Woman raped by husband while she slept

“I woke up in the morning in that sort of drowsy just waking up stage and realised that he was molesting me in my sleep,” she said.

“At the time I thought I’ll just pretend I’m still asleep, see what’s going on. He stopped pretty quickly and I left the bedroom and went downstairs, I think I sat up watching some rubbish on telly and drinking coffee.”

Once her husband had left in the morning, the 26-year-old mum went to her neighbour and said she didn’t know what to do. It was the neighbour who encouraged the panicked victim to call the police.

It wasn’t until police investigated and discovered hundreds of videos on his computer that Sarah realised the extent of what her husband had been up to.

Police discovered 316 videos in total, she said, and were shocked by what they found.

Sarah’s husband had filmed himself having sex with her, and sometimes using household items to abuse her. She believes she may have been drugged during this time.

“A couple of the videos I watched you couldn’t hear me breathing and I didn’t really appear to be moving at all … I did look like I was dead in some of them,” she said.

“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.”

Sarah told the morning program she was completely shocked by what had happened to her while she slept, and never suspected a thing.

“In the morning I might wake up with a dead arm … but nothing that made me think something untoward was going on,” she said.

“No matter how I think about him, I didn’t see that coming ever.”

Mr Tetley last year pleaded guilty to 26 counts of rape taking place between January 2011 and October 2013 and is currently serving a 12-year prison sentence.

When he was convicted, the investigating officer praised Sarah for her bravery and hoped her husband’s admission would help her “move on with her life and put the events of those two and half years behind her”.

Sarah is now using her story to encourage others to speak out about abuse.

“If in any way you’re being abused you should tell someone — even if it’s just mentally — whatever kind of abuse it is,” she said.

“And especially if people are secretive. It might be nothing but it might also be something quite big.”