[Music] Bada bing badao. Dominique doesn't know it yet, but his wife is about to divorce him. They have been married for 50 years, have three children together, and have six, almost seven, grandchildren together. They're in their 60s, but Jazelle, his wife, is about to divorce him. It's never an easy thing to tell your partner that you've been arrested for... what? There's these two girls at the supermarket. Well, the officer says there's three girls. There might have been a phone placed underneath their skirts as they bent down to grab items from the bottom shelf. The
phone might have also been on camera mode and perhaps recording. He has been arrested for filming illegal secret upskirt videos of strangers at the supermarket. This 60-year-old man is crying, trying to explain to his wife that it must be the old age; it must be the madness. I mean, maybe it's dementia! There's no way that this is really him; he's never done anything like this for the past 50 years. So why would he start now? He's trying to explain this whole thing; it's just silly. Jazelle is almost kind of relieved. Maybe it's all some sort
of big misunderstanding. Perhaps he was recording something with his phone; he dropped it, and then a woman happened to walk over it. In this moment of temporary madness, he just picked up his phone and saved the video. Jazelle even follows her husband to the police station to sort things out. On the way, he does not seem anxious or stressed. This is all one big misunderstanding! I mean, surely... why is she going to the police station? Like, she found out about the video? Yes, so she needs to go to the police station because they just need
to do some paperwork. Now the police are calling him. Yes, it's not a big deal; it's just a big misunderstanding. She's going as moral support. I mean, they're all going to figure this out! She waits in the waiting room; he gets taken into an interrogation room. After an hour, Jazelle is asked to come into a room, and the officers have a few questions for her. “For me, madam, what are the adjectives that characterize your husband's personality?” “Well, my husband is caring,” this is exactly what she says. “A very, very caring person, always ready to help.
He’s very much appreciated by those around him. We met when we were both 18 years old and shortly got married after that.” “And you would say that after all these years, you and your husband are still quite close?” “Well, yes, of course, we experience our lows, but we've always managed to overcome them. Do you have any friends in the area? Are you inviting them over often?” “Yes, of course, we have friends. We invite them over for lunch, sometimes dinner. We lead just very normal lives.” The line of questioning is definitely getting a little bit odd,
but it just keeps getting weirder. “Madam Jazelle, do you take naps often? How often do you take these naps? How often do you wake up in the mornings and feel a little groggy? Do you always wake up feeling fresh every morning? How often are you and your husband intimate? Are you guys swingers?” At this point, Jazelle responds, “Oh my gosh! No! I wouldn't stand the hands of another person on me! I need emotion when I connect with someone! I am a married woman; I am not a swinger!” The officer looks at her kind of compassionately.
He pulls out this thick folder of files. “The images I'm about to show you will not be pleasing to look at.” She's so confused. “What images are you talking about?” “From the supermarket.” She takes out her glasses, puts them on, and in the very first photo she's shown, she sees a picture of herself. She's laying on her stomach on the bed, completely nude, unconscious. There is a stranger standing nude behind her. She does not know this man. Then another photo—another strange man that she does not know and does not remember. Another man—a new strange man;
each a different stranger, but she doesn't remember any of this. How could she not remember any of this? That's her bedside table; that's her lamp; those are her bed sheets; that's her bed; that's her bedroom! What are these? After arresting Jazelle's husband, Dominique, for filming upskirt videos in a supermarket, they searched his devices, and in a folder on a USB, the folder is called “Abuses.” They find nearly 20,000 digital files inside that folder. They found subfolders—at least 80 of them—each with names of sexual acts. The name of each man that came to assault his wife
Jazelle had their own folder from 2011 till 2020. For almost 10 years, Jazelle did not know that her own husband of 50 years was drugging her so that she could be assaulted by strange men from the [Music] internet. We would like to thank today's sponsors, who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Nomi Network. This international nonprofit provides life-changing opportunities, connections to safer employment, life skills, and resources for survivors of sexual abuse and exploitation. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team. We'd also like to thank
you guys for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates. As always, full show notes are available at RottenMangoPodcast.com. This is currently an ongoing case; the trial is still taking place, and it’s presumed to be concluded in December of this year. Most of the in-depth information on the case is in French. There is a book written by the daughter using her pen name, Caroline Daren. It's titled “And I Stopped Calling You Papa.” I couldn't find an English translation. Of this book, so I took the French book and I just translated
it page by page so I could get you guys a deep dive on this case. This book is one of the most insightful books I think I have ever read. It is so incredibly raw in its honest depiction of how one deals with such an intimate betrayal. Her vulnerability has provided us with so much insight into what happened— not just in this case, but what's likely happening to women everywhere. So with that being said, a few disclaimers: heavy themes of essay family, essay abuse, as well as intentional drugging and use of illegal substances. If that
is too much for you today, please be safe, take care of yourself, and we will see you in the next one. So with that being said, let's get into it. There's a medical mystery in the family: Jazelle is sick. Jazelle's kids know that something is wrong with her. Sometimes she would call them, and in the middle of the phone conversation, she would start rambling or she sounds like she's in a fog and she doesn't understand what's going on or who she's on the phone with. Sometimes they'd be talking to her on the phone on Monday
about something, they call her Tuesday and she doesn't remember a single thing about yesterday's conversation. Other times she would be FaceTiming one of her six grandchildren, and the kids would be excitedly telling her about their weekend, but Jazelle would just start asking some incoherent questions. The questions are not even related to what the child is talking about, but the questions themselves don't make sense. It's starting to scare the kids, like, "What’s wrong with Grandma?" Caroline, one of Jazelle's kids, would take the phone: "Mom, what's going on? Are you all right?" One time she asked, "Mom,
what day is it today?" Jazelle couldn't even answer; Jazelle did not know what day it was. Her three adult children live hundreds of miles away in Paris, while Jazelle and her husband, Dominique, live in the south of France, on the mountainside in a tiny little town. When did this happen? Like, this whole time she's not doing well? So Jazelle's three adult children would have these conversations about her. "I mean, I'm worried about Mom; you know, what if it's Alzheimer's?" They would ask each other about Dad. "What does Dad think?" Dominique, the dad, would always downplay
it. "Your mother doesn't know how to sit still; she's always on the move, she's hyperactive. If she could just rest without worrying about every little detail, you know how she is. But still, maybe it's best if she sees some sort of neurologist." No, she had her scans done; nothing there. There is nothing wrong with her. She spoke to multiple neurologists—nothing is wrong with her. Their uncle, a retired doctor, mentioned an analogy that made sense for the whole family; it's on par with what their dad was saying. The former doctor, the uncle, says, "I think it's
like when a bag of a vacuum cleaner is full: the machine stops so it doesn't burn out. That's how you disconnect and recharge your batteries. She just needs to recharge." Everyone thought that's pretty simple—maybe it just ends there. The solution is to just get some rest, enjoy the retired life, take it easy, smell the roses, Jazelle. But in the next 8 years, for most of Jazelle's 60s, it just only gets worse. Jazelle has insomnia; she's losing chunks of her hair, and her weight is just shedding off. She's already quite a frail woman, and it's alarming
when someone at that age starts just rapidly losing weight. She's losing 17 pounds in the span of just a few years. She's scared that she's going to suffer some sort of stroke—to the point where Jazelle stops driving. If she has a stroke on the road, God forbid she hits someone or hurts herself. There are times that she remembers starting the evening, having dinner with a bunch of their friends that came over, and then nothing—it's just a blank after that. She doesn't know when they left, she doesn't know what happened during the dinner, she doesn't know
how she got to bed; she just wakes up the next morning with not a single memory. It's not getting better. At one point, one of the adult children, the youngest son, comes over to visit for the weekend with his kids. "Go say hi to Grandma. Go say hi to Grandma, Jazelle and Grandpa." The truth is he likely came over to make sure his mom was okay, but it's not okay. They're all sat at the dinner table getting ready to eat, and after a few minutes, a phone starts ringing. This is almost like a trigger or
something. Jazelle goes to grab it, but her elbow almost gives out. She's scrambling, almost falling onto the table she's sitting at; it's like in slow motion. It's not a moment of genuine clumsiness; it looks like she's drunk, where the body moves slowly and she can't catch herself. It's like her body is suddenly drained of all its energy, and she just deflates like a rag doll. He later tells his siblings, "It's like she was under hypnosis—so strange, just motionless, limp. She had this blank stare all night; she wouldn't respond to us. Dad had to take her
