Zoe lived for 16 years with a man who drugged and filmed her
After her ex-husband was convicted, she launched a global campaign against online networks that organize drug-facilitated sexual assaults.
After her ex-husband was convicted, she launched a global campaign against online networks that organize drug-facilitated sexual assaults.
Zoe Watts met her future husband when she was 17. Their 16-year marriage was marked by abuse, but she had no idea how serious the situation really was until one evening he confessed what he was doing.
"He sat me down one evening and told me what he was doing. I think he always loved risky behavior, and it was part of the cat-and-mouse game he was playing with me," Watts told Al Jazeera from Devon, England. "It was quite turbulent, but I didn't know what he was doing to me."
Her husband admitted to crushing sleeping pills into her tea and then exploiting her sedated state to take photos and videos. It was only later that she realized she had been raped. In 2022, her ex-husband was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
"He had many online profiles, and that's where my images ended up," Watts said.
In May 2026, Watts, along with another survivor, Amanda Stanhope, launched the #EndEyeCheck campaign, targeting drug-facilitated sexual assault and its spread online. The campaign's name refers to a disturbing practice in a certain subgenre of pornography, where the victim's eyelid is lifted to confirm she is unconscious.
Researcher Emma Quilty from Australia's Monash University, at the Centre for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, warns that this form of cybercrime is often categorized under domestic or intimate partner violence, which can obscure the broader networks and actors enabling it. "Or it's attributed to an individual problem, a few bad apples, rather than a series of systemic failures," Quilty told Al Jazeera.
The phenomenon first gained global attention in 2024 with the case of Gisele Pelicot in France. Her husband, over nearly a decade, encouraged 72 men to rape her while she was sedated, recruiting participants online. In March 2026, a CNN investigation exposed a so-called "rape academy" operating through the Telegram group Zzz and the website Motherless.
The UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) recently identified 270 members of an international network organizing drug-facilitated sexual assaults. Meanwhile, Europol's Project Medusa identified 156 perpetrators and victims from another network. According to investigation data, Telegram groups with as many as 70,000 members have been identified, and criminal cases have been recorded in countries worldwide, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, China, and Poland.
Watts says that since launching the campaign, women from 22 countries have reached out to her. "That's an immense number of survivors. They've all experienced trauma. Many of them, when it comes to light, face similar societal bias where they're blamed for their partner, the perpetrator, attacking them. It's such a sad story because realistically, if you're sedated, you can't consent, so I don't know how that can be blamed on the woman," she said.
Dr. Juliane Kloess, senior lecturer in forensic clinical psychology at the University of Glasgow, commented to The Guardian that the real or perceived anonymity of the internet allows perpetrators to detach themselves from the harmful consequences of their actions.
Quilty emphasizes the necessity of changing how data is collected. "We need to start keeping separate statistics for drug-facilitated rape... Currently, it's just registered as another rape, not as intimate partner drug-facilitated rape," she explained. She adds that a new legal approach targets the founders and owners of websites, charging them to reduce the possibility of platforms being used with impunity.
Watts, who has four children with her abuser, says her life has been completely destroyed. "We were supposed to grow old together, raise our children together. You don't expect the person you marry to be a perpetrator. You didn't choose for your family to fall apart. The choice was taken from you," she said. Her message to society is clear: "For survivors, the first thing we can do is believe them. In my experience, he was innocent until proven guilty, but I was guilty of accusing him until proven innocent, and even with his confession."
