Nine men have gone on trial accused of being involved in the abuse of a woman who was drugged, raped and sexually assaulted by her husband while he “lived a double life masked in respectability”.
The husband, who cannot be named in order to protect the anonymity of his victim, has already pleaded guilty to a number of offences against his wife spanning more than two decades.
The offences involving the nine men on trial, who the prosecution say “were [also] leading double lives”, are alleged to have taken place between ۲۰۱۵ and the husband’s arrest in ۲۰۲۵.
Two of the men, Daniel Rayner, ۴۲, from Whitstable in Kent and David Graves, ۵۹, from Ilkeston in Derbyshire, were described in court as “non-contact offenders”, who are alleged to have encouraged the abuse online.
The other seven were described as “contact offenders”, who are alleged to have visited the couple’s home in Stockport, Greater Manchester, and participated in the abuse of the victim.
They are Philip Wild, ۵۸, from Stockport; Jordan Wallace, ۳۱, from Manchester; Alan Keelan, ۴۲, from Manchester; Jonathan Kirk, ۴۳, from Stockport; Robert Stewart, ۷۰, from Stockport; Mohammed Sabir, ۲۸, of no fixed abode; and Richard Townsend, ۳۷, from Heywood in Greater Manchester.
Three other men, Sean Peers, ۳۸, from Stockport; Keith Fotheringham, ۵۹, from Dundee; and Graham Brougham, ۷۴, from Northwich in Cheshire, have already admitted to abusing the woman at previous hearings at Manchester Minshull Street crown court.
Last week, Karl Lindsay, ۵۶, from Somerset also pleaded guilty to “non-contact” offences at a hearing at the same court on Friday.
Opening the crown’s case, prosecutor Louise Oakley KC said: “Unbeknownst to [the victim], for over ۲۰ years, her husband had been abusing her sexually in a variety of ways whilst she was asleep or was unconscious.”
Oakley said he had done so “initially taking advantage of occasions when she had drunk enough alcohol herself to put her into a deep sleep, but also on many more occasions, more and more frequently, over that ۲۰-year period, deliberately using a cocktail of stupefying drugs, which he administered to her without her knowledge, with or without alcohol”.
Oakley said that “from ۲۰۲۳ onwards at the latest, though he had been talking about it for much longer, [the husband] began actively inviting other men round to their home, and, whilst his wife lay unconscious in their bed, he filmed himself and others raping and sexually abusing her”.
“They were well aware, the prosecution say, that [she] was not conscious, that is why they were there, to use her body whilst she was unaware, just as [her husband] had been doing over the preceding years.”
Oakley said the men “derived sexual gratification and enjoyment from knowing” that the victim was “unaware” or “out of it”.
The victim “had absolutely no idea it was going on”, Oakley said, “that is, until the police came round to her door and identified to her that she had been the subject of the videos” her husband had taken.
As the prosecution set out their case in court, a relative of the victim, who was in the courtroom, cried and held their head in their hands, as they were comforted by two companions.
Oakley said that while during the course of the trial it maybe be suggested that the victim was “in fact only pretending to be asleep or unconscious as part of a fantasy role play with her husband … the prosecution says that is a smokescreen”.
“What these men did”, Oakley said, “was not participation in unconventional, but consensual sexual practices: in this case it was rape and sexual assault, pure and simple.”
The court heard that the husband’s offending was discovered after undercover journalists infiltrated a chat on the Telegram messaging platform. He was arrested and his mobile phone was seized.
“That telephone was like a confession booth,” Oakley said, adding that it “contained decades’ worth of material” from other devices and cameras.
“That description cannot be underestimated,” she said. “It contained [the husband’s] darkest secrets and the barbaric sexual fantasies that he had sought to fulfil going back in time to ۲۰۰۴.”
She said the mobile phone contained “over a million photographs and videos, cataloguing not only his abuse of [his wife] but abuse committed by others on her, including those in the dock today”.
Oakley said the husband had “lived a double life masked in respectability” and that the nine men on trial were also “leading double lives”.
They were, she said, “either creeping in and out of [the marital home] in the hours of darkness, quietly and carefully so that they weren’t seen or heard, or hiding behind the screens of their mobile telephones and computers. No doubt believing they were safe.”
The men deny all of the charges against them. The trial at Minshull Street crown court continues.
