mother, Gisèle Pelicot, had been drugged and abused for years—by the man they both called family.
But this memoir isn’t just about what happened.
I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again is about what happened next.
With unflinching honesty and fierce compassion, Darian tells the story of how she and her mother refused to be defined by silence. Together, they pursued justice in the courtroom—and sparked a global reckoning outside of it. Through the viral #MendorsPas: Stop Chemical Submission: Don't Put Me Under campaign, they’ve taken on the epidemic of chemical submission and lifted a rallying cry for victims worldwide.
For readers of Know My Name, The Choice, and The Fact of a Body, this is a must-read for anyone drawn to stories of truth, transformation, and fearless resilience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The daughter of Dominique Pelicot, whose 2024 trial in France made international news, debuts with a chilling memoir. Darian documents the year following the 2020 discovery by police that for a decade her father had drugged her mother Gisèle and raped her while she was unconscious, and invited more than 70 men from an online sex forum to also sexually assault her. Organized like a diary, the book's earliest entry recounts Darian's final communication from her father—an innocuous Facebook comment—the day before his arrest for "trying to film up women's skirts." The horrific extent of her father's crime unfolds in Darian's day-by-day account like a waking nightmare: the "over twenty-thousand pornographic photos and videos," many of her mother, found on his hard drive; the grotesque new explanation for her mother's "episodes of amnesia"; and the unearthing of naked photographs of Darian herself. Darian makes visceral her "crushing double burden" as child of both "victim" and "tormenter," which strains her relationship with Gisèle, who struggles to accept that Darian might also have been drugged and raped by Pelicot. Writing that such "chemical submission" in the "familial sphere" is more widespread than many realize, Darian advocates for better care for survivors. This is a courageous effort to bring "unsayable" abuses to light.
