\n<\/p>\n
Two women who were drugged and raped by their partners while they were unconscious have said hundreds of people \u2013 including about 80 in the UK \u2013 have come forward to an international support group for victims of the crime.<\/p>\n
Zoe Watts and Amanda Stanhope, who were both repeatedly assaulted by their partners while unconscious, are calling for tighter laws to stop men sharing images and videos of sexual assaults and rape online.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the National Crime Agency said they had uncovered a \u201ctruly international network\u201d of organised drug-facilitated sexual assault.<\/p>\n
It said it had identified more than 270 individuals linked to an online forum it began investigating in October last year, but that many online networks were \u201cas yet unidentified by law enforcement\u201d.<\/p>\n
Watts set up a support network for women who have been victims of this type of rape, and said hundreds of people from across the world had so far joined \u2013 including about 70 to 80 from the UK.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had survivors from 22 different countries reach out in about 40 days,\u201d said Watts. \u201cA lot of these women are asking for what the signs and symptoms are and saying: \u2018Oh my god, I\u2019ve been feeling this for years. I didn\u2019t realise this is what was going on in my body until I found the images. I\u2019m not going crazy.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI think as awareness grows, we\u2019re going to see a lot more women come forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their campaign, End Eye Check, refers to the act of a perpetrator pulling back a victim\u2019s eyelids to show they are unconscious before assaulting them, something that is often filmed and can be specifically searched for online.<\/p>\n
Watts\u2019 husband of 16 years told her one Sunday afternoon after they had been to church that he had been crushing their son\u2019s sleeping pills into her tea at night and raping her for over a decade. He is serving an 11-year prison sentence for various offences including rape.<\/p>\n
Stanhope was raped repeatedly by her partner while she was unconscious on prescription medication, often waking up disoriented, in new clothes and with bruises on her body. Her partner was charged with multiple counts of rape and sexual assault, but took his own life before the case reached court.<\/p>\n
She said he had told her he had taken videos and images of her, but she has no idea if they were uploaded to the internet. \u201cWe need to tackle the online content, because that is what has fuelled it and why it\u2019s grown so quickly and globally,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Stanhope decided to start campaigning to make sure women received better support than she did, saying she \u201cwas failed by every single person that was supposed to help\u201d.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Amanda Stanhope.<\/span> Photograph: Family handout<\/p>\n \u201cI woke up; that\u2019s how I found out what was happening to me,\u201d she said. \u201cBut some of these other women, it\u2019s the police telling them they are a victim of this because they\u2019ve found a video. It\u2019s just the most horrific, traumatic experience, and there\u2019s no real dedicated support at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n Both women were inspired to speak publicly after hearing the story of Gis\u00e8le Pelicot, a French woman who was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men for almost a decade. She waived her right to anonymity and insisted on a public trial in order to raise awareness of the crime.<\/p>\n Watts and Stanhope say that, while Pelicot\u2019s case has massively increased awareness of the crime, there is still a long way to go to educate medical professionals on the signs to look out for and teach young people about the risks.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be asking the medical community: if you have a woman who is struggling with her memory, very, very tired, maybe feeling sick, something\u2019s not right \u2013 are you thinking she could have experienced a drug-facilitated rape? Because I really don\u2019t think they are,\u201d said Watts.<\/p>\n She added that a huge culture shift was still needed for people to fully understand this crime could be happening close to home.<\/p>\n \u201cAre people looking at their friend group, and looking at their family, and thinking: are you safe tonight? Of course they\u2019re not. They know Cheryl\u2019s husband, Mark, and they know Rebecca\u2019s husband, Tom,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd there lies the problem, because it is happening, and we\u2019re not questioning it. We\u2019re not even asking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two women who were drugged and raped by their partners while they were unconscious have said hundreds of people \u2013 including about 80 in the UK \u2013 have come forward to an international support group for victims of the crime. Zoe Watts and Amanda Stanhope, who were both repeatedly assaulted by their partners while unconscious,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[360,24918,1123,1936,2160,3295,358,359,694,354],"class_list":{"0":"post-50885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-assault","9":"tag-drugfacilitated","10":"tag-global","11":"tag-group","12":"tag-hundreds","13":"tag-join","14":"tag-rape","15":"tag-sexual","16":"tag-support","17":"tag-survivors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}