"In my eyes, up until maybe the day before he admitted to what he'd done, it was the best relationship I've ever had."

Adelle Overton's boyfriend of 13 years, Steven Uden, appeared to be the perfect partner.

They met on the set of a zombie film and had lots of shared interests. She says Uden was kind and loving and even gave up work to be Overton's carer when she became disabled.

"He was wonderful. I loved him deeply, and I think I still kind of do a bit," says Overton, sitting on a sofa at her home in Derby.

Overton trusted Uden, but that trust was shattered when he admitted he had been raping her while she slept.

"I instantly felt betrayed. I'd never felt so safe in a relationship before that point," says Overton.

Uden had cared for Overton while she was being treated for breast cancer, but he later told police he had raped her while she was under the effects of the medication.

"That sense of betrayal, that I thought I knew him, but I don't know who he was," says Overton.

"And the thought that he'd been living with me for 13 years, he helped raise my children.

"I thought he was safe when he wasn't."

Uden is now in prison, and Overton has decided to talk about what happened in the hope it will help others.

Overton and Uden met in 2009, during the filming of a zombie film being shot in Nottingham, when she was 29 and he was 27.

Uden was doing make-up and acting, and Overton was one of the actors too. They were both in relationships with other people but stayed in touch as friends.

They eventually became a couple on 13 January 2012 - Overton remembers the date because they had a Friday the 13th film marathon.

Overton said being with Uden felt different from the relationships she had been in in the past.

"He was fun and caring and I felt loved by him," she says.

They had met in an unconventional way, and their life together was unconventional too. They worked as professional zombies for a company that ran zombie survival horror experience days.

Playing a zombie required Overton to be physically active, but she eventually had to give it up in 2017 after being diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Uden then became her carer towards the start of 2018.

"He did almost everything for me," she says.

Looking back, with hindsight, Overton - nicknamed Dell - thinks Uden did start to become controlling.

"He would enjoy telling everybody else what I was capable of doing," she says.

"Somebody would come up with a suggestion for doing something, he'd enjoy saying, 'I don't think Dell would be able to manage that, let's think of something else'."

But Overton now knows that Uden's behaviour was far more sinister than she could ever have imagined.

She had suspicions in 2020 while having chemotherapy for breast cancer.

"I don't know if the discomfort in my body was more apparent, but I woke up while he was doing it," she says.

"He made loads of excuses like, 'I thought you were awake, and you were making all the right noises'.

"I was thinking about all of the stress we were under, and he's saying he did it by accident."

So, Overton brushed aside her concerns.

"I guess it was easier to believe the lie than process what the truth might have been," she says.

But Overton started having difficulty sleeping.

"I think somewhere in there, in my head, my brain just didn't feel safe while I was asleep," she says.

Overton says she also struggled to be intimate with Uden, and started having more nightmares relating to her past experience of sexual abuse.

"At the time I thought I was linking it to my trauma, and I was judging him and what he'd done more harshly because of my trauma," she says.

"I started to feel guilty and started berating myself internally for it all."

Uden didn't confess until five years later, in 2025, when he was having cancer treatment himself - for bowel cancer.

"I think something must have been playing on his mind, because now he was seeing what I was going through from the other side," Overton says.

"He definitely lingered on the fact that he didn't look after me very well when I was going through treatment."

This brought back Overton's memory from five years before, of waking up and finding Uden having sex with her.

She says: "I pushed him. 'What do you mean by that? What do you mean you didn't look after me? In what way?'"

At some point during the conversation, which Overton says was spread over two days, Uden phoned a friend and admitted what he had done, before returning home and confessing to Overton.

She felt betrayed, and sickened, but did not immediately end the relationship. She felt like she relied upon Uden, and she loved him too.

Overton was already having group therapy for past sexual abuse and mentioned it during her next session.

She says: "It was one of the counsellors, one of the therapists that shook me out of it, because I was in bits, I was in floods of tears saying, 'what do I do? How do I stop him from doing it?'

"And she said, 'you kick him out and you call the police'. And later on that day she said they'd had a safeguarding meeting, and they would be calling the police about the whole thing, and at that point I kind of knew that it was out of my hands."

The case was allocated to Det Sgt Eleanor Kirton, of Derbyshire Police.

"The first thing I did was contact Adelle," she says.

"Understandably she was incredibly distressed about what had happened."

After interviewing Overton, police arrested Uden.

"When I interviewed him, he immediately confessed to what he'd done," says Eleanor.

"He straight away admitted that he had raped her, which is very unusual for our investigations to go down that route so quickly."

Uden was charged with two counts of rape, which he later pleaded guilty to in court, and was given a prison sentence of six years and eight months.

Kirton says Overton's actions have helped protect other women.

"Her bravery and resilience has meant that we've safeguarded so many other people, that this person could have continued doing these offences to," she adds.

"If someone feels that this might be happening to them, I would really encourage them to come and speak to us about it, because there are things we can do, and this proves that."

But Overton still struggles to understand why her supposedly loving partner of 13 years would rape her while she slept.

"I don't know how somebody can get pleasure out of somebody not reacting, and that was the thing that just did not make sense to me," she says.

"He had a preference, I don't know how to put it, for sleeping women.

"He wanted me to be asleep, and he wanted me to not be aware of what he was doing."

Overton suspects Uden was drugging her with her own medication, which he had full control of.

"I had little pill pots, and he'd pop all of my meds out for me," she says.

"I've now got a lot less of the sedative medication than other medications, so I strongly suspect he was overdosing me to try and keep me asleep."

Kirton says it was what police call a "historic case", so forensics and toxicology would not have been able to confirm whether or not this had happened.

Also, there was not any evidence about this presented in court.

But Uden did tell police he had raped Overton on one occasion while she was having chemotherapy, which makes people more tired.

Kirton says: "I think he actually introduced it at the time, saying she was having chemotherapy, and he accepts that she would have been under the influence of the medication when it happened on that occasion."

While Uden was charged with raping Overton on two occasions, she believes he has done so more times.

"He told me he'd done it to me seven or eight times," says Overton.

Her daughter, Shari Overton, says it has been difficult to see the impact Uden's crimes have had on her mum.

"She's very different now. I can see her confidence has dropped massively," says Shari.

"I'm also incredibly proud of her for going through with this and talking to the police and the court and standing up for herself."

Overton hopes her story will show other vulnerable people they do not need to tolerate abuse at the hands of their so-called carers.

"I feel like I need to speak out, because it got me thinking about how many other disabled people are in situations where somebody has got control over them," she says.

"I used to think for a few months after I found everything out, that maybe it was some kind of payment for his care. Maybe I owed him that intimacy. But I didn't and nobody else does either."