Have you asked, “Can a husband sexually abuse his wife?” The answer is yes. When it happens, it’s difficult for a woman to understand what’s going on.
Do you need support? Learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.
Even when she does, her husband is rarely held accountable by therapists, clergy, and family – let alone the law.
Sexual abuse is a serious crime and victims suffer devastating trauma as a result of their abuser’s choices. But women can heal and find peace again with support, safety, and self-care.
Sandy, an incredibly courageous member of the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Community shares her story of intense and traumatizing betrayal and rape, and how she identified it abuse. Even when it was happening to her she didn’t know her husband was abusing her. Read the full transcript below.
Anne: A member of our community. Sandy is on today’s episode. Not her real name, she’s using an alias. Because she’s going to be talking about how she experienced abuse. The perpetrator was her husband. We won’t go into details. Welcome, Sandy. Why don’t you just go ahead and start where you want to start.
Sandy: It’s hard to know where to start because I feel like the timeline is complicated. I was raped by my husband and then about a week after that happened. I found out that there were pictures of me on pornography sites. They were two completely separate incidences because the pictures happened about eight years before. I just didn’t know about them until a friend of mine told me. She said I don’t think you know this but he puts pictures of you on pornography sites.
Anne: Wow. So you’re raped by your husband and then a week later, a friend says, you might not be aware, but there are some pictures of you on a pornography site.
Sandy: When I heard that, I don’t even know how to describe it. It was like horror. The sentence can knock the wind out of you and just make your spirit, my soul, like just torn apart. That’s the only way I can describe it.
Sandy: I went home and I asked my husband if it was true, are pictures of me on pornography sites? He said, yes. I look back now and I think about that as the end of everything. We were married for 13 years at that point, but we were together for 15. This person that I had loved for 15 years, it’s like he didn’t exist anymore. I didn’t know who this person was who would do this to me.
Sandy: At that point, I hadn’t identified what he had done to me as rape.
Anne: Can you describe what you thought at the time had happened?
Sandy: I knew it was not good. I knew it wasn’t loving. It was very confusing. Why it was happening, what was going on. We had just had this terrible fight. The next thing I knew, he followed me up to the bedroom and I had my bathing suit on. I was taking it off. And the next I know, we’re having it, and I didn’t know why. I thought if I would ask him to stop, then he would yell at me more.
Sandy: I talked about this with some with some friends, and they said, that’s rape. I said he didn’t pin me down, didn’t hurt me. They said, yeah, but he didn’t have your consent. I said, no, I didn’t realize that at that point, there are actually degrees of rape. The rape hotline online support has first, second, third and fourth different grades or degrees of rape.
It was actually third or fourth degree rape. Friends and leadership from my church at the time told me, this is rape, call this hotline. They’ll point you in the right direction. You need to get help. And they kept pushing me to get help because they were very much, you’ll heal faster if you process this right away. This is abuse.
Sandy: Yeah, I definitely feel the Holy Spirit watching out for me, putting people in my life to really push me in the right direction.
Anne: That’s not a very common thing for clergy to help a rape victim identify the rape, especially when it’s her own spouse.
Sandy: And he didn’t punch me. He didn’t push me down.
Sandy: They were really the ones who urged me to go to therapy by myself for abuse and trauma. It wasn’t one of these, “Oh, you guys need to get into couples counseling.” The church, all the friends I had, they were like, you need to heal from this before you can ever work on a relationship again. The same thing for him, they were like, he obviously has major issues. He needs to figure out what those are and get help for them before he can be in a relationship with you.
I felt like that all started me out on the right track, even though it was the harder track in some ways because I was very much just wanting things to get back to normal. I wanted my life back. Not to say that I had this perfect relationship or something like that. We definitely had issues.
Anne: Are you saying that at the time you didn’t really understand the extent of the issues?
Sandy: Yes. That’s a better way
Anne: Okay. So at the time you’re thinking, I know we have issues, but really, do I have to go through all this stuff?
Sandy: Yeah, I knew that it was bigger.
Sandy: Once I found out about the pictures especially, yes, there is more going on here than I ever realized. I think I was in denial for many years because at one point I found a hidden camera in our bedroom. I asked, what is this about? He said, when I take the kids to school, you get undressed and I miss taking pictures of you. Because he was always essentially stalking me when I would take a shower or when I would get undressed.
