Oprah and Caroline Darian: First Us Interview Since Her Father Dominique Pelicot’s Shocking Trial

In a story that made international headlines, French grandmother Gisèle Pelicot was drugged and raped by her husband Dominique Pelicot and more than 70 men he invited to rape her while she remained unconscious. In this episode of The Oprah Podcast, Gisèle’s daughter Caroline Darian reveals how her father’s secret life has devastated their family and destroyed the life they knew. During this candid conversation, Caroline shares how they found out about her father’s crimes, how he recruited men to rape her mother, and the lengths he took to keep his perversion a secret from everyone. She will also talk about the shock of discovering photos of herself unconscious in his collection, how he raped her mom in Caroline’s home and how she and her mother found the strength to face her father and the dozens of accused men during the trial. Minnesotan Jenny Teeson - a mom of two who found video of her ex-husband drugging and raping her - also joins the conversation. Jenny will explain why most of the charges against her ex-husband were dropped despite overwhelming video and photographic evidence. BUY THE BOOK! “I’ll Never Call him Dad Again” by Caroline Darian, published by Sourcebooks, is available wherever books are sold. https://amzn.to/3Sim9xE ⁠https://books.apple.com/us/book/ill-never-call-him-dad-again/id6740407561 https://books.apple.com/us/book/ill-never-call-him-dad-again/id6740407561 For more information on Caroline Darian’s movement, “Don’t Put Me Under: Stop Chemical Submission” please go to her website. https://mendorspas.org/ If you are a victim of sexual assault, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-467. More information can be found at the website below. https://rainn.org/resources Follow Oprah Winfrey on Social: https://www.instagram.com/oprah/ https://www.facebook.com/oprahwinfrey/ Listen to the full podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0tEVrfNp92a7lbjDe6GMLI https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-oprah-podcast/id1782960381

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Oprah Winfrey?

  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 Darian, 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 Pelicot, reportedly a devoted grandfather, father,

• 0:45Oprah Winfrey?

  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 Pelicot 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

• 1:27Oprah Winfrey?

  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 chatrooms 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 police, 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."

• 2:14Oprah Winfrey?

  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

• 2:58Oprah Winfrey?

  was an opportunity for you to actually state a way of surviving for yourself. And my intention is, 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,

• 3:42Oprah Winfrey?

  regardless of what kind of challenge or difficulty or atrocities that women have been through, that her being able to stand up for the Pelicot name gives the opportunity for every other woman to look inside herself and stand up. And I think for you, Caroline, to be willing to speak the truth of your life in this horrific story is just an act of victory and triumph, and it shows that you are a mighty woman. You are a mighty woman, and so is your mother. So I thank you for writing this book. I mean, I can't imagine, well, I actually can imagine,

• 4:26Oprah Winfrey?

  because in the telling of the story, you tell us how many times you had a breakdown. But you say that for you, this became a question of survival.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Chopra. I'm really touched by your words.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  I really wanted to write down this story because I wanted to to show to the many people that whatever you you live in in your family, you are not, you know, responsible of what happened.

• 5:00Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  And there's always something more positive to share with the with the more vulnerable people. So I wanted, I really wanted to make something useful and to go beyond, you know, this terrible legacy.

• 5:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Well, four years ago, let's go back to four years ago, you were living a life that you called a simple and ordinary life. I know many women around the world can relate to this. And certainly here in the United States, you had a home in the suburbs. You had a really good job that you enjoyed, a husband

• 5:34Oprah Winfrey?

  and a six-year-old son. You were very close with your two brothers and your parents, who had retired to this picturesque village in the south of France. So take us back to November 2nd, 2020, the day all of that all came crashing down. And I, well, I will have to say, I really appreciate in the book how you reflect back to ordinary things, like the kids in the pool and the moments at the grocery store and just ordinary, simple things that are going through your life. And then this horrible thing happens and nothing is ever the same again.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I used to say that I had a quite normal life, you know, banal life. I was the daughter of my two parents, beloved parents, who were so close from each other, who were really a united family.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  I was also, but I'm still close from my two brothers, David and Florian. And

• 6:35Speaker 01

  We are living in a, you know, yes, in a normal life, we are so, so happy. Then I thought that I had a solid, cheerful, protective and reassuring dad. I thought also that they were happy together. They were living, they lived together for about fifty years.

• 6:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  And, and yes, I had a husband, I used to work, I had a great job and, and then.

• 7:10Oprah Winfrey?

  You were doing such ordinary things. I like how you start in the book, talking about you were teaching your son to put on the mask.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we were in the middle, we were in the middle of the lockdown.

• 7:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  And, yes, we're ju- just preparing my, our son with my husband to go back to school and, and that day, November the, the second, twenty twenty,

• 7:36Speaker 01

  all my life and my childhood, in a way, collapsed.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Because I thought I knew my, my dad.

• 7:47Oprah Winfrey?

  So it started with a phone call?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  And it started with a phone call, the evening of November the second. And I, I remembered I'd worked all day from home because we're in the middle of the lockdown.

• 7:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  And I received this call from my mom and I thought that everything was okay. And she told me, you have to sit down, Caroline, because I had to, I had to say something really, really difficult to say over the phone. So you have to sit down and I just want to be sure you're not alone and you are with your husband. And she told me, I just discovered this morning at the police station, where I stayed almost five hours, that your dad used to drugged me

• 8:37Speaker 01

  before I was raped, and I was raped by a dozen and dozen stranger, unknown people. And at this time, you know what? I still remember, you know, this.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  This tipping point of my life, I saw, I still saw on the clock on the oven, you know, that is twenty-five past eight in the evening. And that everything changed in a second.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And I just realized that my life will never be the same.

• 9:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Could you even take it in, Caroline? When she's, when she's saying, I'm at the police station and I just found out that your father has been raping me and other men have been raping me, dozens and dozens of men have been raping. Could you, I don't even know how you even take that in. So what did your brain do? What did, what did, did you collapse? Did you scream?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I screamed a lot.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  I cried a lot. But I, you know, instinctively understood what I saw over the past years when my mom, you know, had this incorruptible behavior.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  She was talking in a, in a, in a, in a strange way.

• 10:13Oprah Winfrey?

