In September 2024, Amanda Stanhope watched from her home in Manchester as the Gisèle Pelicot case dominated global headlines. The case, in which Pelicot was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of strangers recruited online, struck a deeply personal chord. 'Gisèle's case was the first time I knew of somebody else who had been raped while they were drugged,' Stanhope says. 'I remember feeling: Thank God I'm not alone. There's one other person in the world that this has happened to.'
Stanhope's former partner, David Rogerson, was under investigation at the time for raping her while she slept and filming the abuse. In Exmouth, Devon, Zoe Watts was also following the Pelicot case. Her ex-husband was already serving an 11-year sentence for drugging and raping her over several years. 'I'd never heard of it before and I absolutely did feel as if it was only me,' she says. 'Gisèle was like fresh air. You know that feeling when you come into a house and open up all the doors and windows and let the air and the light come through? Well, drug-facilitated rape is one of those doors she opened.'
Hidden Crime Comes to Light
The shock of the Pelicot case suggested a monstrous anomaly, but Stanhope and Watts knew otherwise. Just last week, at Northampton Crown Court, a sobbing man in his 40s pleaded guilty to filming himself and another 'person unknown' raping and sexually assaulting his partner over an 11-year period, including tying her limbs and writing on her body. Earlier this year, former Swindon councillor Philip Young pleaded guilty to multiple rapes of his former wife over 13 years, administering substances and voyeurism. In September, another case involving 14 men accused of drugging and raping one woman's husband is set to reach court, with defendants aged 28 to 73 from various professions.
Internationally, a German case resulted in convictions of four men for drugging and raping women, members of a Telegram group called 'German driving school for experts' where women were 'cars', sedatives were 'fuel', and rape was 'driving'. In 2023, German investigative journalists Isabell Beer and Isabel Ströh uncovered a network using the porn site Motherless to share DFSA videos. One man had uploaded footage of his sedated wife for almost two decades without consequence, bragging on threads: 'I'm just about to slip the bitch something' and 'I gave her a few hard slaps in the face and she didn't even notice.'
Scale of the Problem
Pressure from journalists eventually led to police intervention. The wife initially thought police had the wrong address; she had consulted doctors about deep sleeps but never suspected abuse. Further investigation by CNN led to an arrest in Poland. In April 2024, Project Medusa was launched, a collaborative effort led by Germany and the UK with participation from Brazil, Canada, France, Hungary, Netherlands, Spain, US, and Europol, identifying 156 perpetrators and victims to date.
Watts, 43, and Stanhope, 53, were brought together by the CNN report, inspiring Watts to found #EndEyeCheck, a survivor-led campaign group. The name refers to perpetrators pulling open an unconscious victim's eyelid to ensure sedation, often filmed and shared online. The campaign aims to educate schools about DFSA, push for an inquiry into policing and prosecution, raise awareness among medical professionals to spot signs, and ban 'sleep content' from porn sites. 'The first step, though, has to be gathering information,' says Watts. 'Until we understand the scale and magnitude, no one is going to act.' An online survey has been completed by more than 400 people, with survivors ranging from early 20s to 70 years old.
Survivors' Stories
Watts met her husband at 17, he 28, and they married, had four children, and ran a business. She learned of his abuse in February 2018 when he confessed after a Valentine's Day church service, downplaying it as 'having sex' and taking photos to avoid looking at porn. 'You don't understand what you're hearing, because, until then, I didn't even know something like this was a possibility,' says Watts. 'I'd been telling my daughters how to get home safely at night. I'd not been telling them that the person they've already met and fallen in love with might drug and rape them.'
Watts experienced recurrent urinary infections, thrush, tiredness, nausea, confusion, and migraines, once suspecting a brain tumour. She had woken to find her husband 'having sex' with her, and he feigned shock, seeing doctors who prescribed antidepressants or advised wearing trousers to bed. 'He had told people, including non-medical professionals, about this thing he'd been doing and how terrible it was, and how bad he felt,' says Watts. 'He framed it in such a way that none of them deemed it a crime.'
Police took Watts seriously, but the CPS initially declined to charge despite medical records. Watts challenged the decision with daily emails. Even when charged, her husband spent four years before trial living nearby, dating and working in a recovery centre. In 2022, he was convicted of rape, assault by penetration, and administering a substance. 'Even then, there were people in town taking his side,' she says. 'They said: You must really hate him to have done that.'
Stanhope's Ordeal
Stanhope met Rogerson in 2019; the relationship moved fast, but his jealousy and rages followed by pleas for forgiveness took a toll. She was prescribed antidepressants, beta blockers, and sleeping pills. She woke with towels beneath her or without pyjamas, but Rogerson gaslighted her, saying she was losing her mind. 'You live in confusion for years because nothing makes sense,' she says. She was referred to a psychiatrist and neurologist, diagnosed with pseudodementia, and prescribed antipsychotics and lithium. 'If they'd only asked the right questions: How is your relationship? What are things like at home? Maybe it could have been spotted.'
Rogerson's crimes came to light after Stanhope took an overdose; he raped her unconscious body while waiting for an ambulance. When she came to, she ended the relationship but let him sleep on the sofa; she woke to find him raping her again. She went to police, who found he had filmed one assault and posted photos online. In April 2023, he was charged with five counts of rape between 2021 and 2023, though none related to DFSA as Stanhope had taken medications herself. Six weeks later, Rogerson took his own life.
Systemic Failures
DFSA is not new; medieval legal historian Gwen Seabourne highlighted a 1292 case of a doctor drugging and raping a patient. In Victorian Britain, 'knockout drops' caused social outcry. 'There are always going to be men who rape and control and have that entitlement,' says Stanhope. 'But I believe that online porn has accelerated it massively.' Search terms like 'passed out', 'drugged', and 'raped' deliver tens of thousands of videos on sites like Motherless, which advertises as 'moral-free host'. Research on Pornhub found one in eight landing page videos depicts something illegal.
Philosopher Kate Manne, author of Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women, argues DFSA is a means to evade shame, a 'closing her eyes to his disgrace'. DFSA is the 'stealing of her consciousness, her vigilance, her wakefulness'. Prosecutions are rare; in the crime survey for England and Wales ending March 2025, almost a quarter of victims were unconscious or asleep during the most recent sexual assault. 'It's a silent crime that can go undetected for years,' says Watts. 'Unless you stumble across the video evidence, what do you have to prove it happened?'
Campaign for Change
Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University, says the Online Safety Act (OSA) applies to platforms with UK links, obliging them to prevent 'priority criminal offences' like rape and DFSA. 'We need a regulator that's swift and proactive,' she says. Ofcom has not yet taken action on content, only age verification. An Ofcom spokesperson stated: 'The Online Safety Act imposes strict duties on firms to take proactive steps to assess and mitigate the risk of their services being used to commit or facilitate criminal offences. We are actively assessing a number of platforms' compliance with these duties and have been working closely with law enforcement agencies to receive intelligence and support our evidence gathering.'
For Watts and Stanhope, recovery is ongoing. 'Sleep doesn't exist for me any more,' says Watts. 'I'm what you call a night owl and I don't think I'll ever get peace with that.' Stanhope adds: 'Nobody realises the impact. It took me a year to even be able to say the word rape.' What has helped most is #EndEyeCheck. 'This has been so validating,' says Stanhope. 'It's exhausting, but I think it has healed me.'
Finding each other has been transformative. Earlier this year, they attended a lobbying event in parliament, sharing a hotel room. Watts saw Stanhope asleep and cried, realizing their vulnerability. She told Stanhope later, who replied: 'It happened to me, too. I thought the same thing.'