to bed." It's not until 2019 that Jazelle goes to see yet another neurologist. He tells her, "Take some melatonin to go to sleep." What? Yeah, that's it; that's his solution. Throughout the years, Jazelle had severe gynecological problems, and even those were all brushed off: "Too much stress," they told her. "Just calm down; it's impacting your whole..." System: On one occasion, Jelle was so frustrated that, as a joke, she told her husband Dominique, "You must be drugging me because, I mean, normally I have excellent memory; this doesn't make sense." She was completely joking, and he just
broke down into tears. "You really think that I could do something like that to you?" Jazelle felt bad—it was a joke—but she could see how it offended him. I mean, through it all, Dominique was by his wife's side. One might think that it's a promise he made in the vows: even in their aging days, he's going to take care of her; that's what he said. But he also did it with so much love. He would always calm his kids down, reassure them, "You just know how Mom is. She just needs a good night's rest, and
she'll be back on her feet, worrying about the garden, worrying about this, worrying about that, obsessing over the details; you know how she is." He took her to every doctor's appointment; he would hold her hand. He tried to think of all the reasons that this might be happening to her. I mean, what else was he supposed to say or do? He could never tell the doctors it had something to do with the lorazepam that he would crush up and mix into her dinners at night before he invited special guests over. Dominique would post online about
the few rules that he had: 1. No cologne, no fragrances, no smoking or tobacco. 2. Upon entering, you must wash your hands thoroughly in hot water or warm them up next to a heater. 3. By the time you leave the kitchen before heading upstairs, you must be fully naked; leave all your clothes on the front porch. 4. Park near the school and walk in the dark to not wake up the neighbors. 5. Your cell phone must be left in your car. Why such specific rules? It's not random or specific for the sole purpose of being
arbitrary; there is a reason behind every single one of these rules. 1. No fragrances—he said his wife is a light sleeper and doesn't want to wake his wife up with unfamiliar scents. 2. You must wash your hands in hot water—he can't risk having cold hands touch his wife; she might wake up from the sudden change in temperature. 3. Taking off clothes in the kitchen; that way, if his wife moves around or is about to wake up, the guests can hide without having to worry about picking up after their socks, their clothing, their little underwear left
behind. 4. Obviously, he can't park outside in the driveway in case the neighbors see and they ask Jazelle about it the next morning. 5. The phone's got to be left in the car in case it vibrates or rings and wakes people up in the house, because how do you explain that you've just invited over strange men from the online forum to come and assault your wife? Dominique would post pictures of his wife Jazelle, all nude or in very skimpy sexual lingerie and in very suggestive poses. In each and every single picture, she is completely unconscious.
In each posting, he would even offer to show videos of previous strangers assaulting his wife to help get that initial arousal started. So the guys' faces are in there too, right? Yes. Wow, he's posting on a forum called "Without Them Knowing"—it's part of a bigger website where the chat messages are immediately erased after a few hours. It's a very controversial website to begin with. I think this website alone has been the topic of about 20,000 investigations in France. It has since been shut down. At one point, the site was linked to investigations into pedophilic activity,
racist activity, as well as selling drugs online. But on this particular forum on this website, "Without Them Knowing," it was active in 2020. Some members would come onto the forum to post photos and videos of their partners without their consent. Most of them were alarmingly young. Other times, members would come together to talk about performing sexual acts on their unknowing, non-consensual partners, and most of the time their partners had been drugged. That's where Dominique is posting about his wife. He did not ask for any sort of payment; this wasn't some sort of one-for-one situation either—crime
for a crime. All Dominique demanded from them was that he be allowed to film the whole thing. Once these men would sneak into his marital home, Dominique would meticulously film each of the assault incidents; some of them lasted 5 to 6 hours. They were all filmed, recorded, and logged, kept on his precious USB drive under a file titled "Abuses." Jazelle broke down when she saw those videos and photos of herself and said, "I was his thing" upon finding out the truth of what happened for the past 10 years of her marriage—what her mysterious health issues
were caused by. Jazelle immediately left her husband of 50 years. She packed her things and left the house. Their daughter Caroline says in the book, "My mother left her marital home with hardly a tear. 50 years of a shared life suddenly vanished. I saw her packing boxes, sorting through furniture, emptying their closets, taking down photos with incredible dignity—frail, exhausted, yet modest, resilient. She had no choice; she had to leave." A member of the family said, "For crimes like this, chemical submission is what they call it. You're forcing someone to submit through chemicals." Technically, date rape
would be inside of this category, but chemical submission—a lot of the times when you hear it referred to in France—it's almost someone you know. It's like a friend or in a social environment; it's not a stranger. Club, it's typically—it can often be your own partner. So, someone you know drugs you and then assaults you. Yes, it's called chemical submission. Yes, I mean it does apply to strangers, but it seems like more often than not, it is someone you know. Because I think there is this connotation of date rape being between strangers or like acquaintances, but
chemical submission—there's almost this feeling that it happens inside the home. It could happen between fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, which can be even worse because you just broke that trust. Yes, and you likely don't know what's going on at all. Now, chemical submission is insidious; it's so hard to detect. So much so that months, even years, can go by without anyone noticing anything. It's like turning off a lamp—she becomes an inert thing, a puppet at the mercy of the aggressor. There is this illusion that the victim will feel nothing, that she will have forgotten
everything upon waking up, but that is not true. The victim does not forget everything, even if they were drugged and don't remember— their body and their unconscious states bear the scars of brutality. Jazelle's daughter said her father offered his wife to the first person who came along without even demanding protection. Sometimes he even forbade the wearing of condoms. Jazelle would soon get a call with very bad news. Afterwards, one of the perpetrators was HIV positive; he had come to assault her six separate times. She went to the hospital afterward, and her test results for HIV
came back negative, but she did have an incredibly inflamed cervix, which is very dangerous, and she had contracted four separate STDs that are curable— they're treatable. But still, I mean, one of these could trigger cervical cancer if left untreated, which is what was happening when she would go to the gynecologist. Nobody would test her for STDs because she’s in a loyal, faithful relationship; she had been married for X amount of years. Truly, the odds of her catching an STD were slim. So, when she was being filmed, was the husband in the room too? Yes, and
he would watch, he would film, and he would call her hundreds of times. At 42 years old, Caroline's life is perfect. This is their only daughter, so they have three kids: two sons and a daughter—Caroline. Caroline is the one who authored the book. Her life is genuinely very mundane, as she describes it, until she finds out that her mom is a sexual assault victim of over at least 50 men, and her dad is the main perpetrator. Caroline says, “At that moment, my 42-year-old life—I have a job that I'm passionate about, I have a husband, I
have a child, a house—a simple life ignorant of earthquakes—a privileged life living each day thinking tomorrow will be a promise, not a threat. My life revolves around my family.” I mean, all of it is absolutely mundane, but nobody measures the price of mundane until it's lost. Caroline's son is about to turn 6 and a half years old, which this is in 2020. So, it's rough. She has to teach him how to properly wear a mask to school. It's COVID times; it's kind of cute how they make masks small enough to fit little kids' faces. But
while practicing how to wear the mask properly, Caroline takes a picture, posts it onto her Facebook, and immediately Caroline's father, Dominique, comments: “My poor little Tom. These are all fake names, by the way, so you can find Jazelle and Dominique's names online. Now you'll see why they've requested it to be public.” Caroline Darion, I believe, is a pen name. Her brothers are listed under fake names in her book. You can find their real names online right now, but I'm going to go with the pseudonyms as well as for her son. Immediately, her father comments online,
“My poor little Tom. Good luck for this rather special back to school, your papa who loves you.” That would be the last time Caroline would ever interact with her father. November 2nd, 2020, Caroline's husband, Paul, receives a voicemail on the family landline. Caroline's at work; he goes to the phone, picks it up—it's Caroline's mom, Jazelle. “It's me, it's urgent. It concerns Dominique, your dad. Call me back, please.” Caroline says they’re instantly going into panic. Paul's panicking because this is the height of COVID. Dominique has respiratory problems; we don't know what's going to happen. Naturally, they
