‘He dressed Maman like a lower class prostitute’

The family room of horrors, as Caroline Darian calls it, was unexpectedly exposed on Monday, November 2, 2020. It was the height of the Covid crisis in France and Darian had just taken her six-year-old son to school, wearing a mandatory face mask. Her father, Dominique Pélicot, sent his grandson a reassuring message online: "My poor boy. Be brave. Love, Grandpa." But then, just a few hours later, the phone rang. It was Darian's mother: "Your father is going to jail."

And just like that, what Darian had called her boring but successful world-"husband, son, home, job I loved"-was turned ...