I would say that virtually everybody will know who this woman is.
Gisèle Pelicot
I know the facts that have been on the news. I was floored reading them. That a man could do that. Without suspicion. And for so long.
What I didn't realise is that there are children in this family, a daughter and two sons. I saw a documentary last week where Caroline, the daughter, was interviewed. She has written a book called I'll Never Call Him Dad Again.
I bought the book and read it last week. It's not only beautifully written, but it made me think even further than her situation. I don't want to come across as completely self centred, but I related to a few aspects of this.
- She has a strong, stable husband called Paul
- She has a little boy whose very existence has helped her keep focus
- The new knowledge of what happened, turned her life into before and after
As she describes, learning of what her father did to her Mum, changed all the memories she'd had of her childhood. Of how her father helped her, listened to her, supported her. Everything changed. The man she thought she knew entirely, was a charade in her eyes.
Even worse - if that's even possible - they discovered that he had photos of her. She was asleep. Was she naturally asleep or chemically put there? She spent a lot of the book trying to work that out - concluding that it must have been chemically induced like her Mum.
Yes, I'm going to describe how I relate to that. For completely different reasons of course, my life has "before" and "after". It has taken me 16 years - and I'm still in the process of coming to terms with it - to understand the person that I now am.
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