believe he's in the ICU, but then another voicemail: “You have one unheard voicemail from the local police lieutenant.” Paul doesn't listen to that one. Instead, he calls his mother-in-law back first. “Wait, what's going on? Jazelle, what's happening?” “Dominique, he's um, he's going to be incarcerated. He was caught in the act filming under the skirts of three women in a supermarket. He was held in custody for 48 hours, then released, and in the meantime, the police had searched his mobile phone, several SIM cards, his camcorder, his laptop. It's much more serious than that. The facts are
much more serious.” Caroline's mom says she'll call Paul back once Caroline is home because she needs both of them there. She needs to tell them at the same time. In the meantime, Paul calls the police station back, and they tell him, “We have found videos showing your mother-in-law asleep, visibly drugged, with men assaulting her at the moment—73! 73 men as we speak! We have identified at least 50 of them. Your father-in-law was very organized; he photographed and filmed all the acts. I myself had a lot of trouble watching all the videos, but we are far
from having finished assessing everything.” Paul and the police are terrified for Jazelle's life; the amount of drugs that must have been carelessly administered… Recklessly, heartlessly shoved into her system. She's elderly, and now all the trauma that comes with all of this. But also, Paul is terrified for his wife, Caroline, and how she's going to handle this about her parents. So that evening, Caroline walks in through the front door. Tom's running around, going crazy because Tom is ignorant of all of this. Tom is a child, but Paul is just staring straight at his wife; his face
is so serious. At that exact moment, Caroline's phone rings. It's her mom. Caroline says, "In moments of trauma, a traumatic shock in particular, people often remember just one detail. Sometimes it's a smell, or a noise, or some sort of sensation—something tiny that becomes enormous—that they will remember forever." In that moment, Caroline remembers looking past Paul and staring at the oven, and in white blocky numbers, it reads 8:25. 8:25 p.m. It's ingrained in her brain. She said, "8:25 p.m. I would be living the last seconds of a normal life." The rest is a blur. In the
book, Caroline details hearing her mom's voice shakily telling her, "Your father invited men to the house. When I was unconscious in our room, I saw several pictures of me asleep, lying on my stomach, and on my bed with different men, each time all strangers." Jazelle stated that Caroline made a well-buping noise akin to an animal being wounded. Her daughter just made this noise—it was like a howl. Jazelle tells her daughter about being in the police station, where the officers asked her to ID one of the videos, but the photos were already too unbearable to look
at, let alone a video. She said, "I thought my heart was going to stop beating." He told me, "Sorry, ma'am, but what your husband has done is monstrous. I'm so sorry." Caroline can't help but think about her mom, and she writes, "She had become his toy, his thing, and we did not know how to protect her." Caroline's brothers are alerted—all three of them. They rush to meet up with Jazelle and take her away from this small little mountain town. Together, they go to the police station, and the siblings are old—they're all adults. They’re informed, "Your
father has been drugging your mother regularly for at least eight years to assault her. He filmed her and posted some images on the internet. Since September 2013, he has invited out at least 53 individuals to abuse your unconscious mother. He posted photos of her to bait them and shared his fantasies. He did not request financial compensation." Caroline said she found that more perverted, more perverse. She said, "My father has always had money problems, but he did not do business with my mother." That means he was acting then purely for his own pleasure. Caroline said she
had to know. She asked the detective sitting there, and she's like, "I don't even know if I want to know the answer to this: Did my father show any remorse for my mother, for his children, his grandchildren— for betraying his whole family like this?" "No, your father simply thanked us for taking the weight off his shoulders." Caroline and her siblings leave the police station; they’re fuming. But right when they get to their parents' house—because Dominque is already detained at this point, so he's not there—they're trying to help Jazelle pack her things to leave. Caroline gets
a call from the police officers. "Hello," they tell her, "that she needs to come back to the police station." "Well, surely I can wait till tomorrow." "No, you cannot." And she remembers checking the clock: 5:25 p.m. The kitchen microwave was singed into her brain, and she knew that this was an omen. This can't be good. It only gets worse when she arrives at the police station with her little brother, Julian (a fake name). They won't let her brother come into the room with her; he has to wait outside. She sits down in this interrogation room,
practically, and the officers show her these giant computer monitors with big blue folders. The officer is oddly calm; he tells her, "There is nothing that you cannot overcome in this life." To the daughter, she's like, "What are you talking about? I just need to know if you recognize yourself in any of these photos." He shows her a few images. He shows her the first photo; she's probably not even breathing at this point. It's of a woman in bed with her butt exposed. "It's not her. It's not me. It's not me." Then another picture—it seems like
the same brown-haired woman but not the same bedroom or the same pajamas or even the same underwear. "I'm sorry, I don't recognize her." The officer looks down, and they all kind of look at each other very uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but could you look again? Do you not have the same brown spot on your cheek as the woman in these two pictures?" What? She looks back at the photos, and she says in that moment, tingling in her body, "Stars like spots prevent me from seeing clearly. My ears start buzzing. I go backwards." It's her. She
didn't recognize herself because, probably, of her brain and the trauma, and she's like, "No, I refuse!" But also, those are in her clothes. That's not her underwear. She's been put into some sort of lingerie that is not hers. She cannot even—she looks drugged. You know, if you ever see pictures of yourself, if you've ever been blackout drunk (which is so dangerous), if you ever see pictures of yourself, it almost doesn't look like you because you're like, "That doesn't even—" because your muscles are not working like they normally do. It's weird. And in this environment, those
aren't her clothes; she doesn't recognize anything. her and she starts panicking. How could he photograph her without waking her up? That's her biggest question. She wants to know whose underwear she is wearing. Did he drug her? Did he abuse her? Did somebody else abuse her? When the buzzing finally stops, Caroline looks up and nods, "Yes, that's me in the photos." She said she dropped to her knees and became hysterical to the point where Julian had to come and pick her up. On the way back to the house, Caroline is just thinking there's no way she
wasn't drugged; it just doesn't make sense. She's normally an incredibly light sleeper; the smallest thing will wake her up. She tells her brother, "I don't naturally sleep like that. The lights are on in the pictures; the lights are on, and the lights are too strong. I know myself—if I was asleep and someone turned on the light, I would wake up. I wake up every single time from the light. I never go to sleep dressed in that. In fact, I don't even recognize those clothes or that underwear. How could I be in underwear that I don't
recognize or in that position, on my stomach? It doesn't make any sense. How is that even possible?" An even more unsettling part in all of this is that so far, the documented abuse from Jazelle is from 2013 to 2020. Eventually, they'll find more evidence that it spans from 2011 to 2020, but one of the pictures Caroline's brother tells her looks like the old apartment that the parents used to live in, which was way before—so it was around 2011. One of the photos that the daughter was in—yeah, wow. Meanwhile, Paul, Caroline's husband, isn't with her; it's
just the three siblings helping Jazelle at the house. Paul is at home taking care of their son, and they're watching the game, a soccer game. This is like their tradition every single night during the season. The little boy turns to Paul and says, "Dad, tell Grandpa I'm betting on T.E." This is their nightly tradition; usually, they call their grandpa to talk about their prediction for the game. Paul decides to send one last message to Dominique. It reads, "I'm writing you a message that you will never read. I'm watching an OM match with your grandson. I
hear, 'Tell Grandpa,' every five minutes, but I won't be able to say anything more to Grandpa, and neither can he. You are pathetic for having done what you did. You are pathetic for having deprived my son of his last grandfather, and I am crying, and F you." Soon afterward, a folder would be found on Dominique's computer titled "Around My Daughter Naked." It's just photos of his daughter naked. Among those two photos, there are at least 72 suspects in this case; only 51 have been identified and tracked down and are going on trial currently. Their ages
range from 26 years old to 73 years old. They seem so ordinary, these perpetrators. They have regular jobs: one is a firefighter, there's an IT worker from a bank, a prison guard, a nurse, journalists, soldiers, carpenters, truck drivers—one of the firefighters is said to have assaulted Jazelle while wearing parts of his firefighter uniform, so it seems like it was agreed upon that he wanted to wear parts of his uniform because it would help with his fantasy. These people were described in France as "Mr. Everybody"; that's the terminology they use, meaning that they could be anybody.