  You would see lapses in her memory?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  She would lapse in the memories, like, you know, she was doing amnesia. She didn't remember some of our conversation about the phone the, the, the day, the day before. I mean, 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 drugged, mom. And this is the way you found out? I mean.

• 10:38Oprah Winfrey?

  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?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this, the, the morning of November the, the second, they have to tell my mom that he was arrested and that.

• 11:06Oprah Winfrey?

  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 Pellicole, 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 and why are you asking me these questions, correct? And then they show her the photographs.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they show her seven different photographs with seven different men where she was abused and--

• 11:43Oprah Winfrey?

  And what is in those photographs, Caroline?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  You saw my mom drugged, that 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.

• 12:02Oprah Winfrey?

  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 Darian reveals how her own father systematically recruited more than 70 men from nearby towns to rape her unconscious mother

• 12:45Oprah Winfrey?

  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 Darian in her first US interview. A reminder, this conversation contains discussions about sexual assault and can be triggering for some viewers and listeners. This interview is not appropriate for children at all. Caroline's father's reprehensible crimes made international headlines last year. In her new book, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again, she uncovers how her own father regularly drugged her mother Giselle so that she would pass out. And then, over the course of nearly a decade, her father used chat rooms to invite more than 70 strangers

• 13:30Oprah Winfrey?

  into their home on separate occasions to film them raping his own wife, Caroline's mother. So those of you who are not familiar with the story, Caroline's father went on the internet to some website and invited men into their home, into the marriage that he had been with Giselle Pellicle for now 50 years, 50 years, and invited men into the home to come and have sex with his wife, to rape her on a regular basis. This was happening on a regular basis. Because I read in one of the reports

• 14:15Oprah Winfrey?

  that several of the men had been back five and six times.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Some of them went several times. Some of them went only one time. But my mom was raped more than 200 times. She was raped more than 200 times during 10 years by more than 70 different men.

• 14:38Oprah Winfrey?

  By more than 70 different men. And 50 of those men stood trial. Yes. So how did your father drug your mother? And how did you, your brother David and Florian, how did the children in the family not sense that something was wrong?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  My father was used to use some prescription.

• 15:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Prescription drugs, yes.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Medicine coming from the fabric cabinet medicine. It was sedatives, anxiolytics, or even, you know, painkillers.

• 15:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  And he were using those medicines, you know, within the food, even within a glass of wine.

• 15:25Oprah Winfrey?

  He would crush sleeping pills.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  He was mixing, you know, all of these substances.

• 15:31Oprah Winfrey?

  During the trial, Dominique confessed that he regularly crushed prescription sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medications into Giselle's meals or her favorite dessert, raspberry ice cream, which he would bring to her in bed. The drugs caused Giselle to have frequent blackouts, insomnia, and bouts of amnesia.

• 15:54Oprah Winfrey?

  She suffered hair loss and also lost 22 pounds over the eight years.

• 16:00Oprah Winfrey?

  As Giselle's memory lapses continued, Caroline and her brothers became increasingly concerned that their mother was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. Despite several doctor visits and a brain scan, no cause was ever found to explain these episodes. No doctor or family member thought to test her blood for drugs. He actually had a formula that he would tell the other men about because he was also teaching them how to drug their wives.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he also give those, I was gonna say, recipe, you know, to some other man, and they replicated the same, you know, process.

• 16:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, to rape their wives.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  To rape their wives, yeah.

• 16:43Oprah Winfrey?

  To rape their wives. And so, you write on page 27, "What depths of dishonesty does it take to have maintained all these years the tranquil illusion that everything was normal?" So I know your mother even felt like your father doted on her. Didn't you all think, "He doted on her, he loves her, this is a great marriage"?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  You know, even my mother told to the police station, to the policeman, that he was a great guy before, you know,

• 17:17Speaker 01

  discovering the truth and the reality of his real personality. And the fact is that we lived with him, a side of him, without knowing, you know, we knew his face A. Because there is, I think there's two faces within Dominique Pellicle.

• 17:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  The face A, which is a good guy, a good neighbor, a good husband, a good pa- parent.

• 17:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  And another one, which is a real manipulator. And he was doing, you know, he was coexisting with these two faces in, at home and we never saw.

• 17:50Oprah Winfrey?

  So he would dote on your mother, he would make meals for her, he would always, when he was around you.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  He was really protective with her, he was, you know, uh, they were really, uh, really close from each other and so we never saw him. I never saw my dad stare at a woman. I never saw my dad, you know, having a strange behavior with some woman.

• 18:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Of course, even seem interested in other women.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Or flirting with other women or anything.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  Never, never, ever.

• 18:19Oprah Winfrey?

  You, you, you felt that they were devoted and, and in the police station, when she first arrived, when they asked her, what was your relationship? She said her husband was a great man and a great neighbor and all those things. How would you describe him as a father to you growing up?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  He was really, uh,

• 18:39Speaker 01

  he was taking care of me.

• 18:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  He was close to me, uh, he used to bring me to school to encourage me, you know, within my studies.

• 18:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  We used to get a lot of conversation, different kind of conversation. I thought he was a good father.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  But in the end, uh,

• 18:59Speaker 01

  uh, you know, I know now, since thirty-two years old.

• 19:04Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  That, uh, is probably one of the most important sexual criminal.

• 19:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Criminal in France.

• 19:13Oprah Winfrey?

  And that is a whole lot to have to reckon with. The father that you've known to be the devoted husband to your mother and to be there caring for you and always interested in you. And then to realize that there was this whole other side of this man that you didn't know about. So I realized that a few days, you write in, I'll never call him dad again. You write that you were called to the police station a few days after your mother and father had been there and she had recognized that. First of all, how, how, how did she react in the beginning? Did she, did she, I mean, there's, there's a picture of her body.

• 19:55Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, lying there in the bed or wherever she was was placed. And she can see that she's out of it, that she's drugged. And it's one man after another man after another man. How did she even?

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I think she she lives a kind of a disassociation.

• 20:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Disassociation.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Disassociation, sorry. Because it was a real shock for her.

• 20:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Those of you who are listening to us or watching, you know, hopefully you won't have to go through something as horrible as that. But you know, when you go through something that is shocking, when you have been betrayed, it feels like it strips you of everything you thought you knew. It strips you of your own identity. Because here I was, a person who believed all this time that you were a certain way. Who, so what does that say about me? That I couldn't see that, you know? It just causes people to question themselves. Did that happen with you?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Me, I live kind of a post-traumatic stress disorder.

