Court told woman's world 'tilted on axis' learning husband invited men to assault her

A woman's world was "tilted on its axis" when she discovered that for years her former husband had been drugging her and inviting men into their family home to sexually assault her while she was restrained and blindfolded, a court has been told. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.

Businessman Philip Young advertised his then wife, Joanne Young, on dating and swinging websites, presenting it as a "kink" for both of them, Winchester crown court heard.

In fact, he had been sedating her, plunging her into "an inanimate state" where anything could be done to her by whoever answered the adverts, jurors were told.

Young, 50, has pleaded guilty to multiple charges of abuse against his former wife, who has waived her right to anonymity.

The jury of eight men and four women is hearing the trial of four men jointly charged with sexually assaulting Joanne Young, 49.

The alleged offences carried out by the four – Connor Sanderson-Doyle, 32, Richard Wilkins, 62, Norman Macksoni, 48, and Mohammed Hassan, 38 – are said to have taken place between the summer of 2016 and the winter of 2023. They deny the offences.

Sarah Jones KC, prosecuting, said Joanne Young had no idea what had been happening to her when police arrived at the family home in Swindon, Wiltshire.

She said: "The world she thought she knew had entirely tilted on its axis. The relationship she thought she had appears now to be wholly unreal – she does not even know what she doesn't know."

Jones told jurors they were going to have to contend with "some depressingly awful and sordid material". She told them: "You are going to see videos of things you cannot then un-see and may find you can't forget."

Jones said the videos that formed the bulk of the evidence showed Joanne Young was the victim of her husband's fantasy to watch her being "crawled over" by men "plucked from the internet".

The barrister said the case was about whether it was ever reasonable to have sex with an unknown woman without checking with her first. "Whether it is ever reasonable to think someone truly can give consent on another's behalf," she added.

The barrister said Joanne and Philip Young married in 2004 and had three children, now young adults. She said: "From the outside they seemed a normal couple with a normal family life."

Joanne Young characterised her sex life as "fairly normal" and was emphatic that she and her husband were "monogamous … physically and emotionally … the traditional sense of marriage … it was us two kind of till the end." She didn't like being out of control, not even liking to take a sleeping tablet, the prosecutor said.

The court was told her husband had some "preferences" in their sex life. He liked his wife blindfolded and with restraints, which she did not object to.

In 2015 a packet of a sedative drug that had been posted to Philip Young from India was intercepted at customs. Police visited him and he denied knowledge, telling them someone must have obtained his name through his business.

But Jones said this helped build a picture of Young searching from 2015, at least, to trace drugs that could be used on their own or with alcohol to send Joanne Young into "a deep sleep where she would be disoriented, unaware of her surroundings and unlikely to be able to recall what happened".

In 2023 after a night out, came an indication she had that her marriage was not what she had believed, the jury heard.

While she and her husband were having sex, she "felt someone else's hand on my wrist and it wasn't his [her husband's] hand".

She said "I was obviously really shocked because, obviously you don't expect someone else to be in your bedroom. Phil said to the person: 'Get down,' and the person ducked at the end of the bed."

Joanne Young later said: "I was just really shocked. There was this man in my house and I was naked." She hid in the bathroom. The following morning Young said he had been looking in "forums" and invited someone round the house to watch them have sex.

Jones said: "She had stumbled upon the edges of a far greater issue in her relationship. Young had advertised her on websites – he sought strangers to come and sleep with his wife – any age, any race – but as close to Swindon as possible so that when the circumstances were right they could be seized upon immediately."

The investigation began when police received a notification that the user of a social media account connected to Philip Young had uploaded extreme pornography.

Officers went to his address and they found videos of Joanne Young lying naked on her bed, restrained and blindfolded while other men engaged in sexual activity with her as her husband recorded what had taken place.

Jones told the jury that none of the defendants now suggested Joanne Young was actually consenting. She said: "Each agrees that she was not. But what each defendant is likely to say is that they believed at the time that she was consenting and to argue that such a belief was reasonable."

The prosecutor continued: "It is their last desperate throw of the dice to convince certainly you and perhaps even themselves that they are not rapists or sexual offenders when they took what her husband was offering out to them without ever checking for a second with the woman herself whether she was OK with it."

Young will be sentenced after this trial.