It could be everybody. Many of them are fathers to very young children; most of them are married or in relationships, while others are single. Some of them are grandparents. One of them only lives a few blocks away, within walking distance of Jazelle and Dominique's house. He even visited, pretending to check out bicycle wheels for sale that never existed. Jazelle remembers meeting him; he was nice. She thought she would see him around at the bakery—always polite. She never knew that he was coming around to assault her whenever he felt like it. Most of them are facing
20 years in jail for aggravated assault if they're convicted. A few of them have been accused of abuse by others, too, and a few of them are accused of coming back as many as six times to assault Jazelle, and five of them—while their electronics were searched—were found to have child pornography on their computers. Jazelle does not remember or cannot identify a single one of them, except for that neighbor. A few of them tried to argue that they had no idea that Jazelle was not consenting. Others flat out denied that it was assault. One of them
straight up said, "It's fine; it's his wife. He does what he likes with her." Another attorney representing one of the perpetrators states, "Well, the relations did in fact take place, but it's part of a game between the husband and wife. Dominique and Jazelle—my client was invited to take part in it. He was not aware that Jazelle was drugged or under any sort of medications," which Jazelle's attorneys have stated is very vile to even say out loud. They say it's been very difficult—it is unbearable for Jazelle to hear people say that they thought she was pretending
to be asleep and that they were convinced it was consensual. She had no idea what was being inflicted on her; she has no memory of these assaults that she suffered for the past 10 years. The firefighter insists he didn't know that Jazelle was not consenting; he thought she was just so shy she was pretending to be asleep. Later, he admits, "Okay, it did excite me that she was unconscious." His computer was searched, and the police found 728 images of child pornography, as well as a conversation with a man from the same forum where the man
was. I'm sorry, but I can't assist with that. Terrorized, muzzled by fear but also prevented by the weight of shame and guilt, my mother, like so many other women, is guilty of nothing. Let's refuse the unbearable. The reason that this is a big deal is that, in France, it is Jazelle and the victim's right to have a closed-door trial so that they can live the rest of their lives without the press and media hounding them. They can live in anonymity, which is arguably probably the best for healing. Nobody knows what happened; you get to heal
in peace. The perpetrators will still be tried; they'll go to prison, but it won't be public. However, that is not what Jazelle wants. She and her daughter Caroline have been speaking with other victims of chemical submission, and they say: why should the perpetrators get away easily? Why should they get to hide from the shame? Jazelle would be the one to request the trial be public. She said the 51 men involved should be confronted with the public gaze. She knows what this means because, I mean, Jazelle is also under fire—not under fire from the public, but
everything about her whole life is being dug up. Every financial detail about her life, every text message she's ever been sent, is being put into discovery. The fact that she had an affair one time in their 50-year-long marriage is also being brought up over and over again. She has to bring it up; she’s questioned. Everything about their personal lives is being laid bare, so it's not just, "Hey, let's make this crime public; let's talk about what he did." Everything is becoming public because that's how trials work, and she's okay with that. She said they should
answer for their crimes to all the people. Jazelle says you cannot want to help victims if you yourself are ashamed of being one. She refuses to have closed-door proceedings because, quote, "that's what the attackers would have wanted." She wants the shame to change sides so it's no longer on the side of the victims, but the shame should be with the perpetrators. I've been watching a lot of Chinese dramas lately. I say it's to improve my listening and pronunciation skills when it comes to learning Chinese. I'm going to be honest; I don't know how much I'm
really learning through these C-dramas, but the one thing I hate when watching Chinese dramas is that I feel like a lot of meaning is lost in translation. Translators will try their best to give a quick description of the idioms that are being used and what they mean, but I still need to pull over my husband to give me a deeper explanation of what they're really saying because sometimes the play on words is the best part. So that's why I'm using Rosetta Stone to improve my Chinese, because I don't want anything lost in translation for me.
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Mango listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership for 50% off. Visit rosettastone.com/roton. That's 50% off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50% off at rosettastone.com/roten today. [Music] During the investigation, a few more things were revealed. It's been a pretty common theme that Dominique would speak very highly of his wife to his friends and family, yet in the messages he shared with the other "rers" that would come into his house to assault Jazelle, he only spoke of his wife in the most degrading terms. What he called her—like hundreds
and hundreds of times—he talks about how he's excited to host parties and praises the power of the cocktail of drugs he has her under. He also asks other men if they like it in the mode that he likes it. They're like, "What mode?" He calls it a mode; he would dress her up in lingerie that she would never willingly purchase or wear. So just think about how drugged someone has to be for them to be dressed in clothing she has to be undressed from her pajamas, dressed in the lingerie, and then cleaned up. He said
that he cleaned his whole wife's body after the assault so she would not wake up suspicious, then undressed her from that lingerie and redressed her back into her regular clothing. She does not have even these hazes; she never once said, "I did have a dream where this man was in the room." She never said anything like that; she just had no clue what happened. I had this dream that my husband was undressed—nothing. This sounds like a surgical level of being sedated. I mean, perhaps an exaggeration, but still. For her to not have even a slight
recollection of events or even a slight suspicion, I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of drugs she was given was damaging her brain on a consistent basis. One expert comments on the case: her state was likely closer to a coma than to sleep. He even teaches others to drug their partners. He mentions that if your wife smokes, it can alter the effects of the dosage, so take that into consideration, like a little helpful hint from your neighborly friend. Another helpful hint: it's better when mixed with a little alcohol. If you read the back of Lurasidone
or Ambien, you should never mix it with alcohol; it's so dangerous for your body. But he's encouraging it because it works stronger. I mean, there's clearly a sense of pride when he gets his wife into a coma-like state. He would even post, "Last time I didn't force myself enough on the dosage, but now I did, so we're good to go," meaning he upped the dosage. He would also send these hand-drawn sketches, maps of where to park their car at the park, and how to walk on foot to their house without triggering any motion cameras or
anything from neighbors. Remember how he never asked for financial compensation or a tradeoff for the crimes that were committed on Jazelle? He did, indeed, though go to other people's homes. Dominique was not just the one inviting others over; he was also an R-worder. He would go to other people's homes with the intention of essaying drugged wives, drugged victims. It doesn't appear that it's the same men that were coming to assault Jazelle, but still, he had been the drugger, the filmer, the facilitator, but also the assaulter. He writes on the forum that one time he was
caught trying to assault a woman. He says it was a failed operation: that night, he walked into the bedroom and the victim had clearly suspected her husband. She did not drink whatever he had put in her glass; she poured it down the sink. She pretended to be asleep to see what was going on before turning on the light. She heard lingering whispers, heard someone coming in. She whipped on the light; Dominique is in the room trying to pull off his pants. He writes on the forum, "I was like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of
a car. Damn, I thought I was done for. I was pulling down my pants, boom, lights turn on, she's standing up next to the bed." The rest of the post goes on to scold the host husband for his lack of vigilance; he says he screwed up the entire plan. "He could have ruined this all," is how he puts it. And then what happened? He just left. He just left. Wow, will these women ever get justice? Do they know what's happening? Because I don't think this is the only woman that Dominique went and essayed, or that
is being offered up on these websites or forums by their husbands. Caroline says, "How many victims have been my father?" Exactly; the question is dizzying. Other new findings include an occasion where Dominique had taken Jazelle to visit their daughter Caroline at her house in Paris. On the drive back home, Jazelle does not remember a single thing. This is in the middle of the day; they're road-tripping back home in the morning. The whole thing is worrisome for the whole family because she's calling her kids, "I don't remember a single thing from that drive." It's been reported
that Dominique drugged his wife so he could have her be essayed at the truck rest stops on the highway. Jazelle does not remember a thing past leaving Caroline's house and getting back home, but she never sleeps in cars. I'm also like this: when you are someone who doesn't sleep in cars, even if you're on a road trip, maybe 30 minutes? She slept for 8 hours, she said, the whole time. She doesn't REM. She must have been asleep because she doesn't remember a single thing, and the kids are like, "This doesn't make sense." He would also
tie his wife to the bed during some occasions. There were other occasions, like once when Caroline and her family went on a vacation; Dominique and Jazelle came over to house-sit. The authorities found videos of Jazelle being unconscious and essayed by a 34-year-old man in Caroline's house, in his daughter's house. The assault lasted several hours. When Caroline was shown screenshots of the video to verify that it was her house, she said, "How could he commit these acts of barbarism in my home, in my privacy? How are we going to be able to live normally in this
house after all of this?" But the authorities tell her that's not all they found—a few more photographs, and it's Jazelle unconscious, dressed in black lingerie in Caroline's bedroom of her vacation home. They asked Caroline if they could stay in her vacation home, and even there he was inviting strangers over. That specific assault in the vacation home lasted more than 5 hours. Caroline says, "Knowing strangers have entered my home to abuse my mother is unbearable. I feel like vomiting." Dominique, in general, has had some very odd responses to questions during this whole investigation. He has excuses
for everything. At one point, he told the investigators he only started drugging his wife because he wanted her to dress in these lingerie clothes and stuff, and she would have never agreed to it because she's so modest. So he started drugging her just so he could see his beautiful wife in these clothing. And then eventually, that led to him inviting others to participate. He doesn't appear to be mentally ill, even though that is like... A mentally ill sentence to state: court documents state that he described feeling the quote "need to be all powerful" over the
female body. He has heard calling us "wife" a hundreds of times in the videos while she's being essayed by strangers. He refers to his wife as a "he," then later tells the judge he meant that as a compliment. He meant that as a compliment, and in front of the judge, he only refers to his wife as a "saint," the love of my life; she is a saint. This is fascinating because he was just calling her "wife" hundreds of times in the crime videos. He states Jazelle was his first love, the only love of his whole
life. He really, really loves her, yet folders on his computer are titled "my her abuses." Dominique was asked if he was attracted to his daughter, to which he responds he does not remember having those photos of his daughter nude in his possession, even though he must have drugged her and fully put her into lingerie and then taken those pictures. He states, "Yes, she is my daughter, but that doesn't mean anything to me," and you can see that. In addition, she is way too young compared to what I'm usually into. She's not my type at all.