• 21:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Absolutely. Okay, so let's go back. The police called you back to the station. And what did they show you?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  They had to show me two pictures of me. Almost naked with a paint, a beige paint, which is not mine, laying on the left side like my mom. She hears on almost all the photographs and videos. And I had to recognize myself.

• 21:29Oprah Winfrey?

  At first, you didn't recognize yourself.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It was so difficult for me to realize that it did what it did.

• 21:37Oprah Winfrey?

  To your mother.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  To my mother, but also to me, you know?

• 21:40Oprah Winfrey?

  When you're looking at, but, okay, so you're brought back to the police station. And the police show you pictures that they've taken from your father's computer of you in a pair of panties that you don't even recognize.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  I don't recognize them.

• 21:54Oprah Winfrey?

  And you are knocked out. You don't recall even where or how that could have been.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  I don't have any recollection of the of where those pictures were taken.

• 22:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  That day, I mean, it was November the third. So the day after.

• 22:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Wow.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  The revelation with my mom. So almost twenty-four hours after. And I had to sue my father because I saw myself. But it tooks me like, it took me like fifteen minutes to realize that it was me on those two different pictures. They got at two different place. Uh, with a, not a pen, which is not mine.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  So I live like a tsunami.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Because I realized that my mom was not the only victim of this family.

• 22:56Oprah Winfrey?

  It was also you.

• 22:59Oprah Winfrey?

  It was also you.

• 23:04Oprah Winfrey?

  That leaves me speechless because to recognize, first of all, the day before that your father has been calling in strangers to rape your mother and drugging her for over a decade. And then the next day to be called in and to see pictures of yourself drugged. Immediately, your thought goes to, did he also rape me?

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Yes. I, uh, to me, I saw this woman on those two photographs. And I deeply, I'm deeply convinced that first I'm drugged. And then that he probably raped me.

• 23:49Oprah Winfrey?

  He denies raping you?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  He denies and, uh, over those, uh, past four years and even during this trial, he refused to tell the truth. And he, uh, he said a different version. But we don't know the main reason why he took those pictures and told.

• 24:10Oprah Winfrey?

  What does he say? Because my thing is if you see, you, you see the pictures of your mother knocked out and obviously she was raped because he filmed everything. He obviously didn't film himself or anybody with you, but there are the pictures. Why would, why does he say he took the pictures of you knocked out and drugged?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  He didn't remember taking those two pictures.

• 24:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh.

• 24:36Oprah Winfrey?

  And why does he say he drugged you?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  He said that he did not meet on the photographs. He said that he never touched me, he never raped me, he never drugged me. But there are those two pictures, you know what I mean?

• 24:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Uh huh. The pictures were in a file and the file was labeled something. What was the file labeled? The pictures were in a file labeled?

• 25:00Speaker 01

  My daughter naked.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  They found that those two photographs, uh, which was deleted two months before he was arrested.

• 25:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Through this IT expertise.

• 25:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, so an IT expertise found those photographs that had been deleted. It's a lot. So he tried to actually get rid of those photographs.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:26Oprah Winfrey?

  A week after our interview, Caroline filed a legal complaint against her father, accusing him of drugging and sexually abusing her over a 10-year period when she was in her 30s. Caroline says she filed with the prosecutor as a message to all victims that you must never give up.

• 25:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Later, they found pictures of your sister-in-law. Is it your sister-in-law? You had two sister-in-laws?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  I have two sister-in-laws, yes.

• 25:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, and the two sister-in-laws, he had been taking pictures, nude pictures of them coming out of the shower or?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  In their own living, in their own bedroom, uh, even when one of my sister-in-law was in, was pregnant, you know? And, uh, none of the women of this family were spared.

• 26:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, no woman in this family, in this immediate family, was spared. What was your mother's reaction when you told her that they had found photos of you and your father's files?

• 26:27Speaker 01

  She wasn't able to react.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  She was, uh,

• 26:34Speaker 01

  she was kind of locked in the silence. She, uh, she was not able to support or even to help me.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  And I think that's, you know, the the consequences of this post-traumatic stress disorder. She was not able to help me even to believe me, you know.

• 26:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Because she wasn't at the police station with me at that time. So and my brother had to tell, to told her, but man, it's really Caroline on those two photographs. But, you know, she was, she was lost.

• 27:11Oprah Winfrey?

  From reading the book, I know things might have changed since you wrote the book. From reading the book, it appeared to me that your mom still did not believe that your father sexually assaulted you. That she could wrap her head around the fact that she had been raped by all of those men and that he had called them in for years and she was drugged. But there was something about

• 27:40Oprah Winfrey?

  her not being able to accept that it actually happened to you. And at one point, that became a great tension between you because she said, you know, why do you keep, you know, talking about this or fixating on this? I mean, he wasn't mean his whole life or he was, he was good for part of your life is what she said.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  You know, I think she is, it's difficult for her, for her mom to realize that you were not protective enough. I mean, that you did not protect your daughter in your own family. I think it's a difficult ordeal to face for her.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  But we are in a different position. I mean, for her, I think it's probably easier to consider that she is the only victim of Dominique. Because, you know, she she decided to live with him. She, he was her husband. But, you know, realizing that he might have, you know, sexually abuse.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Our daughter, I think it's impossible for her. It's a kind of an auto-protection process.

• 29:03Oprah Winfrey?

  So what did this do, Caroline, to the relationship between you and your mother? Because at one point, you write in the book, one brother was siding with the mother and the other brother was siding with you. What did this do to the whole family? Because no one wanted to believe that this had actually happened to you, even though you have the pictures.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  You know, we have to live our, you know, reconstruction differently. And from, I mean separately. Still, I mean, she, I understood that she is not able to realize and I have to respect that. Because, you know, I don't have any father, but I still have a mother.

• 29:58Oprah Winfrey?

