'I woke to a stranger raping me as my husband watched'

[IwantToRetire]

For years, ‘Lucy’ had endured years of abuse at the hands of her husband.

"A night or two before our wedding, he punched me by the front door, so I had to put a lot of our wedding photos in black and white so the bruises wouldn't show”.

But nothing prepared her what she discovered one night in late 2021.

"I woke to a stranger on top of me raping me and my husband in the room watching over. The stranger got up and ran off quite quickly, and then I barricaded myself in my children's room and called my father...and called the police."

He confessed that he'd invited strangers into their family home to abuse her. Men who are still free.

"I said, what have you have you done? And he said, I have to go inside or I'm going to end up killing you. And I said, what do you mean? He said, this has happened eight more times. This isn't the first time."

"I spend every day of my life in fear and worry. But more than that, I feel upset that these men are walking free."

Lucy said that she doesn’t know who her perpetrators are. She said, “They probably think that they've completely got away with the crimes that they've done and therefore may even be continuing."

Article continues at https://www.itv.com/news/2026-06-17/the-woman-searching-for-the-men-invited-by-her-husband-to-abuse-her-as-she-slept

I thought there was a thread about this and I was going to add that she has been interviewed by ITV. But couldn't find one - sorry if this is a duplicate.

I know NAMALT but honestly I struggle with just how depraved some men are when they think they won’t get caught. It’s just a never ending stream of awfulness.

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2026.06.16-181702/www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/wellbeing/mental-health/my-husband-was-sexually-assaulting-me-in-my-sleep/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2026.06.16-181702/www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/wellbeing/mental-health/my-husband-was-sexually-assaulting-me-in-my-sleep/

This is Zoe Watts’ article in the Telegraph. She’s mentioned in the article.

I think these are both being shared now as part of the #EndEyeCheck campaign. Thanks and respect to all the women speaking out, I just can't imagine how they keep going.

It’s appalling on so many levels. One of which being, yet another thing for women to fear.

I’m honestly beginning to wonder whether huge numbers of men would be LT but they don’t have the opportunity/aren’t quite daring enough to go for it.

The reason I suspect that is not just these appalling cases that are coming out, but also why so many wealthy, powerful men are such abusive sh1ts when they can presumably have any number of women thanks to their position and wealth, yet they still want to find ways to abuse women who don’t particularly want to be with them.

So is it “just because they can”? And is the corollary that lots of ordinary men who don’t act like that, don’t do it “because they can’t”? They aren’t powerful enough to have that impunity?

That thought worries me.

This is the 4th thread this week (not all started by me) where I am beginning to think men shouldn't be allowed out, or in fact even in their home, without supervision.

I suspect shit like this was always going on, and whilst the idea of it being videoed or whatever is just gross, it mean there is in fact evidence.

How many women in the past have been sectioned for being hysterical, or some such woman despising designation, when in reality what they were saying and experiencing was the reality of how men were treating them.

Link to campaign web site https://endeyecheck.org/

I worry about this too actually. I think sexual violence is becoming more normalised. Extreme examples but the UN saw a 50% rise in reported cases of sexual violence in conflict zones from just one year 2022-2023. In Sudan sexual violence has become incredibly prevalent. Demand for life saving rape treatment has increased by 288%. For the refugees who escape they are subjected to msf workers attempting to trade food for sex and alleged sex trafficking.

Back home in the UK rape is practically impossible to get a conviction for unless you are a “perfect victim”, porn has gotten more extreme with a correlating rise in rough sex.Then there’s men who will drug you to have others rape you, the men who will coerce their partners into swinging sites. The sexualisation and abuse of young teenagers whilst powers that be turn a blind eye. It never ends and that’s whilst the men who apparently not like this are leashed by societies mores.

Not sure why but links didn't seem to work. Never sure if it is something about links in MN posts

So in case anyone else is having trouble I think this will work:

Telegraph link https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/wellbeing/mental-health/my-husband-was-sexually-assaulting-me-in-my-sleep/

And archive link https://archive.is/xm93k

And in case anyone didn't see this yesterday
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5543125-traumatised-by-swinging

I have no doubt that porn, now it is on the internet, is only making what has been sexual exploitation of women by husbands and partners more "normal" - to men.

I'm not clear on what endeyecheck actually means, and googling hasn't helped.

I wasn’t clear until I read the article in the link. It’s because the men lift the women’s eye lids and check they’re unconscious before going ahead.

Well, almost all Freud's patients who were the victims of childhood sexual abuse, for a start!

After initially accepting that they might be fact, Freud went on to discount reports by women of incestuous sexual abuse, because he didn't believe that this would happen. He developed other theories to explain away child sexual abuse and pathologize the little girls rather than blame than the fathers. He falsified his data to this end.

So "the father of modern psychiatry" comes over as pretty-much an abusive parent.... It ought to be shocking, but it isn't really a surprise.

Exactly - there are many examples of Freud accurately reporting what women are saying, and any women whether identifying as a feminist would know and trust what she said.

But a man faced with this, just cannot comprehend.

So they find or make words to indicate it is a women lying.

Hysteria and many others.

If you're interested, take a look at DPP vs Morgan [1976] AC 182. This case involved an RAF man who asked his mates to his home to have sex with his wife, having told them she liked to struggle so pay no attention to that as it meant she was enjoying it. The men were convicted of rape after arguing that they honestly believed the woman had consented.

They believed she had consented because her husband said so. Who needed to pay any heed to what an inconsequential woman said?

The campaign name is very strange. Thanks for the explanation but it's a bit niche to capture an audience unless they start splashing what it means around a bit more. I looked all over the website and couldn't find anything.

This is a really important campaign and they need to explain that much better.