“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” said Gisèle Pelicot in her opening testimony of a trial that shook France and the world between September and December 2024. Waiving her right to anonymity, the 72-year-old made her ordeal public so that, in her words, “shame must change sides”. For nearly 10 years, her husband of 50 years Dominique had invited dozens of men via an online site (now closed) to rape her while she lay comatose in bed in their home near Avignon. Each time, he had sedated her with a mix of anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills slipped into her food and glasses of wine. He filmed the rapes and stored the videos neatly in his computer under the title “abuse”.

Dominique Pelicot may never have been arrested had it not been for the perseverance of supermarket security guards who noticed him making upskirt videos of female shoppers. They convinced three of them to file a complaint to the police in September 2020. A young police officer then seized Pelicot’s computer and electronic equipment to investigate further. Police technicians unearthed more than 20,000 pornographic videos and pictures documenting his crimes against his wife. In just a few weeks, the police established that Gisèle Pelicot had been raped at least 200 times, the equivalent of once a fortnight for almost 10 years. Convinced that she was in mortal danger because of the repeated sedation, they worked night and day until they could gather enough evidence and arrest Dominique Pelicot. On 2 November 2020, Gisèle accompanied her husband to the police station in Carpentras, near where they lived. He had admitted to upskirting and had cried for her forgiveness. While police officers dealt with her husband (he would never walk free again), Gisèle Pelicot was invited into a room by the young investigative officer, who started revealing the torture she had endured unknowingly. She now understood why she had suffered from severe memory losses, fainting and gynaecological problemss. She did not have Alzheimer’s, as she had feared.

Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot have three children, David, Caroline and Florian. They were the next to be informed of their father’s crimes, after their mother . Caroline Darian’s I Will Never Call Him Dad Again starts then and runs for 13 months after finding out her father’s crimes. It offers a compelling perspective on what sexual abuse does to a family, its far-reaching repercussions within it, and how victims cope and can fight back. It is a story of resilience, lucidity and courage, told with force and aptly served by the brisk translation of Stephen Brown.

“I bear a crushing double burden: I am the child of both the victim and her tormentor,” writes Darian in the preface written a few days before the trial began. “For four years now, I’ve been trying to find a new way to exist.” One way she has coped has been to raise awareness about chemical submission. “Everyone has heard of GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), the ‘date-rape drug’, but who is aware of the risk of being chemically subjugated by a spouse, lover, relative or friend with the contents of the family medicine cabinet?” she asks. A French study found that in 56% of chemical submission cases, the perpetrator used an over-the-counter medicine: antihistamines, anti-anxiety medication, sleeping pills and cough medicines, all “prized by abusers for their sedative and muscle-relaxing properties.”

However, it took her some months to find the cause that would give Darian’s life a new meaning. While her mother, this “medieval queen”, whose dignity and magnanimity has so awed the world, insisted on remembering all the past’s good moments, Darian chose never to forgive or forget what the man who raised her inflicted on them all.

Her world sunk even deeper when the officer in charge of the investigation showed Darian pictures of her sleeping in her underwear. At first, she didn’t recognise herself, then she fainted. “How did he manage to take my photo in the middle of night without waking me up? Where did the underwear come from, as I’m sure it’s not mine? Did he drug me? Go beyond the photos? Did he – I can’t keep the unthinkable at bay – abuse me?” As more evidence piled up Darian became convinced that her father had drugged and raped her too, a crime he always denied.

As she and her brothers helped their mother pack her things as quickly as possible from the family home, they found files full of unpaid bills and outstanding debts hidden away in plastic folders. “The debts are huge … Substantial loans were taken out, almost all of them in Mum’s name.” Betrayed, tortured and bankrupted by her husband of 50 years.

After packing her entire life in a few boxes, Pelicot went first to live with Darian and her husband and six-year-old son. Soon after, Darian found herself in a psychiatric ward, where she was given a treatment used for schizophrenia. The idea of being drugged and sedated was intolerable for her. “I want out. I know I need help, but I don’t need this.” Darian starts writing a diary as a means of therapy. “It provides distance, helping to keep me from drowning.” She also sets herself a mission: she “won’t let her father’s perversity become this family’s curse.” She addresses him in her diary: “Crime will not infect us, will not be transmitted from generation to generation. None of us will be like you – not my son, not my brothers. We are all stronger than you were. You made no attempt to extract yourself from the mud your father wallowed in. He was a piece of work – tall, intimidating, had nothing but contempt for women, and seized every opportunity to put them down.”

Misogyny is not only a social issue but a trait that is often transmitted from fathers to sons, unchallenged by submissive mothers and sisters. It takes strength to break the mould, or the “curse” as Caroline Darian names it. It needs society as a whole to treat it as a public health issue.

• I’ll Never Call Him Dad Again by Caroline Darian (translated by Stephen Brown) is published by Leap (£16.99) To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply