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The Women Who Woke Up (Sleep Rape Reader Letters)
The Motherless 'Rape Academy' Was Just the Tip of the Iceberg.
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I’m running a new survey on waiting in relationships and I’d love your input. You can fill it in here. Thank you!
We probably all know about the scandal in France when Dominique Pelicot was arrested on a different charge¹ and police were shocked to discover years of video material about drugging and abusing his wife together with dozens of other men he invited to join in.
Then came the so-called rape academy discovered in April by CNN investigators, where plenty of men were coordinating and exchanging tips on how to drug and abuse their partners in their sleep. And two days ago, international authorities uncovered 4 more similar rape networks as part of an ongoing investigation called Project Medusa.
But while the internet and technology in general is enabling new forms of coordinated abuse and sharing non-consensual videos at scale, the very basic act of abusing women in their sleep is nothing new. Contrary to what the mainstream public thinks, rape isn’t primarily a criminal act done by strangers. Instead, it stems from patriarchal entitlement, in men who think they have a right to women’s bodies regardless of their consent.
Because of this main driver of patriarchal entitlement, the main perpetrators of rape have always been current or former partners, friends or relatives of the targeted victims. And a lot of boundary-infringing behavior happens when the victim is asleep, either normally or in a deeper sleep caused by substances the victim might have knowingly or unknowingly consumed.
How widespread is sleep rape?
The latest official statistics (which, ironically, came out a couple of months before the CNN rape academy story) suggest a harrowing landscape:
51% of women have reported waking up to their partner having sex with them or performing sex acts on them while they are asleep.
27% of women have experienced this multiple times.
One in two women have been raped or sexually assaulted by a partner in their sleep.
Over half of women have been subjected to some form of violence, including sexual assault, in their sleep.
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These statistics are just for the UK, but we can assume they are similar globally. So, abusing women in their sleep has always been a thing. What’s different now is that the men who also drug their partners, assault them, film it and share it online have found the communities in which to share, co-plan and scale their abuse.
The small silver lining is that women can now also share their stories about being abused in their sleep, on their own terms, and, hopefully, contribute to more awareness about patterns to watch out for.
Here are just a few letters and messages that I got from readers all recounting the same phenomenon. All of the rapists in these stories were boyfriends or husbands or fiancés, with just a few involving male friends or family members. Men who were supposed to care about the victims. ...