  And it's interesting, you do write to, and say it so beautifully, I forgot the phrase, about how you are the daughter of both the victim and the perpetrator. Yeah, yeah. Next, Caroline Darian tells me how her father managed to keep his dark secret hidden from his family, the police, and everyone else for nearly a decade. She also describes what it was like for her own mother to face 51 of her rapists during the grueling trial. Stay with us. Welcome back to the Oprah Podcast. I want to remind you that this conversation contains discussion about sexual assault. It may be triggering for those watching or listening. This interview is not appropriate for children.

• 30:40Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm speaking to Caroline Darian, author of the new book, "I'll Never Call Him Dad Again", in which she shares her family's unfathomable ordeal. Her own father spent nearly a decade drugging his wife, Caroline's mother, then inviting men to come into their home to rape her unconscious body on camera. So after seeing the photos of yourself,

• 31:05Oprah Winfrey?

  it became too much to bear and... There's no one listening to us or watching us right now who doesn't understand that your brain just can't even you're first trying to process, my mother has been raped by seventy different men. That's on November 2nd. And then on November 3rd, you're brought back to the police station, you see pictures of yourself. And now you've got to process, what happened to me? And it was too much to bear and you ended up just having a breakdown. What does a breakdown feel like? Can you share with us? What does it? What is happening when you break down?

• 31:41Speaker 01

  I felt abundant, like an orphan. Abandoned by my father because it was the worst betrayal. You know, discovering that you don't know who raised you.

• 31:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  And I felt alone all by myself, you know, without any support from my mom because she was unable to be there for me. So it's a lot of loneliness.

• 32:13Oprah Winfrey?

  So you went into hospital for how long?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  Almost seventy-two hours.

• 32:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Almost seventy-two.

• 32:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Just to sort of get your brain straightened out?

• 32:22Speaker 01

  So that I can sleep. But you know, the worst thing that they had to sedate me, you know, at the hospital, for, you know, for me being able to sleep. And this was exactly, you know, the modus operandi that my dad used, you know, to rape my mom and me. And you know, I was in the hospital, you know, amongst different GPs and so on. And I realized that the only way to care of me, to take care of me was to sedate me and to give me some pills, some sleeping pills.

• 33:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  So which was, you know, like quite

• 33:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Also triggering.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Triggering.

• 33:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  And so I was there and I realized that there are there are no, no real support from, you know, the victims were suffering for chemical submission. We need to get a special support in that case. So it was really Tough for me.

• 33:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Chemical submission occurs when a perpetrator uses drugs to make someone unconscious or incapacitated in order to commit a crime against them. Although chemical submission is not new, Giselle Pelicot's case drew renewed attention to the method being used specifically to perpetrate sexual assaults. This type of crime has been on the rise for 20 years in France. In the United States, this crime is referred to as drug facilitated sexual assault. It is also on the rise here in America, but difficult to prosecute due to lack of evidence. You talk in the book how you and your mother were not supported as rape victims should be.

• 34:12Oprah Winfrey?

  You're told this information and then just left on your own. I got the impression from your story, though, that at times the police were sympathetic because they couldn't even believe what they were pulling up. They couldn't believe themselves. That's the impression I got from the book. Correct me if I'm wrong, that this man, Dominique, the man you'll never call dad again, had done this to his wife.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  It's the worst case in France, and even the policemen didn't see that kind of story before.

• 34:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 34:53Oprah Winfrey?

  Nobody had ever even heard of this before.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Never, never, ever. It was for them, it's the...

• 34:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Coming to a nice little French neighborhood suburban home, the men would park down the street. Can we talk for a minute about the 50 men accused? They know that there were at least 70, but they were able to identify 50 of the men from the tapes because Caroline's father...

• 35:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Had one condition for the men. He didn't charge the men to come in and rape his wife. He only insisted that he'd be able to film it. And therefore, all of those men who raped Giselle Pellicole over a period of more than a decade, all of those men are on tape. And they ranged in ages from 26 years old to 74 years old. And they come from all backgrounds. One was a sales manager. I heard one was a journalist. There was a firefighter. They're all fathers and grandfathers. And one of the perpetrators, I heard, was also one of your mom's neighbor, right?

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Yes, they were like the good men, the good neighbor.

• 36:07Oprah Winfrey?

  The good neighbors.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  They were well inserted within the society. They were some job with some role and responsibilities. They were dad, grandfather, and all of that.

• 36:17Oprah Winfrey?

  And one of the men was HIV positive?

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yes, and he came several times. He came seven times.

• 36:28Oprah Winfrey?

  He came seven times?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Seven times. So my mom is a miracle.

• 36:31Oprah Winfrey?

  And was HIV positive? And obviously, never said he was HIV positive. So your mom did not contract the disease?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  She's a miracle.

• 36:39Oprah Winfrey?

  That's a miracle.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  That's a miracle.

• 36:41Oprah Winfrey?

  And he didn't use a condom?

• 36:44Speaker 01

  No, never have.

• 36:46Oprah Winfrey?

  None of these men were using condoms?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  None of these men.

• 36:49Oprah Winfrey?

  So wouldn't your mom have, you know, vaginal infections or urinary tract infections? Weren't there always something going on with her?

• 37:00Speaker 01

  She had some gynecologist troubles.

• 37:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  But you know, as a GP, when you saw a woman who is 78 years old, you don't even think about that.

• 37:18Oprah Winfrey?

  In 2019, when Giselle told Caroline that she'd been bleeding heavily from her vagina, Caroline brought her mother to a gynecologist. The doctor detected an inflammation of her uterine passage and prescribed some antifungal ointment and left it at that. So at one point from prison, I think your father wrote a letter to his brother. He wrote a letter. Your father writes a letter to his brother saying that life is too hard and Caroline's anger is making it worse. He then writes to his brother, "Try to calm, try to calm her," meaning you, down. What was your reaction when you read that letter? First of all, he's not even supposed to be writing letters from prison,

• 38:02Oprah Winfrey?

  is what I understood in the beginning, contacting the family.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  No, he wasn't able, I mean, he was not able to do that, but he did. And, you know, I was so angry. You know, the anger that I feel toward him is so hard. I mean, it's so strong. I realized, reading this letter, that, you know, he is a real manipulator. He's a liar. He's playing a role. He played a role, probably, all of his life.

• 38:39Oprah Winfrey?

  And all that time, did you feel, "So he really wasn't my dad? He was just playing a role as a dad?" Is that what you ended up feeling?