He always had the camera and he was always wanting to take pictures. And I was always like, oh my gosh, this is so annoying just let me take a shower. But I thought he’s my husband, he likes to see me naked that’s good, right? It all was warning signs. So anyway, I found the hidden camera and I was to really angry about it. He was like, okay, I won’t do it again. That was years before I knew about the pictures online or anything like that.
Anne: When you find out about the pictures, what becomes clear to you at this point? I mean have you been going to therapy at all before the rape, before these things? Or, have you been thinking, there’s something not quite right with my relationship, something’s weird going on. Or were you thinking, oh I have a great relationship.
Anne: Can you talk about your thoughts before the rape, and then also before you found out about him posting porn?
Sandy: It’s hard to explain because I wouldn’t say there was anything seeming super wrong. Our relationship beforehand seemed fairly normal to me. I wanted him to pay attention to me more. I felt like I’m the mother of three kids and I was a stay at home mom and I was always just wanting him to come home and spend some time with me.
He had an excuse to go do something else, and he had decided he wanted to start this new business. I was like, Why? Don’t! Don’t start this business, please. I never see you, I need you to be home. I need you to be a part of this family. He just was like if you don’t want to be a part of it, you don’t have to, but I’m gonna do it anyway.
I was, of course, upset about that, but to me, it’s It’s nothing to get divorced over, but I just thought he’s going do what he wants to do, and I’ll stay out of it if I don’t like it.
Anne: Well, ironically, going to therapy at that time, you not knowing about abuse, couple therapy wouldn’t help you a whole lot.
Sandy: Yeah, I had no idea and so it was just this sort of we both felt busy, had my own business, he was starting a business, I just remember thinking like, I can’t wait till we can spend more time together. Looking back at everything, it’s a weird combination of, I was begging for his attention and he was also obsessed with me. He was obsessed with me in a that way. It was almost like I couldn’t have his attention any other way.
Anne: Because he’s taking pictures of you all the time, and he’s doing these things that make you feel uncomfortable. At the same time, at least it’s something.
Sandy: Right, and there was one point where I even thought I wonder if he’s seeing somebody else because he never comes straight home after work. I would call his work and I would say, Hey, has he left yet? They would say, yeah, he left two hours ago. I didn’t know what that was about, so I thought I’ll just put out when he wants because then he won’t have a reason to sleep with anyone else. Looking back, that was so stupid.
Anne: We’ve all been there Sandy, no it was not stupid. It makes total sense.
Sandy: Yeah. You don’t know what else to do. Our kids were so young. Looking back, I can tell I was like in a complete state of denial, really, about everything that was going on.
Anne: I wouldn’t call it denial , because denial puts the fault on you. I would say that you were seeking safety. At the time, the safest thing to you was to have a good attitude or give it more because the alternative seemed terrifying. I wouldn’t call it denial as just really seeking safety and the alternative was too scary. The reason why I don’t want to call it denial is because they purposefully confuse and manipulate and lie.
So it’s not like you’re in denial about something that you know. It only confirms that you were a victim of psychological and emotional abuse. It sounds like you tried the oh, I’ll have it with him whenever he wants. I’ll try to be a better mom. I’ll try to, be better. Those things didn’t work. Then you find out about the pictures. Where do you go after that? What happens after you find out, he produces porn, of me. And he’s posting this online without my consent.
Sandy: Obviously, as I said before, I just felt torn apart. I did not know which way was up or what to do. I started therapy and the therapist was like, have people around you that help you to feel safe. Have people that you can talk to at any point, friends, family, whoever that is. Maybe it’s just one or two people.
Do everything you can to get back into doing things that you enjoy, that you find interesting. In the meantime, I was trying to figure out, okay, but how do I live with this person? Because at the time, I didn’t know that I wanted to get divorced or anything. I was just trying to figure out which way was up.
Anne: Did anybody at the time, did anyone indicate to you that you could press charges?