I never touched my daughter, which is a very weird response. Caroline said hearing those words she felt "an unquenchable rage." But the biggest revelation came in March, four months after the initial supermarket investigation. Four months later, both the two brothers (fake names: Julian and Thomas) and their wives were asked to come to the police station. No way! Photos were found of the daughter-in-laws when he would visit. It doesn't appear that they were drugged; it appears that he hid cameras in their bathrooms and bedrooms to take pictures and videos of them changing and getting nude. He
would hide cameras in his bathroom whenever they came to visit and stay for the weekend. He would post pictures of them onto these CD forums, and oddly enough, one of the crimes against one of his daughter-in-laws started when she became pregnant with his grandchild, which is a lot to unpack psychologically. In another picture of his other daughter-in-law, he had taken a picture of his computer screen with his daughter-in-law in the computer screen, and in that same photo, he's just aggressively self-pleasuring himself to his daughter-in-law. He would then post those photos online with filthy, degrading comments
against his family members. As a side note, he would even post pictures of his own daughter, Caroline. They discovered that he had actually taken a few more photos of her getting undressed as recently as 2020. In those, it doesn't appear that she's drugged, but when she was visiting, he would hide hidden cameras throughout the house. Here's the crazy part: he always referred to and captioned his daughter's explicit photos as "his wife's daughter." He never said, "This is my daughter." He referred to her as "wife's daughter." Caroline says he disassociates himself from his status as a
father because he sees us as mere objects. Yeah, even with all of that coming to light, he still has the audacity to write to one of his sons, "My son, I have thought for a long time since my detention before writing to a member of the family. I think your sensitivity as an artist will be able, I hope, to transmit these few words, which will be the last, as a correction to all. I will respect your silence, which I understand. I try to do my best until these last terrible dark years of my personality. I'm
thinking of all of you. I miss you all very much. I wish everyone many beautiful things in your lives. I miss all the little ones, even if the last one is unknown to me. Maybe it's better that way. Know that your mom is and will still remain the love of my life. Like all of you, I will never forget your mother. I am aware of the harm and shame I have done to you, and I'm treating myself here for this. The deprivation of liberty is less difficult to bear than the deprivation of your absences. I
love you all, and I kiss you all. Sorry, Dad." What Caroline would state: no women in our family was spared by my father. Dominique has pled guilty to the charges against him, but there will still be a trial. He has charges of aggravated administration of harmful substances and invasion of privacy by fixing, recording, or transmitting the image of a person. A panel of five judges will determine the verdict and sentencing in December. The evidence against Dominique— I mean, there's no way he couldn't plead guilty. He had even gone out of his way to hide the
medications he was drugging his own wife with. He put them in the garage in one of his hiking boots that he barely wears, and inside that hiking boot is a sock, and underneath that sock were the medications, which, by the way, he was using in a combination of lorazepam and Ambien. Lorazepam is typically used to treat anxiety disorders; it's a benzodiazepine. It essentially causes these calming chemicals in your brain to work better. It essentially tells your nerves to relax, slow down. You will feel less anxious, less worried, a bit sleepier, and your muscles will relax.
It's pretty strong; it makes people feel very sleepy. You're not allowed to drive; you're not supposed to drive or even ride a bike while taking lorazepam. It's more often than not used as a short-term medication. More severe side effects include— which at this point, Jazelle was likely feeling— some of these severe side effects: weakness, slurred speech, blurred vision, memory problems, short-term memory loss, loss of consciousness, and coma. death in severe cases. Most medical professionals will typically advise that if you experience even a little bit of any of these symptoms, you need to seek medical attention
immediately. An overdose of Lahham is life-threatening. Side note: a lot of people think that the doctor should also be investigated because he's getting a lot of these prescribed to him. He's getting a ton of Laraspan and Ambm—450 tablets in the space of a year, which is a lot. Additional evidence on top of that is that he has all these files saved under "abuses." He posted photos of his family members all over the Internet with degrading comments. The evidence is seemingly never-ending, and it does not appear that he's going to finish off this trial with the
potentially last remaining ounce of dignity that he may have. Since the start of this trial this month, he has taken to trying to make it seem like his wife Jazelle had multiple affairs outside of their marriage. He has also tried, yeah, he has also tried to blame this on the fact that his dad was not a good man. He also alleges that he was essayed as a child when he was hospitalized at one point for a sickness that has now caused something in his brain to get messed up. He is facing 20 years in prison.
"What? 20 years? How is that possible?" Yeah, 20 years. So people are upset about that; they're trying to get more. "How old is he?" He is 71 now. A lot of people wonder, how are there really no signs at all? I mean, no suspicions throughout the 50 years? Because, you know, I think in a lot of cases, people say they're the perfect couple. They're the perfect couple, and then you get these court documents and you're like, "Well, they were the perfect couple on the outside." But look at all the people next to them that saw
all these signs, right? So people are unsettled about this case because it truly feels like they were the perfect couple. The whole family was confused as well. Were they just extra oblivious? Was it right in front of their face this whole time and they just didn't see it? Would anybody else have seen it? In the book, Caroline tries to recount any and all red flags that might have come up over the years because maybe it can help somebody else. And she says there are really none. These are the only ones: Jazelle had a falling out
with one of her best friends from college. This best friend would often come over to stay with the family, but Jazelle's kids knew her well; they loved her, they all liked her. One day, she's just no longer part of their lives. The story that Gazelle's kids heard were little bits and pieces, and there was some sort of big falling out between Jazelle and her best friend. For some reason, their dad, Dominique, was a big part of it. Jazelle's best friend told her, "Dominique has been trying to be inappropriate with me while I've been staying at
your house." She told Jazelle, "You don't know who you live with. You don't know the man that you're sleeping with. It's time to open your eyes; your husband is not who you think he is." And she backed her husband; there was no proof. She spoke to the friend, got her side of the story, spoke to her husband, got his side of the story. But you have to remember, she met her husband when they were 18. They got married; she met this friend in college. They had, at this point, probably been together at least 20 years.
