A woman has spoken of her horror at discovering her husband had been secretly raping her while she slept and filming the attacks. Sarah Tetley, fought through panic attacks and depression to see her now-ex partner Charlie Tetley put behind bars after the terrifying assaults which took place in the bedroom they shared. The 26-year-old is now sharing her story in the hope that it will help other victims of abuse. Sarah thought that she had the fairy-tale marriage when she met Charlie Tetley in a pub when she was 18. Although he was eight years her senior, the couple instantly hit it off and began a relationship.
In 2009, they completed their family when Sarah fell pregnant with their daughter, who is now four years old.
But gradually, Charlie’s behaviour became more and more controlling and he would tell Sarah where she could be and how to behave with their child. Despite some reservations about his personality, Sarah agreed when her boyfriend proposed, thinking that marriage might iron out the problems in their relationship. So the couple married in 2011 at a local church in front of all of their family and friends.He refused to let his wife use his computer and would regularly shut himself away in their bedroom in the evening.Sarah feared her husband was having an affair behind her back, but the truth was far worse – he had been raping her while she slept at night and recording the assaults.
She made the discovery one morning when she woke up to find Charlie attacking her.
As well as raping his wife, Charlie would also film himself molesting her with various household objects.
She told This Morning:
‘At the time I thought, I'll just pretend I'm still asleep and see what's going on.
‘He stopped pretty quickly and I left the bedroom and went downstairs and sat up watching some rubbish on telly.’
After her husband left for work, she fled to her neighbour’s house and told them what was going on.
The neighbour convinced Sarah to report her story to the police and officers came over immediately to take more details.
‘I was told they had found a bunch of videos showing Charlie raping and abusing me.
‘The officer said they were quite disturbing and that I needed to come to the station for an examination and drug testing because of the nature of the assaults and that I appeared to be unconscious in the videos.’
Sarah had her hair, blood and urine samples tested, but both her blood and urine tests came back from the lab negative and her hair sample was inconclusive.
Then a few months later, Sarah was called back to the police station and asked to watch a few of the 300 recordings that Charlie had amassed over the years of him molesting her.The officers asked her to look over the footage ahead of the court case against her husband.
She told This Morning that she was horrified by what she saw in the footage
She said:
‘A couple of the videos I watched you couldn't hear me be breathing and I didn't really appear to be moving at all. I did look like I was dead in some of them.
‘A lot of the videos weren’t just of him but of household objects and things he would decide to do with those, it was quite disturbing.’
One of the things that shocked her the most was that she had no idea that the abuse had been going on.
On March 28, 2014, Charlie attended Leicester Crown Court and pleaded guilty to five counts of rape, attempted rape, eight counts of assault by penetration, three of sexual assault and ten of making indecent images of children.
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Since arrest, Sarah has suffered from panic attacks and depression.But over the last few months, she has tried to come to terms with the abuse and move on with her life.
She has divorced Charlie and is now in a loving relationship with the neighbour who supported her after the attack and encouraged her to call the police.
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