Sandy: Yeah, because I was still speaking with a person on the rape hotline pretty regularly. So I mentioned to this person about the pictures. They said I would need to get the police involved to get the pictures down, but be aware that if you go to the police, they may, in fact, press charges even if you don’t want them to. If he gets put on the offender list, he would lose his job. I could not make a decision, in regard to that, in my state of shock and trauma.
Sandy: I told him we need to get these pictures taken down. He said, okay, I’ll hire a private company. He told me the pictures were taken down by this private company that he hired.
Anne: One of the questions I have is, looking back now, do you think it would have been better to press charges?
Sandy: I do now. Obviously I’m not completely healed from the trauma, but I’m in a place where I can talk about it a little easier.
Sandy: I actually did go to the police because I had panic attacks that the pictures weren’t actually down and I thought, I don’t know. He just continues to do things that make me nervous even though we’re not married and we’re not living together or anything.
We share custody of the kids but trauma comes back and I just sometimes I freak out, right? I thought, Okay, I’m just gonna go to the police. I had the list from the company that he hired of all of the links, which was six pages worth of links to my images. This is obviously abuse. When I take this to the police and they say okay, we’ll look into it.
Two years has passed since the crime. I did find out that yes, they are officially down. The company took them down, but they didn’t seem to think I could press charges. They didn’t really seem to care that this had been done and anything was told well, there’s nothing we can do.
It was two years ago, how can something be such a crime? He could have gone to jail or put on the offender list. So many things could have happened two years ago if I would have reported it. But now that it’s been two years, they’re like I don’t really see anything happening if we report this.
Anne: One of the things I’m trying to help women understand is that when you don’t report something immediately, there are good reasons to report and good reasons not to report. We’re never judgmental around here about women reporting or not reporting. I want women to know that sense of, I can’t report this or I shouldn’t report this for some reason is usually the abuse talking.
Generally speaking most women, once they get past the trauma and they’re feeling better, really regret not reporting. If any victim is listening right now and they’re thinking, yeah my husband did do a crime and I haven’t reported it and should I report it or not. I would submit that the most likely thing happening currently is that it’s the abuse telling you not to report.
You’re so used to this abuse voice in your head and also the societal scripting or perhaps religious scripting, like he will lose his job or what about him? I had a discussion with a friend the other day and she was like, we really need to do these things and hold them accountable out of compassion for them. So that they can change.
But I said, it’s interesting as a victim of abuse, you don’t really have to, justify your actions through it’s the most compassionate thing he can change. You could also do it just out of sheer anger. You don’t have to be like I need to do it from a place of love. No, you can actually call the police from a place of anger or from a place of trauma or from a place of anything that you want. It’s fine.
Anne: I think society has said to victims you can’t be an angry, bitter woman. If you’re going to do it, you have to do it from some place of forgiveness or some place of compassion. It’s just something for people to think about that as a victim of abuse you don’t owe your perpetrator anything.
Sandy: I had to get to that place because I completely agree now. I realized I did not do anything wrong. I was a victim of a crime. I need to report that crime.
That’s how I look at it now. Whereas before it was like you said. You can’t do this to him. It would destroy him and be so bad. It would be bad for his job. As well as thinking about our kids too. Besides, I did not do these things. I should not have to make that choice of whether or not he goes to jail. I was the victim. And I felt like that weight was on me to decide what his fate was.
Anne: Right, and just leave that up to the justice system, really. If someone witnessed someone stealing a car, you might be shaken up, you might pick up the phone and you might be like shaking because you saw this car get hijacked, let’s just pretend. Someone would not say to you, Oh let’s stop shaking before you call the police. Let’s make sure that you’re doing it from a place of really loving and having compassion for the guy that stole the car. Nobody says that.
Anne: Talk about when you decide that you need to end the relationship and get a divorce.
Sandy: I feel like I spent about a year convincing him. That what he did was, obviously not right. He knew what he did wasn’t right, but he didn’t understand why he needed to go to therapy. He basically was like, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.
I said, no, you need to get help. In fact he had one that he spoke to for a while, and I asked to sit in on conversation to talk about some of my concerns. I realized, with this therapist, he did not tell her half of what was going on. And I said what about this and this?