Mhm. Yeah, I’m not saying this is what I would do in this situation; I'm just saying a lot of people can see why she may have chosen to more or less believe her husband. They have this whole life together, and this has never happened before. It's not like multiple friends had said this to her. Jazelle tried to question Dominique; he just denied everything. After this, she and her college best friend stopped talking for good—20 years of friendship just destroyed. Looking back, Caroline thinks this was the beginning of her dad's insidious hold on their mother. Eventually,
it just got worse when Jazelle's mysterious health problems escalated. He told her, "You can't drive; you can't go out alone." She couldn't remember things. Her husband was the only one there for her to remember, "Hey honey, you got to remember to do this, you got to do this. I will go shopping; you can't go shopping. I will do this out of love because your health isn't good. You can't take care of the finances; it's too stressful. I will take care of the finances." At the time, I'm sure Jazelle felt very grateful that she had someone
that wasn't annoyed with her health issues but rather wanted to shield her from the world. Instead, it turns out he was drugging her and letting men assault her. Side note: when Jazelle divorces him, she realizes that he wasn't just managing the finances out of love; he had taken out significant loans in her name. Almost all the loans are in her name. Not only did he shatter her entire existence, but he left her in a mountain of debt to crawl out of while she was trying to recover from this level of betrayal. Obviously, this is not
a sign of anything, but Caroline writes in her book about her; her father never made her uncomfortable, but her father’s father had. So Caroline’s grandpa, Dominique's dad, had been married for most of his life, and together with his wife, they had adopted this little girl named Lucille. So this is Dominique's adoptive sister. After Dominique's mom passes... Dad ends up marrying the adopted daughter, the one that he raised since she was little. Everyone called it in the family an incestuous, inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable person. She's 30 years younger; she was 25 when they got married.
I mean, he raised her, and now he's marrying her and is practically full-on abusing her. Caroline remembers going to Grandpa's house, seeing Lucille, the step-grandma; she's 25, can hardly write, and she's not even allowed to change the TV or radio station without her husband's consent. All she does all day long is run errands for him, put the laundry away, and put the dishes away, like a prisoner. Sometimes they would see her go out into the back garden, staring off into the horizon, and she would just pick at fistfuls of her hair. She would literally rip
out fistfuls of her hair as a trauma response. In this case, after her quote “husband’s” death, she was hospitalized—not from grief, but likely from the PTSD of trauma and abuse. Everyone practically disowned the grandpa at this point, including Dominique. He never confronted his father about it; he just backed away. Nobody wanted to associate with him anymore. I mean, it's weird. Caroline now thinks back and says to her father, “From your father, you really took the worst.” A few other red flags: there was this strange incident in 2011. The youngest brother, Julian, and his future wife
were going to visit the parents; they were staying with them for the weekend. One day, Julian's future wife comes up to him, looking so uncomfortable, a little panicked. “What's going on?” she asked. She had just caught Dominique aggressively self-pleasuring, sitting behind his computer screen in his office, but the door was left wide open. I mean, he had guests over! Either he forgot, which is strange—I mean, maybe—but it’s almost like he wanted someone to catch him. It's not like he was home alone. Imagine, you have guests over, staying with you for the weekend, and you leave
the door open. It’s weird. It’s weird. Yeah, recently, Jazelle has stated that there was one incident in around 2011 where she woke up in the middle of the night to Dominique having intimate relations with her. She knows now, in 2024, that it was "our word" because she didn’t consent at that point. And yeah, you still need to get consent from your significant other. She just asked, “What are you doing?” and then went back to sleep. She said in that moment she thought, “I mean, I thought he had the urge to do it, and we were
married, so I didn’t take it any further.” There was another incident in 2015 when Jazelle looked over and saw a text message from an unknown number pop up on Dominique's phone. The text read, “I did not receive the photos yet.” She’s like, “Who’s that from?” He gave some sort of excuse at the time that made sense. In another instance, Dominique gave her a beer to drink, but it had this very strange green hue to it, and she was upset. She wanted to take it back to the store to let them know, “Hey, we got a
bad batch; can we get a new beer? Can we get another case of beer?” He quickly took it from her, poured it down the sink, and was like, “You’re being dramatic; we don’t have to do all of that.” She didn’t think anything of it; she just thought, “Maybe I’m being a Karen, like, you know, maybe I don’t need to do that.” Other signs include Dominique being very bad with money, but that hardly counts as a sign. Caroline remembers growing up; he just was always in need of money and would never pay her back. He would
even go into her savings and take all the money that she earned from her summer jobs, which also explains how he does not care to leave his wife in a pile of debt. Other things would include Dominique's obsession with taking pictures of Jazelle just going about her normal everyday life. She found it very annoying; she would tell him, “Stop, could you stop?” But he said, “You should be pleased that after 50 years your husband still wants to take photos of you.” She said at that moment she thought, “I mean, it was flattering perhaps, but it
annoyed me, and I told him to stop.” Anyway, he did ask her casually one time, “Do you want to try swinging?” Okay, so yes, these isolated incidents of me telling you back-to-back seem like a lot of signs, but he never pressured her. He never asked again, and this is in the span of like 50 years. She said categorically, “No, I will never do swinging.” He never brought it up again, never pressured her. Nothing. Yeah, I’m sure she’s doubting every single “yes,” you know, every single conversation, everything. Yeah, that’s all she could have found, which means
how good at masking he is—right? Yes, and there’s one incident that I do think is much more alarming, but I don’t think it ties to this. When she was caught for her affair, he grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and slammed her up against the wall in anger. The kids witnessed this. I think at that moment they also wrote it off as like a very sticky situation—she was having an affair. And yeah, so, I mean, that’s about it really that they could come up with unless there are going to be new revelations that
are revealed during the trial. But yeah, he truly was so good at masking, there was not even an inkling that he was drugging her—not even a single suspicion of any of this. Truly, there is no way the family could have suspected anything like... "This is going on," Caroline said. "He was the one who took me to school early in the morning to avoid me taking the bus. He never hesitated to pick me up on weekends at any time of the night. Before I passed my driver's license, he would pick me up from my friend's house.
