Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court (Image: Getty)
A husband who repeatedly drugged and raped his wife arranged for sedatives to be posted to his dead mother-in-law’s home, a court heard today. The husband, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, has admitted 62 offences, including rape and administering substances with intent to stupefy her so others could engage in sexual activity with her. The man, in his 60s, who cannot be named to protect his wife’s right to lifelong anonymity, targeted a sex chat group called ‘FabSwingers’ to trawl for men willing to abuse his “unaware” spouse, a court was told. And the husband even arranged for sedatives to be posted to his dead mother-in-law’s address, so he could use them on his wife, the jury were told.
Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court heard how co-defendant David Graves, 60, who allegedly encouraged the husband to commit the rapes, offered to send him an unknown substance in January 2021. Continuing to open the case on the second day of the trial, prosecutor Louise Oakley KC, told how Graves and eight other men were allegedly involved in abusing the woman: “So desperate is (the husband) that (he) sent him (his wife’s) mother’s address to post them to.
“His mother-in-law had recently died and the house she had been living in was empty. Does it get any worse than that?” The tablets did not arrive and the husband “accused Graves of not having posted them” but when they did turn up Ms Oakley said they proved hard to crush and tasted “bitter” when mixed in wine.
She added: “David Graves went on to provide practical solutions including that they be hidden in her food.” Jurors have been told the husband – who cannot be named to protect his wife’s identity – began abusing her in 2004 and started involving other men in 2015.
Graves and the husband, who first contacted each other in 2018, exchanged a large volume of messages, the court was told. Graves asked for new material and made derogatory comments, calling the wife a “slut” and “old tart” – adding “she deserves it”, it heard. Ms Oakley said Graves became “incredibly impatient” for the husband to send him images of the wife being abused, adding: “(The husband) said to him, our perversion isn’t number one priority. Well, it must have been pretty close to the top of the list.”
The husband went on to give her cocktails of stupefying drugs without her knowledge as he filmed and photographed his exploits, and shared that imagery online, she alleged. One of his online contacts sent the husband a photograph of comedian Bill Cosby with the words “she can’t say no if she’s unconscious”, the court heard.
It is alleged the first stranger to come to the husband’s house was defendant Robert Stewart, 70 – a retired DJ – in 2016, but he left without doing anything because the wife “stirred”, Ms Oakley said – prompting the husband to want to obtain drugs after deciding alcohol alone was “unreliable”.
Stewart provided the husband with tramadol sleeping pills to use, the court heard. It was a “blueprint for future offending” despite the “inherent dangers” of combining drugs and alcohol, the prosecution said. In the early part of 2019, the husband purchased Zolpidem sleeping tablets online, Ms Oakley said. She read out messages which continued with numerous men at all hours, adding: “It’s hard to believe he was a working man. You have offending at night time, in the morning, in the early afternoon. He thought what he was doing was fun.”
The prosecution said the husband was explicit to other men that his wife would not consent and “wouldn’t be interested”. In one exchange with Graves in October 2018, Graves asked the husband “when did you last abuse her?” and he replied: “Don’t keep a diary, lol (laugh out loud)”.
The court heard by 2023 the husband was active in a chat group called ‘fabswingers.com’, with Ms Oakley remarking: “This was a messaging site for people who liked to ‘swing’. Where couples would engage in sexual activities with other people. He started using this site to identify people who lived close to him.
“He would start chatting to people and would make it clear that she would be out of it. He had – we suggest – nothing to hide. At no point did he suggest, the Crown say, to any of these defendants that as a couple they engaged in sleepy roleplay or fantasy.
“She was quite clearly wasted, unconscious, out of it – however you want to describe it. And the sad reality of this case is that there are many, many men whose fantasy is an unconscious and unresponsive woman. He wasn’t interested in sharing his aware wife – his perversion and barbaric fantasy was enjoying the fact she was out of it.”
The woman’s ordeal came to an end after journalists infiltrated an online messaging forum on messaging app Telegram and police swooped in 2025 at the husband’s home address, the court heard. Jurors heard to join the forum the husband had to provide evidence he was a real person and could offer something in the form of imagery of sex offences on his partner or another female.
It is alleged the group chatted via Telegram (Image: Getty)
Detectives arrested the husband and seized a mobile phone from his address which contained more than one million photographs and videos cataloguing the abuse by him and others, the court has heard. Ms Oakley said: “She had absolutely no idea it was going on. That is, until the police came to her door and she was identified as the subject of the videos taken by (the husband).
“These men took pleasure not only in the sexual acts they performed or agreed should be performed, but in the fact that (the wife) was ‘unaware’ – one of the buzz words they used repeatedly.”
Opening the trial on Monday, Ms Oakley said Stewart sent a message to the husband after he visited the house, urging him to “delete all images” and saying “remember what happened to the guy in France”. She told the jury: “The reference in the message related to the man in France who had been raping his wife, a lady by the name of Gisèle Pelicot.”
Ms Oakley said the husband was not in the dock and would be a witness in the case. He had been charged with 62 offences involving allegations of rape, administering substances with intent to stupefy or overpower his wife to enable a person to engage in sexual activity with her, and sharing intimate imagery of her.
Jurors were told many of them involved multiple incidents of offending, not single one-off offences, and some of his offending was committed by him alone while on other occasions it involved other men.
On trial with Graves are Jonathan Kirk, 43, a senior paramedic; Robert Stewart, 70,; Mohammed Sabir, 28, a recruitment consultant; youth football coach Alan Keelan, 42; dog walker Jordan Wallace, 31; taxi driver Philip Wild, 60; metal worker Richard Townsend, 38; and Daniel Rayner, 42. All deny a variety of sexual offences.
Four other men have pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to various offences linked to the case. They are Keith Fotheringham, 59, of Dundee; Karl Lindsay, 56, of Taunton; Sean Peers, 38, of Stockport, and Graham Brougham, 74, of Northwich, Cheshire.