• 38:49Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think, you know, in the end, I don't think he was really happy in his own life.

• 38:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Obviously.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  So...

• 39:02Oprah Winfrey?

  And he blamed this on the fact that when he was nine years old, I think, he was sexually assaulted?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Yes, this is what he told, yeah.

• 39:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And that at 14, he was forced to watch a gang rape? And so he then created a life where his own wife was gang raped?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  You know, I think, I don't know if it's the truth, to be honest with you. I don't know if it's the truth. I heard about this, this story when he was nine years old, but after, you know...

• 39:35Speaker 01

  I don't give any credit.

• 39:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, and lots of people are raped at nine years old and ten and twelve and fourteen, and they don't grow up and do this.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  You know, whatever it is, you, whoever you are, you choose who you want to be in your life.

• 39:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  And he has, you know, he had a chance to get a nice family. He was loved.

• 39:56Oprah Winfrey?

  He was loved.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  By his wife and his three children. He was grandfather, I mean.

• 40:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Which is what most people are looking for, is to, is to know that they are loved. And I know at one point, your mother tells you that your father is in a bad way. In the book you write, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again, your mom says to you that Dominique is in a bad way, and she somehow feels that she has failed him in some way. And on another occasion, she actually packed him warm clothes and personal items. What did you think of that? Did that feel like betrayal to you, that your mom is now betraying you?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I think she was in denial.

• 40:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  For her, having to look at him

• 40:50Speaker 01

  as he is in reality,

• 40:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  it is too tough.

• 40:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, this is the thing, she made a decision early on in the trial, and you all can read about the trial. She made a decision that she was going to, first of all, take this to trial and let it be an open trial, not through closed doors, because she wanted to shift the shame. That's why she deserves a statue in her honor. That she wanted to shift the shame and not have the shame be on the victim, even though this horrible shameful thing had happened to her. She's saying, I'm not going to bear the shame. The shame should be on these, this journalist, this firefighter, the, all these men who are known as every man in the community. They should be carrying the shame.

• 41:39Oprah Winfrey?

  I won't carry the shame. And I love that she took that upon herself. With the help of phone records and more than 20,000 videos and images taken from Dominique Pelicot's computer files, the police were able to track down 50 of the more than 70 men suspected of raping Giselle. Last year, one of the most shocking rape trials in modern history, 51 men, took place in Amignon, France. Giselle Pelicot took the stand to explain that she waived her right of anonymity and made her name and the horrific images public to stand up for other women who suspect they've been drugged and raped. She said she wants society to change the way it deals with rape

• 42:22Oprah Winfrey?

  and to shift the shame from the victim to the perpetrator. For this extraordinary act of bravery, Giselle became a hero in France and around the world.

• 42:34Oprah Winfrey?

  That's why she deserves all of our praise because she said she also, when was asked, "Why wouldn't you change your last name after divorcing him?" because she divorced him last year, wasn't it, last year?

• 42:47Speaker 01

  She has divorced since the very first day of this trial, since September the 2nd.

• 42:53Oprah Winfrey?

  So she divorced him and still wanted to carry the name because she has grandchildren who will carry that name. And she said that she wanted that name not to be a name of shame, but a name of honor. And that's why she was standing up for herself, so that the grandchildren could carry that name and that would be a name of honor. I just think that is magnificent that she was able to do that.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  To me, my mom is a hero. I mean, she's a hero. And in France, but I think everywhere else, we just have to be grateful for what she did.

• 43:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Because, you know, she walked in this court every day during four months to face all of these men, including Dominique,

• 43:42Speaker 01

  showing up all of these videos.

• 43:45Oprah Winfrey?

  While they showed these videos to the--

• 43:47Speaker 01

  And they showed the videos every day.

• 43:50Oprah Winfrey?

  And all the men testified, fifty men testified.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, fifty one.

• 43:54Oprah Winfrey?

  Fifty one, fifty one, meaning Dominique, yes.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and.

• 43:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Can you all imagine that? I mean, we were just hearing about it. I was reading about it in New York Times, but I didn't realize that they were showing the tapes in the courtroom every day and that she had to sit there and witness that every day.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  And she went really every day, eight hours a day.

• 44:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  And she, she showed up, she's strong. And the message behind is if she is able to do that while she is seventy two years old, for all the other victims, invisible victims, they can do the same.

• 44:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's not just victims of sexual assault. I mean, it's, it's everything. It's anybody who has been afraid of standing up. I just don't know anything that is more courageous than that because you've got the whole world looking at you and saying, why didn't you know? I mean, even the family, you, you tell the story in I'll Never Call Him Dad Again. You tell the story of her being at the dinner table and your brother witnessing her falling out of the chair.

• 45:11Oprah Winfrey?

  And your father saying what about that?

• 45:15Speaker 01

  He said that she was really tired, that she was really active and because he spent fifteen days with her children and so he was just telling them, telling him to Florian that she was tired and we believed him because we trusted him.

• 45:35Oprah Winfrey?

  So he had, so he had drugged her.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  He drugged her.

• 45:38Oprah Winfrey?

  During that dinner.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  This evening.

• 45:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that evening.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  And Florian and his wife and his children was about to leave the house and to get, to go back to Paris. So, you know, he did everything perfectly. It was every time well organized, you know?

• 45:56Oprah Winfrey?

  It was manipulated.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Manipulated and.

• 45:59Oprah Winfrey?

  He, he had a real rhythm. He had a pattern to it.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, he had it down.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 46:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And the men knew where to come and he would tell the men, don't wear any cologne.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Don't smoke.

• 46:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Don't smoke.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Wash your hands.

• 46:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Wash your hands and warm your hands before you come in because so that your cold hands don't disturb her in a way that she wakes up. And so she would come out of this stupor of being drugged and not have a memory of anything that had ever happened.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  But you know, most of the time, this is what happened for all of these victims. Because, you know, chemical submission is an underestimated health public issue in France. And some, most of the time, the victims do not have any recollection or even no memories about the sexual asshole.

• 46:58Oprah Winfrey?

  When you go over all of the evidence against your father with your family lawyer, you're struck by, I was struck by it too. You didn't use the language in the book, but I was just, I was struck by the crude language your father uses.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  It's rude.

