Society: ‘I felt very dirty…very used’ 

She would wake up feeling groggy, unable to recall anything. Initially, she thought the drowsiness was due to the pills that her then-husband had given her when she felt unwell. On a few occasions, she found herself without underwear on and with no memory of having removed them: “I thought he could have done it when I was asleep,” said Annie (not her real name), recounting her horrific story last week for the first time to The Straits Times (ST). The “he” was J, a man she loved and trusted, the father to their four children—and also the mastermind who turned a gross fantasy shared among other husbands he met online into sordid reality. 

Annie’s is a sickening tale of subterfuge and cunning. About an instigator who drugged his wife and invited strangers to rape her—five men over eight years—while he sometimes watched and recorded. Annie wasn’t the only victim. Three women, whose husbands had raped her, were similarly violated, two by J. It’s been more than five years since Annie discovered J’s betrayal through a trail of evidence left on his phone, and reported it to the police. The conspirators have been sentenced, with J receiving the heaviest punishment: 29 years’ jail and 24 strokes of the cane. 

“I was initially a bit worried about speaking up, because I am not sure if I can face the embarrassment,” she told ST. But she wanted women to know “this kind of thing really happens”. Gisèle Pelicot inspired her. The 72-year-old French woman had found out in 2020 that her now ex-husband had sedated her for over a decade, allowing more than 50 men to rape her. Pelicot has become a beacon of courage for waiving anonymity in her mass rape trial and shifting the shame back on to the accused. The trial also ignited conversations around marital rape, consent and chemical submission.

Annie sharing her experience may offer other sexual assault survivors a way to understand and deal with their own trauma. But the work to end sexual violence continues. Marital rape, to be clear, is rape, even without drugs or conspirators. Corinna Lim, executive director of AWARE, a gender equality advocacy group, wrote, “There is hope at the end of the tunnel…not just for survivors…but society as a whole.” This case, Lim argued, provides a textbook example of toxic masculinity and the “manosphere” deserves our full concern. If we can “identify” sexual violence, she said, we can “call it out and fight it together.”

Some further reading: In “Consent, trauma, and healing: a survivor’s (messy) story”, Cherry Tan bravely details her own experiences, and offers us all a useful primer on the notion of consent.