My husband seemed the perfect family man. But for years he was drugging me, raping me and filming it. My body gave me warning signs, but I could never have suspected such depravity was the cause: ZOE WATTS

By KATHRYN KNIGHT, FEATURE WRITER One of the many sweet things Zoe Watts’s husband Ben used to do for her during their 14-year marriage was make her a cup of tea before bed. It was a ritual that seemed to show just how much Ben cared for her – because the churchgoing, pillar-of-the-community Ben was big on gestures. ‘He liked making these big outward displays. He would serenade me in church and book hair and nail appointments for me, making a point of telling the staff to make a fuss of me as I was so precious,’ mother-of-four Zoe recalls. ‘We seemed like the perfect family.’ Today, though, Zoe sees all this for what it was. ‘None of it was real,’ she says. ‘People like Ben foster a relationship to get their needs met. They masquerade as functioning, funny, kind, loving people. But behind it all is a monster.’ It’s a big word, but it seems entirely appropriate when one considers the horror Ben inflicted on his trusting wife. Because over the course of at least nine years, he drugged her with sleeping medication he’d put in that cup of tea and had sex with her unconscious body, documenting his depraved actions in countless photos and videos. And when Zoe complained of her endless brain fog and debilitating migraines, Ben told her it was likely because of ‘stress’, saying he would do what he could to ‘lessen the load’. It’s a deeply shocking tale. But such was the persuasive hold Ben had over Zoe that even after he confessed his actions, she struggled to see what had unfolded for the crime it was. Zoe Watts says her husband Ben used to always make her a cup of tea before bed, adding that he would masquerade as a 'functioning, funny, kind, loving' person The case came two years before the world reacted with horror to revelations about Gisele Pelicot, who had been drugged and raped by her husband and other men ‘It took a long time for me to use the word rape,’ she says quietly. ‘I’d been living with this man for a long time, and it takes a great deal to unpick that.’ Today, Ben has been behind bars for four years, serving an 11-year sentence for rape, assault by penetration and administering a substance with intent to overpower to allow sexual activity. His case came two years before the world reacted with horror to revelations about Gisele Pelicot, who had been drugged and raped by her husband, who also allowed scores of other men to abuse her. That court case exposed a sinister crime that had been largely unacknowledged by society. As Zoe puts it: ‘We are brought up to worry about being attacked on the street by a stranger. You don’t worry about the person you lie next to.’ Even today, having bravely waived her anonymity in order to raise awareness, Zoe, 43, still struggles to confront what has happened. ‘It is incredibly hard to learn that the person you trusted most, the father of your children, could betray you in such a way,’ she says. Not in the least because Ben, who worked as a printer, initially seemed something of a Prince Charming. The pair met in 2000 through mutual friends in the small Devon town where Zoe, then 17, had grown up in a close-knit and loving family. While Ben was 11 years older, she found him ‘friendly, very approachable, funny, charismatic’. ‘He swept me off my feet,’ she says. ‘I think today we would call it love bombing.’ The couple had only been in a relationship for a few months when, not long after Zoe turned 18, Ben proposed. If there was any concern about the age gap – or Zoe’s youth – then no one said anything. ‘He ticked all the right boxes,’ she says. ‘He had a good job and friends and good connections with his family. I thought it was my happy ever after.’ The couple married in church in 2004, with Ben spearheading their ‘big white wedding’. By then, Zoe had already given birth to their eldest child, now 23. Years whizzed by in a whirl of family chaos as Zoe gave birth to three more children – now aged 20, 19 and 15 – in quick succession. Like any new mum, she was exhausted, although she and Ben maintained an active sex life, which she today describes as ‘absolutely normal. There was literally nothing to suggest he had any other desires that were out of the ordinary’. There were, though, other issues; for all his outward charm, Ben could be aggressive and difficult, often disappearing without explanation. He was periodically referred to mental health professionals, although no formal diagnosis was given. ‘The GP put his behaviour down to stress,’ says Zoe. It was stress, of course, that Ben claimed was to blame when Zoe started to complain of brain fog and at times debilitating migraines around 2009. Her symptoms were so bad that her GP prescribed medication. What Zoe didn’t know is that these were not the only pills she was consuming; Ben had been giving her the sleeping medication prescribed for their young son, who struggled with insomnia, having ‘taken charge’ of getting his prescriptions. ‘He was not only depriving my son of medicine but drugging me with no thought as to the consequences,’ Zoe says now. ‘Migraine medication already has a sedative effect – so what he was doing was potentially incredibly dangerous.’ At the time, however, a bewildered Zoe, then in her late 20s, could only put her worsening health down to the pressures of juggling family life with four young children – one of whom had been diagnosed with autism – with her busy job in social care. The regular urinary tract and yeast infections were less easy to explain away. ‘I went to the doctors countless times and at one point had further investigations, but they were inconclusive,’ she says. As she had no bruises or soreness, there were no signposts to the true cause. As the headaches and brain fog got worse, Zoe even feared she had a brain tumour. ‘I had an MRI for the migraines, and I was convinced they would find a tumour,’ she says. ‘It was so frightening.’ Whenever she shared her distress with Ben, he would seem genuinely concerned. ‘It was all, “Take it easy. Rest when you can. You’re a brilliant mum”.’ Despite his reassurance and penchant for romantic gestures, by 2015 – by which point Ben had been drugging and raping her for at least six years – Zoe was struggling with the marriage. ‘His behaviour was definitely getting worse; there was more physical and emotional aggression. But he was also in and out of seeing medical professionals. It didn’t feel right to leave him when he was seemingly struggling with a mental health problems.’ But it wasn’t until 2018, during their church’s Valentine’s Day service, that Ben told his wife he needed to talk to her later as he had a ‘confession’ to make. Nothing could have prepared Zoe for what came next. ‘It was so matter of fact,’ she recalls. ‘He said he needed to let me know he’d had an affair with my friend while I was pregnant with our second child. “And I’ve been sedating you to have sex with you.” Those were his exact words. He didn’t use the word drugs, or rape. I was dumbfounded.’ Zoe is unsure why Ben confessed when he did, although she believes he chose to exploit the fact he was undertaking a 12-step programme akin to Alcoholics Anonymous. ‘I now think the confession was the next stage of psychological abuse.’ Zoe had put her worsening health down to the pressures of juggling family life – but then her husband told her: 'I’ve been sedating you to have sex with you.' Zoe believes Gisele Pelicot’s case was transformative, calling her 'an incredible woman who opened the door on to something that was previously hidden' Unable to confront the dreadful reality of what her husband was telling her, Zoe chose to focus on the betrayal of the affair. ‘It was horrible, devastating to know he had cheated on me when I was vulnerable and with someone I knew – but it was also easier to understand,’ she says. ‘The sedation became this box I wasn’t prepared to open. I persuaded myself that there couldn’t be an issue with something we did together normally [namely, sex].’ She even agreed to try couples counselling with Ben, although it ended in abject failure. ‘In one session I tried to describe what had happened. Ben sat there with his head in his hands weeping and the counsellor told me I had to stop as Ben clearly “couldn’t cope”. As ever, it became about him.’ Outwardly, at least, their married life carried on as normal, although Ben’s erratic behaviour got worse. ‘He became more violent, and I became more frightened. Yet he had manipulated me into believing he had mental health issues, which made it hard for me to leave him. I tried to just focus on being a mum.’ Her body, though, knew the despicable truth she was desperately trying to push down, and a few weeks after Ben’s confession, she had a nervous breakdown. ‘I wasn’t really functioning. I had weight loss, anxiety, panic attacks,’ Zoe recalls. ‘My family thought it was about the affair. And I couldn’t bring myself to say otherwise. Not when I couldn’t even admit it to myself.’ The turning point came after she confided in her sister a few months later. ‘She was with me when I had a panic attack, and told me that it was OK for me to not be able to get over the affair, and I needed to leave Ben as it was making me ill. And that’s when I somehow found the words to say that it wasn’t just the affair.’ Her sister called their mother, who in turn called the police. ‘She rang me to say this man can’t come back into the house, but even then I was in huge denial. My brain just wasn’t able to see it for what it was.’ The police – who arrived at her home the same day, and who Zoe describes as ‘fantastic’ – had no such confusion, telling her that if she was sedated she could not have given her consent to sexual activity. That night Ben – who had been AWOL for several hours – was arrested at the family home after returning in the small hours wielding a Stanley knife. ‘I will never understand why he did that. I think it must have been to intimidate me and it worked because I was terrified,’ Zoe says, her voice breaking. ‘He chased me, taunting me saying “What do you think I’m going to do, rape you again?” I managed to dial 999.’ After being held for questioning for 13 hours, Ben was released on police bail and barred from contacting Zoe or returning home. ‘He still made his presence felt, making a point of telling people that I had made these false accusations, so that soon pretty much everyone knew,’ she says. The consequences were devastating, not in the least for the children, who learned of their father’s heinous crimes through the local rumour mill. ‘It was shattering for them,’ she says. ‘He didn’t remotely attempt to spare their feelings.’ She subsequently had to get a restraining order as Ben kept turning up at the family home and outside the children’s schools. Today, none of the children have, or want, any contact with their father. In the wider community, reactions were mixed. ‘Some people said how sorry they were, but I also had people shouting at me in the street for keeping Ben away from the kids, others saying to me, “Well, he is your husband Zoe,” as if it meant it couldn’t be rape. ‘One woman said, “If you were sleeping, what’s the big deal?” There was a prevailing sense that if I hadn’t been dragged down an alley by a stranger, then it wasn’t a crime.’ The police, at least, saw it differently, although it took a grinding four years for the case to reach court. At one point, it looked like the case would not proceed at all; 18 months in, the CPS told Zoe they weren’t going to prosecute because of a lack of evidence. While Ben told Zoe he had been filming his abuse during his confession to her she has never seen the photos or videos – nor does she want to. She is unclear whether they formed part of the evidence against him. However, Ben later brought them up himself in court during questioning. Zoe launched an appeal and finally, in April 2022, the case arrived at Exeter Crown Court, where more horror unfolded. During the five-day hearing – during which Zoe gave evidence from behind a screen – she learned Ben had sometimes used restraints to keep her body in place while she was unconscious. ‘It made me feel sick,’ she says. ‘It was a reminder that I will never know for sure exactly what he did to my body.’ Indeed, even today, Zoe still does not know how many times Ben violated her. Giving evidence, he referred to the photographs and films he had taken as ‘arty’ footage for which Zoe should be grateful. He also falsely claimed that it was his wife’s fantasy to be drugged. ‘I wondered if he could sink any lower,’ Zoe says. Thankfully, his arguments did not persuade the jury, who found him guilty of a series of sexual and drugging offences. He was sentenced to 11 years behind bars. ‘The relief was immense,’ Zoe says. Nonetheless, she believes the sentence wasn’t long enough. ‘There are rapists convicted of one offence who get 18 years in prison, so I don’t understand why, if you’ve got a perpetrator that you know has had access to someone’s body for 18 years and could have sexually assaulted them hundreds of times, the sentence is so low?’ It is one reason Zoe believes Gisele Pelicot’s case was transformative. ‘She is a pioneer, an incredible woman who opened the door on to something that was previously hidden and made us realise the devastating consequences,’ she says. The pair have since chatted over Zoom. ‘There’s a secret solidarity between all of us who have been through what we went through. We can ask stupid questions like whether it was our fault. Because even though I know I’m not to blame, and I know I’m not responsible, when something like this happens, it makes you evaluate every interaction.’ Yet, Zoe points out, there is a key difference in their cases. ‘The world stopped for her case not because it was her husband, but because it was 50 other men,’ she says. ‘The world did not stop for me when it was just my husband.’ That realisation inspired Zoe to start a campaign called #EndEyeCheck – the name refers to a practice where perpetrators lift a woman’s eyelid to check she’s unconscious – to raise awareness of drug-facilitated sexual assault and the online distribution of material depicting unconscious women being abused. Her campaign is founded on one central notion: ‘It doesn’t need to be many men – just your husband doing this is enough, and just one time is one time too many.’ She adds: ‘At one point Ben had confided in his GP that he was drugging his wife and having sex with her. The GP did not see fit to flag it as an offence, but chose to see it as part of a wider pattern of behaviour. It shows how far we still have to go.’ Waiving her anonymity has been ‘the best thing I’ve ever done’. ‘I was hiding from this situation for so many years, but there’s been something really cathartic about going public,’ she says. As a result, she has been contacted by dozens of women reporting similar cases. Just this week, a 47-year-old man pleaded guilty at Northampton Crown Court to filming himself and ‘unknown’ men carrying out dozens of sex attacks on his unconscious partner over the course of 11 years. For, while Zoe says that ‘I know from my own father that there are plenty of amazing men full of love, integrity, and morals’, the bleak truth, she warns, is that the horrors she experienced are ‘happening a lot more that you think’.