• 47:18Oprah Winfrey?

  To the other men, when he's talking on the internet about his wife, he calls her, he, he calls her lots of really bad names. He uses the word slut a lot when referring to her. I, I read that someplace else. You did not put those words in the book. Why did you choose not to include the language that your father had used to describe your mother?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Because his story is tough enough.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a kind of a shame to me. I, I didn't want to write those words. It humiliated her. And I didn't want to write down those terrible words in my book. Because I wanted to share my own story, I mean, our family story. But I'm my own condition with my own condition.

• 48:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, I got that.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  This is a message of hope.

• 48:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. I got that.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 48:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Of course I do.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  So I just didn't want to, to put those words.

• 48:20Oprah Winfrey?

  But you know, when I read that he was using such crude language, I did say, why, why didn't you use words? But I thought, wow, so does he hate women?

• 48:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Does he hate women in general? Or did he just secretly hate his wife? What is your answer to that?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  That's a really good point, Oprah.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Because you know, to me, I think he's really a I think he has a clear detestation for all the women's. I think he he hates women. The position, you know, the position of the woman, and I think it's related probably with his own mother. In his own family, I don't know. Uh. But he do not have any respect.

• 49:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Certainly no respect for women.

• 49:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Or just that woman. I mean, I, I don't, I, you know, what is so hard for, I mean, I'm sure it's troubling for you too. Devastating. Is how in one breath.

• 49:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Cause it sounds like when he says, you know. Giselle is the love of my life. That he actually means that when he's saying that to his brothers or whatever. That she's been the love of my life. On, there's one part of him that believes that. Do you believe that?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:39Oprah Winfrey?

  You just, you think that's a part of it?

• 49:40Speaker 01

  I think he believes himself and, you know, he's so split in two.

• 49:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  No, I think he believes what he, what he say. But it's not. It's not tangible.

• 49:53Oprah Winfrey?

  No, it's not tangible. You couldn't possibly love somebody and do that to them. No, no.

• 49:59Oprah Winfrey?

  Um, in court, did he explain why he did it? Did he say? It was a part of a fantasy. It was a part of a. He did, does, what, what is, what is his explanation for why he did that to your mother?

• 50:14Speaker 01

  He didn't give, you know. A lot of explanation. Uh. You know what? We don't even know the inaugural acts. When, meaning the first time that he started to rob her for helping her. We do not know. Even after four months of this trial.

• 50:34Oprah Winfrey?

  He wouldn't tell the truth.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  He didn't, I mean. And I think he didn't tell the truth, but I think he wouldn't tell the truth.

• 50:40Oprah Winfrey?

  He wouldn't tell the truth.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  He wouldn't tell the truth. I think he's gonna die with a lot of secrets, dark secrets.

• 50:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Have you, Caroline, come to terms with not knowing what really happened to you? Or do you think you know what happened to you? Are you, are you? Has, has that been resolved for yourself?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  I know that I, I, I was drugged.

• 51:11Oprah Winfrey?

  You know you were drugged?

• 51:12Speaker 01

  I know. That's the, to me, it's a, it's a deep conviction right from the start.

• 51:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you know you're drugged because you can see yourself in the picture.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  So I'm drugged on those pictures, so I know it happened. But the real question is why?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  And when you know the criminal past of Dominique Pelicot.

• 51:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Didn't he say he just wanted to look at, just wanted to look at you?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  He didn't, he didn't say anything.

• 51:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, okay.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Anything. So I will, I will, I will have to live with that doubt all my life.

• 51:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Next, as my conversation with Caroline Darian continues, we speak with a mom in Minnesota whose case is eerily similar. She discovered videos on her husband's flash drive that would upend her marriage and her life. In her first American interview, I'm speaking with Caroline Darian, a Frenchwoman coming to terms with the vile actions of her father, which she details in her new book, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again. I think it's important for all of us to note that Caroline's family's case made global headlines because it was so extreme and her father was caught with over 20,000 pieces of evidence. Authority has told us that these types of drug-induced intimate

• 52:32Oprah Winfrey?

  partner crimes are on the rise but are extremely difficult to detect and, of course, to prosecute. And so before this interview, I asked Caroline if she would be okay if we invited Jenny Thiessen to our conversation, and she said yes. Jenny now joins us from Minnesota. Hi Jenny, I know you've been watching and listening and can relate to Caroline's story. You were married, I understand, to your college sweetheart for 12 years, and then you made a shocking discovery. What was it?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful to be in this conversation with the two of you. Um, yeah, so I was traveling for work and it was a quick trip. So I grabbed a backpack um from our closet. It happened to be one of my husband's, um, but we both used it and packed it, went on the trip, did all the travels, came back and was going through each pocket and pulling the toiletries out. And in one of the pockets, I discovered a flash drive that wasn't one I had seen or neither of us had used. Um, and so I plugged it in and I discovered that there was eight videos on that flash

• 53:45Speaker 02

  drive and six of them were of my husband videotaping his coworkers. He was a vice president of a bank and they had a single stall employee bathroom and he was recording his coworkers going to the bathroom. And then there was two additional videos on there of um me getting out of the shower and then one of us having sex that I was not aware of.

• 54:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Hmm. And what did you, what was your immediate reaction to that?

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Honestly, um, this sounds awful, but it was my golden ticket. Um, it was throughout our marriage, there was so many red flags and there were so many things that I discovered and found, but he always had a way to blame me, um, that it was my fault that he did this, or it was my fault that he did that. And for the first time, I had something that wasn't, had nothing to do with me. There was no way, I was not there, I was not videotaping his coworkers. So this was the first time that, as it sounds so silly, because there

• 54:57Speaker 02

  was no reason to have an excuse for all of the other things, but it was truly, it was shocking and uh, it was also my way out.

• 55:06Oprah Winfrey?

  I hear when you filed for divorce, your lawyers told you to take a closer look at your home computer. And what did you find there?

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, so um through the, through our marriage, um there was lots of consensual photos. And when I clicked through um all of the photos on our laptop, there was double the amount of non-consensual photos and videos. And I was tasked with clicking on each single one. Um, like Caroline's story, folders and folders and folders deep. Um, and came across a video of my vagina. And I clicked on it. And I discovered that he was underneath the covers with the lights on.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  And he was penetrating my vagina with a dildo. And my legs were limp. And he crawls through the covers. He stops penetrating me. He crawls through the covers and um pans in on my face. And my face is on my pillow. My mouth is open and it is clear that I am incapacitated. As he panned the wider image out, my son was laying on the same pillow as me in the video while he's raping me.