I said, don’t you see there’s a pattern, with the pictures, him following me around with the camera, the camera in the bedroom and pictures online, there’s a pattern here. There’s something wrong with him. At this point I was just starting to learn about addiction, pornography addiction, that kind of stuff. And the therapist says oh, you didn’t tell me about that. And I just thought, Oh my gosh. At that point he moved out.
Anne: Did any of the therapists that work with you or him say that he’s an abuser?
Sandy: No, they didn’t.
Sandy: At one point I was reading a book about abuse and I was like, I feel like he abused me. I’m pretty sure he has and it was my investigation, although when my mom asked about what’s going on with you guys. I said he’s been abusing me.
I used those words before, but it was almost like I had to convince myself that this was abuse. Because he wasn’t hitting me. It wasn’t all the things that you normally see or hear about. The moment I remember looking up: Is non consensual pornography abuse. Is rape abuse. It’s okay, yes, of course, these things are. I shouldn’t have to be Googling this.
Anne: Is that when you found Betrayal Trauma Recovery?
Sandy: I found Betrayal Trauma Recovery through a friend who is from a different support group.
Anne: When you got here to Betrayal Trauma Recovery, were you like oh, this makes sense. Because a lot of people will Google that stuff, and they won’t find anything. And then when they find us, they’re like, Oh, finally, somebody gets it. Or did you find some other places that you felt understood?
Sandy: I think when I was Googling things, I was really just strictly looking for definitions. Definition of rape, definition of nonconsensual pornography, voyeurism. These are crimes, these are things you go to jail for it seems pretty obvious that’s abuse. For whatever reason, it gave me sort of comfort to have the correct terms, to have the right labels.
Anne: Yeah, he’s going to a therapist, you go to the therapist, and you’re like Whoa. Therapy’s not gonna work. You’ve also got that going on, where you’re recognizing the abuse, but nobody’s saying, he’s an abuser
Sandy: Yeah. So he moves out, he continued to see his therapist, I continued to see mine. It was interesting because he admits to me at that point that his therapeutic goals were just to be a better husband. Whereas my therapeutic goal was to heal from trauma. We were not going down the same path.
Anne: His therapeutic goal was not to “not be a rapist.” His therapeutic goal was not, I want to stop raping my wife and I want to stop being abusive. That is not his therapeutic goal. His goal is just to be a better husband. So you’re recognizing, wait a minute, there’s some serious stuff wrong here.
Sandy: I feel like even after he moved out, I was always trying to relay the seriousness of the situation and he never quite got that. Even when I pointed out, this is abuse and addiction, you need to see somebody who maybe specializes in that. He just said there’s nobody in our area. I’ll just get some books and I’ll read up on it.
Anne: Did you ever confront him and say you’re abusive at that time?
Sandy: I didn’t. Essentially after a year of trying to convince him that he needs to work through these big Issues. That he needs to essentially be able to protect me from himself is what needs to happen, which he never understood.
Sandy: That’s when I said, I can’t do this anymore. It felt like every time I turned around, he was doing the bare minimum. He’d be look, I’m in therapy. I’m doing good. How many other guys would go to therapy? I couldn’t do it anymore. It felt like playing this game, I was done. I can’t describe it any other way.
Anne: That makes sense. What happened at that point?
Sandy: It took me a while to file because I think I wanted to make sure for whatever reason. I could tell he was getting desperate and didn’t know what do. He found a therapist at that point who wanted to talk to me, they’re very much we usually work together and I said my therapist says no.
Anne: I’ll interject here that an addiction therapist. We absolutely do not recommend that women go to an addiction therapist. . We do not recommend the victims try to get the pornography addict to go to therapy with an addiction therapist because they don’t recognize the abuse.
They don’t view him as an abuser. Even if they did, because abusers lie. When abusers go to therapy, they end up weaponizing the therapy that they learn against their victims.
Sandy: One of the comments I should share. This an example of how serious, or not serious. I guess when they first enter in, they tell them, no stimulation for 90 days because you need to completely reset your system. And he comes to me saying, Can you believe I have to go three months without it and it’s swimsuit season? I was like, Oh my gosh.
Anne: But the other thing we need to talk about is that you went to a so called expert and they didn’t tell you this is an abuse situation.
Sandy: No, I never really saw her. I met with her once for 10 minutes.
