WARNING, DISTRESSING CONTENT: Amanda Stanhope woke up to the horror of her partner raping her while she was unconcious after taking sleep medication but the monster continued to abuse her for years
Amanda Stanhope said it took her years to share her story (Image: Anything Goes With James English)
A brave mum has opened up about the horrific abuse she suffered at the hands of her ex-fiancé – after he spent years raping her while she was unconscious from taking sleeping tablets.
Amanda Stanhope initially had no idea what was being done to her – and her partner would mock her every morning with the chilling words: “You had a good night last night.”
This completely baffled her and she began to fear that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s because she struggled to remember being intimate with her partner just hours before.
It plagued her mind so much that she was eventually diagnosed with pseudodementia by a doctor – despite her partner knowing the dark truth.
He was eventually charged with four counts of rape and one of assault by penetration by Greater Manchester Police – but he took his own life before he could face trial.
Now, Amanda, who is from Manchester, has told her harrowing story from the beginning.
How they met
She suffered relentless abuse from a controlling narcissist (Image: Anything Goes With James English)
Amanda was a mum-of-two when she met the man who went on to make her life a living hell. She was out dancing with her daughter when she noticed a stranger at the bar looking directly at her.
Speaking on the Anything Goes with James English podcast, she said: “He just stared. When I say stared – more like glared. He just obsessively stared all night. And I thought, ‘I’ve never quite met anyone like him.’”
This continued for up to four hours before he eventually approached her and kissed her without saying a word.
Despite his odd behaviour, Amanda claimed he was charismatic and confident. But she later found out he was married and told him that she therefore wanted nothing to do with him. Within weeks, the man told her he had left his wife, and was living on the sofa at a friend’s house.
Amanda said she was “gobsmacked” and eventually offered for him to move in with her after sympathising with him. It turned out to be the worst decision of her life.
Red flags
Amanda, who was an interior designer for years, was completely smitten with her new partner, and the first three months were unlike anything she had experienced before. He would cook and offer compliments and she was convinced they were “soulmates” — but then things abruptly changed.
They were out with her friends and she was dancing with a pal when suddenly he “roughly grabbed” her arm and “literally yanked” her away before dragging her into the car park.
She remembered: “I was in utter shock. I was speechless. I was like, ‘What’s happening?’ Then he absolutely laid into me verbally about how I embarrassed him. What did I think I was doing? I made him look stupid dancing with another man. I had no idea where it came from.”
Amanda said her gut told her to walk away, but the relationship lasted another five years.
Raped in her sleep
She said her partner was ‘evil’ (Image: Anything Goes With James English)
The mum said things took an even darker turn one year into the relationship.
Due to how she was now being treated in the relationship, where so many pleasant evenings were ruined over jealousy, she found herself unable to sleep and feeling depressed. She was prescribed antidepressants and sleeping tablets.
During this time, her partner dropped grotesque little hints, and she said: “We’d go and have a coffee and… oh it was awful. I completely remember. He’d go, ‘You had a good time last night.’
“And I’d sit there and think… ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’ None at all. I’d rack my brains. And he did that daily. But I didn’t realise what he was doing.
“I was thinking we must have had sex and I had fallen asleep. It was weird, I didn’t think he was doing that (rape). I just thought, ‘I’m on sleeping tablets, obviously we’ve started and I’ve just fallen asleep.’ But I was more worried that I couldn’t remember than what he was actually potentially doing.”
Amanda soon began to notice bruises on her arms and legs and used to wake up with a towel underneath her — despite not putting it there herself.
She said: “Nothing was clear. I spent months trying to work it out. I thought I had Alzheimer’s. It was that bad.”
Gisele Pelicot sharing her ordeal inspired Amanda to do the same (Image: Europa Press via Getty Images)
Caught in the act
Two years in, Amanda, completely traumatised by the relationship, was diagnosed with pseudodementia, where someone can experience dementia symptoms, but the reversible cause is often linked with depression and mental health.
Completely worn down, Amanda said her partner was a “monster” when his mood switched, and she described being “crucified” in a hotel room during a weekend away.
She said it was her lowest point and she ended up taking more sleeping tablets than she should to “escape the mental torture” he was putting her through. Shortly after, her “panicked” partner was lifting her from the floor, and he even phoned an ambulance for help.
However, she remembered: “This is the worst. I came round to him like slapping me, and having horny sex with me. Obviously, I couldn’t move. I thought I was in a nightmare. I didn’t know if I was dead at that point.
“I remember lying there thinking ‘I can’t actually believe what he’s doing’ because he was getting off on my pain and I’d taken an overdose and was waiting for an ambulance and it was that moment where I thought there’s something very very wrong with him. Very wrong.”
She said she knew she had to eventually leave him, but at the time the mum described being completely broken with no strength.
After what happened, she could still not say the word raped, because she was at that point unaware that you could be raped by a partner. However, she confronted him about what he did while she was unconscious, and he apologised, saying it would never happen again.
Police
Greater Manchester Police apologised to Amanda (Image: Newcastle Chronicle)
One year later, Amanda woke up to the horror of her fiancé raping her once more, before it happened yet again.
She said: “I don’t believe he ever stopped at all because I still had the weird bruises. I was getting worse illness wise, memory loss, I look back on photos and I don’t even know the woman I became.”
As for why she didn’t leave, she added: “I was just surviving at this point. I couldn’t even make sense of anything any more. I was literally in survival mode. That was it. I just had to get through another day to survive another day.”
The mum described feeling like a prisoner and said she was relentlessly emotionally tortured.
Eventually, she told him the relationship was over, and he responded by threatening to kill himself. Feeling sorry for him, she allowed him to sleep on the couch, before she woke up in her own bed to him raping her.
It was after this haunting episode that she found the courage to go to the police.
However, it took two years and three months for charges to be brought against him, before he killed himself six weeks later.
As for how she felt, she said: “I was so angry because of what he put me through. I’d gone through all that with the police for nothing. And I knew that he was never going to be held accountable for what he did. I was so angry.”
A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson said: “It is to our regret that Ms Stanhope did not get to see justice fully served at the end of this awful ordeal. We have written to her to apologise for areas where our service fell below that she had every right to expect.
“This is a serious and abhorrent crime that we are increasingly alive to and we want potential victims to approach us with the utmost confidence that we will investigate all reports at the victim’s pace with a clear determination to bring offenders to justice.
“We have made changes to improve our timeliness on investigations of such a serious nature and to ensure the best possible service to victims so that we can help secure them the most satisfactory outcome.”
Campaign
Amanda felt strong enough to share her story after taking inspiration from the courageous Gisele Pelicot.
And she has now teamed up with Zoe Watts who was raped by her husband while she slept — before he gave a sickening excuse for filming it.
Survivor Zoe Watts(Image: Anything Goes With James English)
Their campaign is called #EndEyeCheck and it is tackling a system that allows men to get away with drugging and raping their other halves.
A powerful opening statement on the website, which you can visit here, reads: “An online academy is training men how to drug and rape their wives. We’re two survivors and we’re taking on the system that enables it.”
If you have been affected by the contents of this article, support is available from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre at 1800 778888 or drcc.ie