A terrified mother locked herself in a bathroom after discovering her former Tory councillor husband had secretly sneaked a stranger into their bed to sexually abuse her, a court heard.
Joanne Young, 49, told how she was left traumatised after her husband Philip Young admitted he had been on an online forum and ‘invited someone round the house to watch us have sex’.
The mother of three told officers in a police interview: ‘I was obviously, I was really upset, more upset, just upset 0 shocked someone had been there, it was so intrusive.
‘Something that I would never, he knew, he would know, I would never ever accept that or want that.’
Prosecutors say the chilling revelation was only a glimpse of a campaign of abuse spanning over a decade.
Young, 50, had ‘advertised’ his ex-wife of 20 years online so she could be sexually assaulted by ‘multiple men’ while blindfolded and bound in a drugged stupor.
The former Conservative councillor for Swindon pleaded guilty earlier this year to almost 50 sex offences against his ex-wife.
Ms Young, who has waived her right to anonymity, had been repeatedly sedated over 13 years by the business consultant so he could carry out his abuse.
Philip Young (pictured) has admitted nearly 50 sex offences which he carried out against his wife Joanne Young over a 13 year period
(Left to right) Norman Macksoni, Connor Sanderson-Doyle, Richard Wilkins and Mohammed Hassan are accused of sexual offences against Joanne Young
Now four others – Richard Wilkins, 62, Norman Macksoni, 48, Mohammed Hassan, 38, and Connor Sanderson-Doyle, 32 – are standing trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of assaulting Ms Young along with her husband.
The men, who deny charges ranging from sexual touching to rape, are accused of assaulting her between 2016 and 2023 after being recruited by Young through websites and apps, including Craigslist and Grindr.
The court heard the couple had been together since 2002 and had three children, now young adults, together.
Ms Young, the jury heard, was ’emphatically monogamous’ and described her sexual preferences as ‘vanilla’.
When asked if their relationship was monogamous, she said: ‘Monogamous. Always monogamous – physically and emotionally.
‘The traditional sense of marriage – it was us two kind of ’til the end.’
The woman said she had complied with her husband’s wish to blindfold and restrain her during sex.
Yet the court heard that she would sometimes wake with the restraints on and wonder how that had happened but had no idea that she might have been abused.
Philip Young admitted almost 50 sexual offences against his ex-wife Joanne earlier this year, including raping her, drugging her and voyeurism
Four men are standing trial accused of sexually assaulting Ms Young, who has waived her right to anonymity
Norman Macksoni of Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, stands accused of one count of rape
Richard Wilkins, 62, from Swindon, has denied one count of rape and one of assault by penetration
Connor Sanderson-Doyle, from Swindon, is charged with sexual assault by penetration and sexual touching
Mohammed Hassan, 38, of Swindon, has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual touching
The jury was told that Young had become fixated on a fantasy of watching others have sex with the mother of his children and began drugging her in 2015.
But it was not until one incident in February 2023, that Ms Young first became aware that there was something seriously wrong in her marriage.
According to the prosecution, Mrs Young was blindfolded during sex with her husband when she became aware of another man’s presence after feeling a hand on her arm.
Ms Jones said: ‘She said she was trying to take the wristband or the blindfold off… and a hand had intervened to stop her.
‘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.’
The following morning, Young was said to have apologised and admitted he had ‘invited someone round the house to watch us have sex’ without her permission.
The prosecution allege that the man in this incident was Hassan, who has been charged with one count of sexual touching.
He was said to have been traced through explicit Grindr messages exchanged with Young.
Ms Jones told jurors the incident was only the first indication of the abuse.
The prosecutor said: ‘It turned out of course that she had stumbled upon the edges of a far greater issue in her relationship.
‘What she had considered to be already a gross invasion, a betrayal of her trust was far, far more invasive and shocking.’
On another occasion a number of years earlier, the court heard, Ms Young had awoken wearing the restraints feeling ‘really, really scared’ and saying loudly: ‘No, no, no.’
She said she had been ‘terrified’ but the following day put the experience down to a ‘nightmare’.
Ms Jones said that Ms Young was abused by men ‘plucked from the internet’ while her husband watched or filmed them.
She added: ‘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.
‘He presented it as a kink for both of them, but there was no information from Joanne herself to support this.’
The prosecutor told the court that Young had uploaded photos of Ms Young to ‘advertise his offer’ which showed her ‘inanimate and tied to the bed blindfolded’.
Ms Jones said: ‘The nightcap they shared, it appeared, would be used to plunge her into a state where anything could be done to her by whoever answered and she would be unaware or unable to remember.’
Jurors were told by Ms Jones that it was not the Crown’s case that the defendants had administered the substances to Ms Young but that the ‘effects’ on her ‘were apparent’ to them.
The jury was told he had filmed three of the four men, who were not known to Ms Young, as they allegedly assaulted his wife.
In one of the videos, the jury was told, Ms Young was ‘snoring’ and is ‘evidently asleep’ while another shows her saying ‘no, let me go’ as she is allegedly assaulted by Sanderson-Doyle.
In another, from February 2017, Macksoni is recorded by Mr Young allegedly raping his wife for seven minutes in their Swindon home.
Ms Jones told the jury the men were expected to claim they believed Ms Young consented to the sexual activity, but this was a ‘last desperate throw of the dice to convince you and perhaps even themselves that they are not rapists or sexual offenders’.
Macksoni, of Bedfordshire, denies rape, while Wilkins, of Swindon, has pleaded not guilty to rape and sexual assault.
Sanderson-Doyle, of Swindon, denies sexual assault and sexual touching, while Hassan, also of Swindon, has pleaded not guilty to sexual touching.
The trial continues.
