Nine men have gone on trial in England accused of taking part in the sexual abuse of a woman whose husband had been drugging and raping her for more than two decades, according to The Guardian.
The proceedings at Minshull Street crown court in Manchester concern alleged offences between 2015 and the husband's arrest in 2025. The husband, who cannot be identified to protect his wife's anonymity, has already admitted a series of offences against her stretching back over 20 years.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Louise Oakley KC told the court that the woman had no knowledge of what her husband was doing to her for over two decades, The Guardian reports. He abused her while she was asleep or unconscious, at first when she had drunk enough alcohol to fall into a deep sleep, and later, increasingly often, by giving her a mixture of sedating drugs without her knowledge, sometimes with alcohol and sometimes without.
Why it matters
The case echoes the Pelicot trial in France, which drew worldwide attention to the use of drugs to enable sexual assault and to the networks of men who gather online around it. Sky News reports that one of the defendants in the Stockport case is alleged to have sent an alarmed message to Gisele Pelicot. The Guardian reports that the prosecution described the husband as having lived "a double life masked in respectability", and said the men on trial had done the same.
Two groups of defendants
The court heard that from 2023 at the latest — though the husband had discussed the idea for much longer — he began inviting other men to the couple's home in Stockport, Greater Manchester. While his wife lay unconscious in bed, he filmed himself and others raping and sexually abusing her, the prosecution said.
Two of the nine defendants are accused of "non-contact" offences, alleged to have encouraged the abuse online: Daniel Rayner, 42, of Whitstable in Kent, and David Graves, 59, of Ilkeston in Derbyshire.
The remaining seven are described as "contact" offenders, alleged to have gone to the couple's home and taken part in the abuse. They are Philip Wild, 58, of Stockport; Jordan Wallace, 31, of Manchester; Alan Keelan, 42, of Manchester; Jonathan Kirk, 43, of Stockport; Robert Stewart, 70, of Stockport; Mohammed Sabir, 28, who has no fixed abode; and Richard Townsend, 37, of Heywood in Greater Manchester.
All nine deny the charges against them.
Four other men have already admitted offences connected to the case. Sean Peers, 38, of Stockport; Keith Fotheringham, 59, of Dundee; and Graham Brougham, 74, of Northwich in Cheshire pleaded guilty at earlier hearings at the same court. Karl Lindsay, 56, of Somerset admitted "non-contact" offences at a hearing last Friday.
"That is why they were there"
Oakley told the court that the men knew the woman was not conscious, The Guardian reports. "That is why they were there, to use her body whilst she was unaware," she said, adding that they took sexual pleasure from knowing she was "out of it".
She said the woman had "absolutely no idea it was going on" until police arrived at her door and told her she had been the subject of videos her husband had made. A relative of the victim, watching from the courtroom as the prosecution set out its case, wept and held their head in their hands, and was comforted by two people sitting with them.
The prosecution anticipated that the defence may argue the woman was in fact only pretending to be asleep as part of a role-play fantasy with her husband. Oakley said that suggestion was "a smokescreen", and that what the men did was "rape and sexual assault, pure and simple" rather than consensual unconventional sex.
How the case came to light
According to the prosecution, the husband's offending was uncovered after undercover journalists got into a chat on the Telegram messaging app. He was arrested and his phone was seized.
Oakley described the phone as being "like a confession booth", The Guardian reports, saying it held material gathered from other devices and cameras over many years, including the husband's sexual fantasies dating back to 2004. It contained more than a million photographs and videos documenting his abuse of his wife and abuse carried out on her by other men, including defendants now in the dock, she said.
The court heard that the men on trial either came and went from the couple's home under cover of darkness, trying not to be seen or heard, or hid behind their phones and computer screens, believing themselves safe.
The trial continues.
