Zoe Watts has spoken out after discovering that her husband of 14 years, Ben, secretly drugged her with sleeping medication and raped her while she was unconscious, filming and photographing the abuse over a period of at least nine years. Ben, a printer and outwardly devoted "pillar of the community" who made grand romantic gestures, dismissed her chronic brain fog and migraines as symptoms of stress, when in fact they were caused by the sedatives he was administering. The case highlights a form of abuse that gained wider public attention two years later through the Gisele Pelicot trial in France, exposing a crime largely unrecognised by society at the time.

Ben has now served four years of an 11-year sentence for rape, assault by penetration and administering a substance with intent to overpower for sexual purposes. Zoe, 43 and a mother of four, met Ben in 2000 through mutual friends in Devon when she was 17, and says it took her a long time even to use the word "rape" to describe what had happened, given how deeply she had trusted him. She has waived her anonymity to raise awareness of drug-assisted abuse within relationships, stressing that society teaches people to fear strangers rather than the partners they live with.