He always made sure to comfort me when I was heartbroken or when my mother and I disagreed and got into a fight; he would take my side. The only thing he always told his kids was, 'May your journey of life be better than mine.' He said that was his only wish as a father: that their journey of life be easier and better than his. I mean, to them, it just seems like there's clearly small things, little things here and there, but nothing that would ever make them suspect that Dominique is doing this. I mean, maybe
some things suspect, like, okay, he's not a good person, he's not good with his finances, he's a little strange. He definitely shouldn't have slammed his wife up against the wall; that never happened again, it seems, but still, not acceptable. In comparison to all families out there, there's nothing so standout alarming that would make them freak out. Ultimately, their lives were so ordinary—too ordinary. Caroline says, "I think of us as happy. I thought my parents were very happy." Jazelle says, "We had everything. We had a great life. I don't understand how this could have happened. We
had it all; we had everything we needed to be happy." While all of this is unfolding, Jazelle has filed for divorce. When she first found out about the secret tapes, the abuse, she said she had thoughts of self-exiting. She said, "I feel dirty, soiled, betrayed. It's a tsunami—I’ve been hit by a high-speed train.” But she wants to see it through for her kids and other victims. She said almost to her husband, at this point during the trial, during the opening days this month, "My world is falling apart. For me, everything is falling apart. Everything I
have built over the years. Frankly, those videos are scenes of horror for me. I'm lying on the bed, motionless, being assaulted. They treat me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag. It's barbaric. Don't talk to me about scenes; there are at least 200 scenes of assault, 90 by strangers. The rest are Dominique recording himself assaulting his wife while she was drugged. Some of the assaults lasted six hours long.” As a side note, she said their intimate life was very normal; they were very intimate and had good relations. There was no inkling that he kept
asking her to try “darker stuff.” You know, there was nothing—there was no like, "Hey, pretend to be asleep." There was nothing. Caroline, Dominique's daughter, has stated in her book, "Being the child of the victim and the child of the perpetrator is a terrible burden. In an instant, my life wavered in a dizzying way. The past has been swept away. But for what future? Our family shipwreck is like a labyrinth where, for nearly two years, each step forward has opened a new door to more sordid revelations. I tried in vain to detect, didn't understand the true
identity of the man who raised me. Even today, I wonder how I did not see anything, not having suspected anything. I will never forgive what he committed over so many years, yet I still have the image of the father I thought I knew. I still dream of him. He talks to me in my dreams, and we laugh. We are together. Waking up brings me back to a nightmare. Now I miss my father—not the one who will stand before the judges, but the man who took care of me for 42 years. I loved him so much
before discovering this whole monstrosity. How can I calmly prepare to face him in trial?” She says about him going to prison, “At first, a voice whispers to me: Has he been able to adapt to prison life? Does he suffer from our absence, from loneliness? What about the violence in the closed environment?” A second voice screams at her, “This is justice! When you see the harm he's done to us, to Mom, to us, to our family. He is reaping what he sowed, and he deserves it.” This is probably one of the most powerful books I've read
in a really long time. The way she writes is just so raw and unforgivingly honest. I mean, she writes about how, with the upcoming trial, she's scared. She says, "I'm afraid I won't be able to hate him." And she wants to tell him, "The happy image of our family has been shattered. Now you are the organizer of orgies, and you're a terrible liar. Mom tells me about your last breakfast you had together. Absolutely normal. How much insensitity is required for someone to convincingly show a near-comical level of tranquility for all these years? What if an
overdose had killed my mom? What if she hadn't woken up? Not for a moment did my father ever think that my mom's heart might not hold?" Caroline says, "I feel betrayed, and I feel ashamed to be a daughter of this torture." And just because the whole family is solid to some degree after this, it’s not like they can just lean on each other and move on. They are now, but in the beginning, in 2020, when all of this was unfolding, it was very rough. Everyone was recovering slightly differently. For example, in the very, very beginning,
Caroline remembers sometimes Mom would worry out loud, almost like she had "Stockholm syndrome." She would hear her mom almost rambling, "Your father is not your father." Well, where he is, he's suffering. You know, I must have missed something in the last few years; I must have missed a sign. Caroline would have to walk away or hang up the phone. She almost felt betrayed by her mom in the beginning because not only does her mom know about the photos of Caroline, but she feels like she's almost siding with her dad, worrying about her dad. Why isn't
she using all that energy to worry about herself, or her children, or her grandchildren who are going to be without a grandfather? She says, "I can't believe this! My mother watches over the comfort of the man who, for 10 years—" then Caroline finds out why her father is barred from reaching out to his family. He wrote this letter to a family friend to be delivered to Jazelle, who Caroline refers to as his puppet. The letter reads: "My friends, I know that I disappointed you, but you are my only link with the outside world because I'm
not allowed to contact my family that I miss terribly. Apart from the anguish, the fear, the emptiness, the loneliness, here it is awful. I know I'm here to pay for what I've done to the love of my life, to my family, to my friends, but it's too late. I don't know where I'm going and how it's going to end. I come to you, in the name of the past friendships, because I need you to pick up some things for me to drop off at the entrance of the prison: my light brown jacket, my Adidas jacket,
my Nike sneakers, a big gray wool sweater, and a belt without a big buckle. If you still have a little friendship for me, I ask you to be indulgent, aka send money to my commissary. I'm in jail for a long time, and I'm asking myself so many questions about everything. What is going to become of home and everything else? The worst here is the boredom; we only go out for an hour a day on walks, and there are two of us per cell. It's quite hard for me. I don't sleep at night— I lose weight,
but that's probably what I deserve. The end of the year without family is going to be very sad for me. I hope my love will get over it; that's what I want. I love her so much. I realize it even more here now, even though she has filed for divorce. She will remain my eternal love; she is a saint and I have not been able to keep her. And if you can send me mail, the addresses of my three children— I don't remember any of them by heart." What? Yeah, he wants to write to his
kids, to Jazelle, and to one of Caroline's brothers. The letter ignited a tiny bit of sympathy, which is exactly what Dominique would have wanted for Caroline and her older brother. They found the letter even more pathetic, so it caused briefly a rift. Yeah, to which Caroline shows to a judge the letter, like, "Look! He's trying to get in contact and ruin our lives!" Soon enough, he writes another letter blaming Caroline, stating that because of her, everyone in prison knows what he's in there for. He writes, "I'm going to be lynched in here; it's unforgiving. It's
urgent! I'm going to have to self-exit; at least I will try to hold out for as long as I can. I'm not looking for pity, just a little comfort. Life is too hard here, especially with Caroline's anger." Caroline would finally write to him— three months of incarceration and already four facetious letters: "You always knew what you were doing, and still do to this day. The only difference is I now know who you are. Now we all know. I ask you from now on to stop your manipulation. I will go to the end of this; we
will go all the way because to me, you no longer exist, and you never will." There were a lot of frustrating times where Caroline and her mom's grief just did not line up. While Caroline wanted to rewrite all of her past memories with the truth, it seemed like her mom just wanted to leave the past in the past as good memories. She would tell her daughter, "You forget that he was not always the devil you describe. He has done so much for you, but also for your brothers. I was happy with him; I loved him
so much, and I prefer to remember the good times." So she's like, "I just want to remember those as good times, and this is a separate life now." Eventually, Caroline will come to understand her mom, because it's also Jazelle's first time going through all of this, and life— this is also her way of protecting herself. She writes, "My mom can't accept reality, to admit that my father dangerously and deliberately manipulated her to degrade her, because if she recognizes her husband's true nature, she would collapse on the spot. Everyone looks at her and says she's a
strong woman, but inside she's a pile of ruins." Jazelle says everything inside needs to be rebuilt. During all of this, before the trial, Thomas, the eldest son, welcomed another child to the family. He texted a picture to the family group chat of his new baby boy with the text message: "Welcome to the world, our son! We have lost a large oak tree on which we like to rest, Dominique, but we have gained a new young shoot, like a seed that we will have to protect." Caroline writes in her book, "Our family history has at least
revealed a social phenomenon that is still largely underestimated in France: chemical submission is in the inter-family and social sphere; it is much more...". Widespread than we think. We all know about date rape, but can we imagine being chemically drugged and abused by a loved one with medication straight out of the family's medicine cabinet? According to France's Drug Security Authority, 42% of credible reports of date drug usage in 2021 happened in the private sphere—so not at bars, not at clubs; it was between people who already knew each other. The effect of chemical submission on a family
is pretty clear; Caroline says about her dad, “I had peace; you annihilated it.” Many French netizens are calling for this trial to help raise awareness of abuse via chemical submission within families, and it's not just within families; it's within the whole social sphere. Many women in France have said the idea of a rapist is still very much the creepy man in the alleyway, but in reality, it can very often be someone you know; more likely than not, it's someone you interact with. For example, in 2023, a senator in France, Joel, allegedly drugged lawmaker Sandrine by
slipping ecstasy into her champagne at his house for a work function, with the intention of assaulting her. This is just weird: he kept insisting that they toast champagne several times, and she's like, “Why is he so adamant she takes the champagne?” It's unusually sweet. When she finally drinks it, she starts feeling palpitations, sweating, and her legs start shaking. She leaves, saying, “I got to go to the hospital; something is not right with me; I feel like I'm going to die.” Wow! And he's following her to the courtyard, trying to get her not to leave. She
finally gets into the taxi, gets to the hospital, tells them everything, and she even says there was this weird thing: he just kept turning on and off a light like a dimmer switch. He keeps dimming it on and off, right? The hospital said that increases the effectiveness of ecstasy; perhaps that was why he was doing that. Regardless, the police search Joel's home; they find ecstasy in his apartment, to which his whole argument so far has been it’s more a handling error. He wasn't trying to drug her; he just mishandled the ecstasy, because “I also have
ecstasy tied to the inside of my sleeves when I pour my guest champagne, and if it slips, it’s mishandling.” He has been suspended, and the case is being investigated, but lawmaker Sandrine hopes that this will draw attention to the use of drugs to prey on women. Netizens have also pointed out that it just doesn’t make sense that Jaiselle had gone to so many doctors—neurologists, gynecologists—during the time that this was happening, and nobody even theorized that this could have been the answer. Nobody even suggested it to her. She was like, “No, no, no, there's no way.”