• 56:35Oprah Winfrey?

  He's raping you and you are drugged. And this was used during your court case. We also asked Caroline ahead of this time if, if she's okay for us to show this. So, okay, we're gonna roll this tape, okay? And you tell us, what are we seeing here?

• 56:51Speaker 02

  This is actually where an anguilla. And this is another of many times where he is checking to make sure that I'm passed out.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  And as you can see, I am clearly incapacitated.

• 57:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Do you recall any of this? Do you recall any of this at all?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  So actually, that instance, absolutely none of the, when I am cold in any of these, I do not, just like Caroline's story, it's so relatable, I do not, it's, it's out of body is the only way I can describe it. But that specific instance, when we were in Anguilla, we had gone to a bar, we were scuba divers, so we weren't cocktailing it up, and I had ordered a pina colada, and I needed to go to the bathroom, so I told my husband, you know, hey, watch my drink, I'm gonna run to the bathroom, and I came right back, and I took a sip through the straw, and on my tongue, through the straw, there was this

• 57:52Speaker 02

  toxic poisonous taste, and it was a half of a pill, and it was disintegrating on my tongue, and I said, oh my gosh, I've been drugged, please, you know, help, I've been drugged, and he looked at me, and he took his, the palm of his hand, and he slammed it on my knee, and he said, Jen, calm down. I said, calm down, you want me to calm down? Someone just drugged my drink. Like, you can see the pill, you could actually tell it was broken in half, because it still was intact, and he said, calm down. It must

• 58:34Speaker 02

  have been, and he goes into his shirt pocket, the other half of my Ambien must have fallen out as I was reaching over the bar to grab something from behind the bar.

• 58:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh.

• 58:47Speaker 02

  And I remember going, that is crazy, that does not make sense, it, none of it does, but also, I'm on vacation, I'm with my husband.

• 58:58Oprah Winfrey?

  Right.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Who I trust. But I remember in hindsight, so seeing that video just went, well, this makes sense.

• 59:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. And I wanted to say to everybody, we're showing the video with your permission not to exploit the story, but just to see how it happens. I remember when I saw it for the first time, I'm sure you felt, had similar feelings, it's just so vile and creepy and disgusting, that someone you're sleeping next to every night, whom you trust, could do that to you.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Exactly. This is supposed to be the person who protects me the most. You know, my greatest protector. And here I am in bed next to them.

• 59:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 59:47Speaker 02

  And they are putting me in harm.

• 59:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you will see yourself many times over in I'll Never Call Him Dad Again. Because you're, I have to say that when we saw this story that became a global story, I think a lot of people were thinking, oh, well, that could never happen here in the United States. Not only did it happen, it's like right there in the heart of Minnesota. So, thank you so much for sharing your story.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jenny. Thank you so much. It's really important to get your testimonial and to make understand that the case of my mom and our family is not an isolated one. And I'm really grateful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

• 1:00:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Have you healed from this? Have you healed from this?

• 1:00:40Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't think healed's the right word.

• 1:00:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  I continue to move on. I'm a single mom. I do my best. But it's still ongoing. We're eight years post divorce and I'm actually in court tomorrow again for our post divorce, still fighting for the safety of myself and my kids.

• 1:01:06Oprah Winfrey?

  Jenny Teeson was first told that her ex-husband, Matthew Hegger, would be charged with a felony which could put him in prison for up to 15 years. However, the felony charge was dropped because of a little-known marital rape loophole in Minnesota law.

• 1:01:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Despite being found guilty of a variety of crimes, Hegger served less than 30 days in jail for the crimes he committed against Jenny and his former coworkers. Although it was too late for her case, Jenny fought for a bill in Minnesota to remove any protections for spouses who rape their partners. In 2019, Governor Tim Walz signed the bill into law.

• 1:01:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so the wrong word is heal. I would agree with that. Have you been able to carry on in a way that your life feels like it's still hopeful? And that you will be able to one day put this behind you? You're not defined by it, is what I'm trying to say.

• 1:02:05Speaker 02

  Amen. Absolutely, I am not defined by this. This will not define who I am as a person. Absolutely not. I think as a parent, it is most important to show my children strength and positivity, and also speaking out.

• 1:02:23Oprah Winfrey?

  What do you say to your children about this? Because, you know, in Caroline's case, she and her brothers were older. They're adults with their own families and children. But when you have teenage children, and this is their father, who has done this despicable, disgusting thing to you, and you are fighting in the courts, not only fighting in the courts, I want to say you got the marital rape laws changed in Minnesota. How do you explain this to your children?

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when this all started, they were five and nine. And so at a very different life point in their life. And I ended up, I did change the law in Minnesota. There was a loophole on our books that said at the time that if you were married or cohabitating at the time of offense, under the subheading of incapacitated, that you could not be charged. And so I did change the law, and there was a lot of press around that. So I ended up having, at nine years old with my daughter, and of course, working with therapists, the sex talk and a talk about rape, pretty much in the same breath.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  And for my son, and for both of them, it was a realm bound. And the analogy that I used with my son is, if you're pushing someone on a swing, and they say, "Stop," you stop. You honor their no, you honor their stop, you honor the boundary. And for my daughter, with the rape conversation, it was about owning your body. And your body, you have the rights to your body, whether you're married, in a relationship, you own the rights to what happens to yourself, and you get to choose. So that was a big part of the conversation I had with her at the time.

• 1:04:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, thank you for standing up for not just yourself and your daughter, but for all the daughters. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yep, thank you.

• 1:04:22Oprah Winfrey?

  In your book, you include a hypothetical letter to your father. Can you read us an excerpt from that?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  The other thing first, your children, is to admit that you never knew who you were. You, from what we thought a good, honest, loyal man, betrayed us, shouldn't sacrifice us to your dark side, thinking you were smart enough to play by your own rules and not get caught. I keep telling myself that you must have lost all love and respect for us along a long time ago in order to be able to inflict such horrors upon us. You demolished the one family you had, giving no thought to how much we might prize it.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  I loved you and respected you. I helped you, as any daughter would have, who felt grateful towards our father. You never kept us your end of the bargain. You refuse to be a real father or grandfather. I'll never be able to forgive you, and that's just something I have to learn to live with.

