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. 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.
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. 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.
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