Anne: They’re looking at him as a addict, not as an abuser.
Sandy: No, they don’t. They don’t look at it as abuse.
Anne: So that is super dangerous for victims as well because what this really is emotional and psychological abuse. So he’s going to the addiction recovery person.
Sandy: He seemed like he was committed to it, I guess is the best word. But I thought if he wants to get healthy on his own, that’s great, but I can’t stay in this relationship. I just knew it.
Sandy: We decided to do mediation instead of hire lawyers for our divorce, which worked well. Thankfully, he was cooperative about it. At some point, I think I just realized that I could never trust him again. Whether he was doing the recovery or not, I just wasn’t going to be able to do that. Essentially I just had to let him go because, you can’t have an intimate partner relationship with somebody that you can’t trust.
Fast forward, and, I find out he has a girlfriend. I’m like, of course he does, because I don’t think he’s in recovery anymore. He must have given up on it a while back, Of course, we’re not married anymore. It’s none of my business at this point what he does, except that, we have three kids together and I want to make sure they’re safe. I don’t want to raise them thinking that the way he treats women is all right. That, that’s my main concern at this point.
Anne: I think it’s validating to see that their behaviors haven’t changed. The fake recovery, we’ll call it, was a grooming phase where they thought, oh, I can show that I’m a good person or I can “prove” I’m a good person. Current boundaries are awesome now that you’re divorced and you recognize that he’s still abusive and he still exhibits abusive behaviors. What have you found that is helpful for your ongoing healing?
Sandy: I’ve done a number of things.
Sandy: One of them is creating sculptures that depict women either struggling or holding some emotion. Basically what I did is because I’m a ceramic artist, sculptor, I just ended up pouring my emotion into these clay women. It was almost like I couldn’t handle it myself and so I decided to make it out of clay and so women attached to vessels. That I throw and then they are engaging somehow, either climbing on them or pulling them together or looking inside them.
Anne: To process your trauma through art. Due to confidentiality reasons, we’re not going to show you her art, but it is incredible. What an amazing way to process. I gardened a lot. Some women exercise a lot. There’s so many different ways to process the and I would encourage listeners to go to our website, btr.org, find this episode and write down some of the different ways that you processed it.
Maybe you started painting your house or remodeling your house or some different way. Because talking about it is super helpful. We’d love to hear how you’ve been processing the trauma on our website.
Anne: If you could go back and share anything with yourself. Before you got married, like any bits of wisdom that may help you in beginning this journey with an abusive man, what would you say to yourself?
Sandy: Looking back, there were many times when I would go to him and I would think that he was hearing me or listening to me, and he just was always like, Okay, that’s fine. I’ll do better. He so avoided confrontation.
If nobody sticks up for what they believe in , it doesn’t mean a fight or a disagreement. It doesn’t have to be like anything abusive. It’s just a disagreement. Everybody has them. It will show a lot of the health of the relationship if you can have those talks without abuse, in a respectful way.
Anne: For those of us who are in a lot of fights, like me, I would say disagreements make sense. not in the way that we were disagreeing because it was just abuse. You’re talking about a man who you thought agreed with you but was really always just grooming you. I am so sorry about your experience and so glad that you’re more safe now.
Anne: Do you limit contact a lot even though you share custody?
Sandy: Really, if it doesn’t have to do with the kids, I pretty much just don’t talk to him. There’s just no reason to at this point.
Anne: It’s insane to me that the state of the civil courts is that if you share children with an abuser, the court forces you to have contact with the man who raped you. Because of the insane state of things with the family court system. That’s why I wrote the Betrayal Living Free Workshop, to teach women how to deal with abusers strategically. Using the strategies, in those workshops, I was able to completely deliver myself and my children from my abuser.
Anne: Sandy you are so brave and I admire your courage. Thank you so much for sharing your story today. I think it’s so important to share these stories because so many women go through them. I’ve had quite a few women tell me that they’ve had their husbands take pictures of them without their consent and post it for porn. I think pornography users would be surprised to know that some of the pornography that they’re viewing is of a wife who has no idea.
Sandy: Yeah, it’s very possible
Anne: Thank you so much for sharing today.
Sandy: Thank you.