• 1:05:31Oprah Winfrey?

  So how have you learned to live with it?

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  I'm fighting.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  You know, I threw myself body and soul into this fight against, you know, chemical submission. And to me, it's become, I think, one of the most important missions of my life.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  I needed to make something more noble.

• 1:06:05Oprah Winfrey?

  The campaign is Stop Chemical Submission: Don't Put Me Under.

• 1:06:10Oprah Winfrey?

  In 2023, Caroline launched the movement to stop chemical submission, "Don't Put Me Under", to help rape victims who had been drugged and to raise awareness of this issue among medical professionals and the general public.

• 1:06:30Oprah Winfrey?

  And what is the mission? What is the goal?

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  The mission is to drive awareness about this health public issue. And the mission is to say to all the victims, all the invisible victims, to speak up and to let them know that they can, they have to come forward because there will be a listen to, but also believe, because it's really important for them to know that and to be supportive. And one of the most biggest tasks that we have, you know, as a, with our charity, is to make understand to the government, but also to the health professionals, that they have a key role to play. They have to be trained

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  to better detect and identify in those cases.

• 1:07:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, if somebody comes in and they're having blackouts and blackouts and blackouts.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Blackouts, amnesia, weight loss, hair loss.

• 1:07:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Because there are so many consequences when you are a victim of chemical submission. You could get traffic accidents, unwanted pregnancies.

• 1:07:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Addiction and so on, you know?

• 1:07:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  So it's really important to raise, to really raise awareness about this.

• 1:07:46Oprah Winfrey?

  Chemical submission. So I was so struck how you wrote the book, I'll never call him dad again, how you write about the two women in the grocery store. I mean, if the two women at the grocery store had never pressed charges against him for filming up their dress, none of this would have been discovered. I mean, I worry and wonder, what would have happened to your mom? She would just continue to have been drugged? And eventually, what would all of those drugs have done to her brain? What have those drugs have done to her?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  She probably could have died.

• 1:08:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah. Yeah. And nobody would have known.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  And we would have never known.

• 1:08:28Oprah Winfrey?

  In December 2024, a French court found Dominique Pelicot guilty of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife and orchestrating her rape by dozens of other men. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. All 50 of Dominique Pelicot's co-defendants were also found guilty of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault, and received sentences ranging from three to 15 years.

• 1:08:57Oprah Winfrey?

  You say that for years now, you've been trying to find a new way to exist. And during the trial, you also asked, "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? How are you managing to rebuild your life? Your son was six at the time. Now he's 10. Your son was really close to his grandfather. You two, just like Jenny, had to tell your son about his grandfather being in jail and try to carry on with your life. How have you been able to rebuild?

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  I'm a positive woman. I'm a positive woman and I'm an active woman. So one of the things which really helped me to go beyond is really the engagement that I have with this charity. But you know, I had a chance to get really well-supported by my husband and by my son. And today, what's the most important things to me is really my own family.

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Because you know, the one that I have before, it's over. So one of the most important things and precious things to me is really my husband and my son and also all of my friends.

• 1:10:31Oprah Winfrey?

  How is your mother? How is she now? I know she moved out of the house. You all moved her out of that house shortly, you know, after all of this happened. And she moved to another area and another neighborhood and is driving again because at one point, she didn't even feel... Safe to drive because she didn't understand where the blackouts were coming from or when she would have a blackout. So I understand she's back to driving again. But how is she?

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  She is safe. She is a strong woman. She's an independent woman. She is well supported by, you know, her friends and family.

• 1:11:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Do you all talk about this?

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  Yes, we talked about this.

• 1:11:15Oprah Winfrey?

  How does she feel about this book?

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  She read this book and she wasn't really comfortable right from the start. But she understood also that, you know, it was really important to me.

• 1:11:29Oprah Winfrey?

  How is the family relationship? Are you all, would you say, not as close as you used to be? This certainly, from what you wrote in the book, didn't make you closer. So has it still created its distances amongst you and the family?

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  I think this terrible story split our tears in two.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  And so my mom and me, we are now rebuilding from our side. Because I can't think we can help each other.

• 1:12:03Oprah Winfrey?

  And so what's your message now to people who either have experienced something like this? Or the reason why you wanted to share your story and to put it into words that would last forever is because you want people to know what, Caroline?

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  I just want them to know that they can speak up, speak out.

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  And they also have to trust themselves.

• 1:12:36Speaker 01

  Know that they are precious.

• 1:12:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  Their voice are really precious.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  And this is only altogether, whatever is in France, in Europe, or even in the US, you know, thanks to Jenny's testimony.

• 1:12:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  That we have to make things change.

• 1:13:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  So I just wanted to say to all of the invisible victims that they have to come forward and to speak up.

• 1:13:10Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, and you know, one of the things that I think, you know, nothing this horrible ever happened to me, and I know many of you who will read, I'll never call him dad again. Hopefully, nothing so egregious and despicable ever happens to you. But I think what you said earlier in the hypothetical letter to your father is true. When you have been betrayed and severely betrayed by someone, the hardest thing for anybody who has experienced that kind of betrayal is to admit that you actually never knew who you were.

• 1:13:52Oprah Winfrey?

  And especially if it's somebody you thought was a good and honest person, and to have to admit to yourself, you know what, I just didn't know. I didn't know who you were. And be able to forgive yourself for that and be able to, as Jenny said, to move forward. I thank you so much, Caroline. Thank you.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you for coming all of this way. And thank you, Jenny, Teeson too, for joining us from Minnesota. The book is I'll Never Call Him Dad Again. And as you have heard from this conversation, it is a riveting and a harrowing read. It is available now on Amazon, and I want to take a moment to say, if you or you are or you suspect you are the victim of a sexual assault, if what we have said here today sounds familiar to you, blacking out and can't remember things, and this doesn't make sense, and all of that, the signals, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

• 1:14:54Oprah Winfrey?

  There's the number on your screen, 1-800-656-4673. Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. Thanks, everybody.