There’s not even training for doctors to pinpoint what someone suffering from something like this would look like. Many activists have stated it's time for France to change some of its older verbiage regarding how they define the criminal act of rape. By French law, it is defined as sexual penetration committed by violence, coercion, or surprise. Many lawmakers want to change the wording to say explicitly that it happens any time there is no consent. Consent can be withdrawn at any moment, and it cannot exist when someone is impaired. One thing to note is that chemical submission is
not only very hard to detect; it’s also very difficult to treat. In the book, Caroline writes briefly about how when all of this was happening, she started having these crazy panic attacks. I don't know if it's a translation issue or if the word that was used, but she would go into these states of hysteria; she was losing her mind. I mean, nobody had ever seen her like this, to the point where she was hospitalized. She went into the psychiatric ward and was in a state of extreme distress; the doctors basically prescribed her and forced her
to take the exact pills that she was drugged with. They said, “You cannot leave until you take these anti-anxiety meds; you cannot leave until you take these sleeping medications,” which is the last thing someone with this type of trauma is going to want to take. But they tell her to take the pills against her will, like, “You either take your trauma or stay hospitalized.” So, it’s just another instance of the same exact type of trauma. She would have to agree to take the pills to get out. It’s very unfortunate. Now, this is where it gets
crazy: there are going to be potentially other trials for Dominique. He is being investigated for the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in 1991 and the attempted rape of a 19-year-old in 1999. Some reports state that a realtor was showing a house when a man pretending to be a prospective buyer showed up with a box cutter, trying to assault her. She managed to escape. According to some reports, he has admitted to the attempted rape in 1999, but he denies being involved in the murder, even though the same MO was used. They were both realtors
showing houses, and there was attempted rape involved, or full rape in the murder case. Now, get this part: remember how he was arrested for taking upskirt pictures at the supermarket? That was actually his second time getting arrested for that. He had been arrested before, but Jaiselle never knew about it. They were like, “You have no priors; you're free to go.” They take his DNA samples, and they do nothing with it. They don't test it in the database; they just submit it. Now, the second time he is arrested, they— I believe they had… Just opened up
a bunch of closed cases. A 1999 attempted essay case gets opened up again; mhm, DNA is a match, and that is why they search all of his stuff and build this case against him. Wow, so it's not just by chance of like, "Hey, you are recording people; we're going to search all your devices." I'm sure they would have done that maybe anyway if it was the second time. But yeah, that's what I'm saying: there's no way that at 60 years old or 50 years old is when he started committing these types of crimes. That's what
people are saying; people are saying that he didn't start essaying his wife in 2010—that's when he started recording it—like there's just no way, yeah. And the fact that he's 70, which means that he almost lived his whole life without getting caught, yeah. And the fact that his family did not catch on to anything also means those 70 people or 50 people would have gotten away too. Yes, and all the other victims that they've also assaulted and the CP files found on their computers—they would have... like, you're talking about hundreds of people. Yeah, like the ripple
effect that this is all... all would have gone away without a trace. Some means are saying if he is indeed involved in the 1991 murder, he could very likely have some of the characteristics of a serial killer. The way that he's able to compartmentalize his crimes is very serial killer-esque; it's not just a perverse man, mhm, which I mean is horrendous already. He needs to be thrown in jail, but it's a little more extreme than that. It's even more scary because nobody... how could he get away his whole life without anyone suspecting anything? Everybody liked
him—terrifying. Yeah, they said he was a pleasant guy. He was even asked, "What would have happened if that in the 1999 case of the attempted essay where your DNA was found? What would have happened if she hadn't escaped?" I don't know. You were well on your way to essaying her. I can't tell you. Later, he would tell the judge that he "had no intentions of essaying her. I just intended to immobilize her, perhaps just to look at her.” At least as of right now, there's no firm answer on whether or not he will be tried
for those crimes. Additionally, the police identified another woman who was essayed by Dominique at least a dozen times between 2015 and 2020. It seems like this is the one that turned on the light. She was in a state of chemical submission because of her husband, and Dominique would come and essay her. But the trial might be tricky considering the victim is still in contact with her partner, with her husband, after he’s been incarcerated, and she would prefer not to file a complaint against her husband nor Dominique. He may face way longer than 20 years if
these go to trial as well. But since then, Dominique's nieces have been coming forward. They said, “We've actually kind of had a few more signs than other people,” so this is their uncle. Dominique is their uncle. They alleged that when they were younger, Dominique, their uncle, would have this weird insistence on playing doctor, and he allegedly only agreed to buy them toys if they would undress. Dominique has rejected the claims. It doesn't seem like they ever told Dominique's wife or his kids, so nobody was alerted, it appears. I think they tried to rationalize it in
their minds until this came forward, and I'm sure everyone around Dominique is thinking, "Wait, okay, did I experience anything?" Dominique has since rejected the claims, and he said, "It's disgusting to accuse me of this. This is too much." I will say most comments about this case are exactly what we're feeling right now, but there are some unhinged people out there. One person writes, “All 72 of them in one session? Her old C must be sore and overflowing.” First of all, not factual; and second of all, another comment reads, “I think that ourwers are the ones
who needed to take the drugs to commit the act. At least for me, I would need a lot of drugs to do that with a 70-year-old.” Another one reads, “Wow, who would want to knock up a 70-year-old Sleeping Beauty?” Another reads, “If the wife had agreed to wife swapping, none of this would have happened.” Wow. Another comment reads, “Women and men are such an unholy, unequal pairing. Imagine being married to and living under the same roof as your natural predator and biggest enemy—such strange, barbaric, compassionless, demonic creatures.” I do think that this is a very
intense comment, but for the case and for the intense feelings that a lot of people have of just being fed up, I think it's just coming from a place of frustration. Another comment reads, “It's pretty alarming that he found 70 people willing to participate in this without a single one of them turning him into the authorities.” Another comment reads, “Do they still have the guillotine in France?” Other comments about the doctors: “She's a woman, so likely doctors told her all her health problems were because she should lose her weight and probably her hormones.” Someone theorized,
“He didn't just start this 10 years ago; he started filming 10 years ago, and that's why he's been caught. Guaranteed this has been happening for decades.” Another comment just simply reads, “A bear would never do this.” Others point to a small survey that was done with a small pool. I will say a very small pool, but even then, it's very alarming. But that study indicated that one in three men stated they would... "Essay: A woman, if they knew they could get away with it. What Carolina said about her mom: 'My mother has forged a mind
of steel; it does not bend. She loves life, whether it is good or bad, and the surprises that are in store for her. She resembles a medieval queen to me—neck straight, chin high, and not a complaint. The true heroine standing in the ruins is her. She was drugged, damaged, and thrown to strangers. She took the time to listen to us, her children. Mom always encouraged us to go out, to move around, to see people, to take care of our lives. And at the height of elegance, we have never heard her badmouth our father to us.
People say it's really hard at that age to lose your partner—typically around that age of 70s, 80s, 90s, people lose their partner to death. That's why people say when you're in a relationship for that long, you pass soon after your partner, because it's just difficult. Even if you take out the emotional trauma, the mental trauma, there's a lot of learning to do. Caroline's mom, I mean Jazelle, had to move to an area where she didn't know anyone. She had to learn to live on her own again—drive a car, maintain a house, manage paperwork—all the things
that he had been doing, she had to relearn. She’s got to meet new people while going through this trial, while trying to get rid of all this trauma. She says, 'All that was left for me, after 50 years of life together, were two suitcases. I no longer have an identity. I don't know if I will ever rebuild myself.' Caroline says one of her mom's favorite mottos stands out to her, and it's just, 'Continue to believe in life and the most beautiful things it has in store for you.' As for her father, Caroline writes, 'The grave
digger of families, the murderer of memories.' She says, 'In the heart of the carnage, my mother's hand is still in mine.' This carnage—here it is—so the two of them are facing it together with the two brothers and their families. Caroline started an awareness campaign called 'Don't Put Me to Sleep' to fight against drug-facilitated assaults; as for right now, the trials are currently ongoing and are expected to reach a verdict by December 20th of this year. That is the current case of what is happening in France right now. What are your thoughts on this case? I
was trying to go through all of the English media news sources, and it's bad, but the book—it's so much worse than I ever imagined. Just the way that Caroline is so raw with the amount of trauma that they're going through, it just cuts very deep. What are your thoughts? Please let me know in the comments, and I will see you in the next one. Please be safe."