Man who drugged and raped wife with strangers 'led double life'

Warning: This article contains distressing content

A woman who believed she had not had sex for nine years had in fact been regularly drugged and raped by her own husband and a group of strangers "whose depravity knew no bounds", a jury has been told.

Her husband led a "double life", prosecutors said, regularly giving his wife a "stupefying cocktail" of drugs to make her "completely unaware" of the abuse.

He and four men have already pleaded guilty to a series of offences, but the trial of nine other defendants who deny all charges has begun at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Louise Oakley KC said the wife had been "happy" but "the life she knew ended when the police knocked on the front door".

Before the case was opened, trial judge Maurice Greene warned jurors they would be expected to view evidence that could provoke feelings of "upset and anger".

As Oakley opened the case, they were shown videos of the woman, in her sixties, being raped and sexually assaulted while, the prosecution said, she was unconscious.

The jury heard the husband and vicitim had the appearance of a couple looking forward to retirement, who "led busy lives, enjoying their home and garden, socialising with family and friends, holidays abroad – all very much together".

But Oakley said the husband, who is also in his 60s and cannot be named to protect his wife's legal right to anonymity, had since 2004 been sharing videos and images online of himself raping and assaulting his unconscious wife at their family home in the Stockport area of Greater Manchester.

"You may think it difficult to conceive how such offending could get worse, but it did," she told the court.

The jury heard the husband had "talked about" inviting men to their home to rape his wife for years, but began actually doing so from at least 2023.

The men were, the prosecution said, "well aware that she was not conscious, that is why they were there, to use her body whilst she was unaware".

Oakley said when the husband's Samsung Galaxy mobile phone had been seized by police, it acted "like a confession booth" containing his "darkest secrets" and his "barbaric sexual fantasies".

Detectives found more than a million photographs and videos "cataloging" the husband's abuse on that device.

Oakley said the files had provided the police with "almost a script" of both the husband's offending and that of the nine men on trial.

"Their depravity seems to have had no bounds," she said.

"They too were leading double lives. Either creeping in and out of [the home address], in the hours of darkness, quietly and carefully so that they were not seen or heard, or hiding behind the screens of their mobile telephones or computers - no doubt believing they were safe."

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The jury heard the men on trial included alleged "contact offenders" including paramedic Jonathan Kirk, 43; taxi driver Philip Wild, 59; amateur football coach Alan Keelan, 42; recruitment agency worker Mohammed Sabir, 28; Jordan Wallace, 31, who worked for a building supplies agency; sheet metal worker Richard Townsend, 37, and Robert Stewart, 70, who was retired.

Two of the men, Daniel Rayner and David Graves, were described as alleged "non-contact" offenders, who did not attend the victim's home but were said to have encouraged the abuse or helped in other ways.

Oakley told the jury: "During the course of this case, you may hear references to unconventional sexual practices, such as 'swinging' and 'sleep fetishes' and other 'kinks'.

"It may be suggested that the imagery you see is posed, and that [the victim] is 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 was not participation in unconventional but consensual sexual practices.

"It was rape and sexual assault, pure and simple."

Oakley gave an example of a message from Stewart to the husband sent within hours of Stewart allegedly raping the victim in September 2025.

"Mate, have had a bad feeling about it all day," she read.

"Delete all images from your phone etc as it's too risky. Remember what happened to the guy in France.

"Delete me from your phone and life. If she caught you out, it would be a whole lot of trouble and end of your marriage and ruin your life."

Oakley told the jury: "As you will no doubt remember, 'the guy in France', the man in France, who had been raping his wife, a lady by the name of Gisele Pelicot."

The jury heard the husband in the Stockport area case, after pleading guilty, had given an account of his actions and would appear as a witness.

He told prosecutors he had begun abusing his wife in the early 2000s.

Initially, he would record himself abusing her while she was unaware and kept the images "for himself".

However, he soon progressed to sharing images on online chatrooms with other "like-minded" men.

Oakley said in a "sick and perverted twist" he would sometimes pretend to be his wife in conversations online, but said that had stopped fairly "early on".

The jury heard the investigation into the abuse began after a team of undercover investigative journalists infiltrated a channel on the encrypted messaging service Telegram in October 2025.

The channel appeared to involve men sharing images of apparently unconscious women being raped and sexually assaulted.

One user in particular, Oakley said, was claiming he had been drugging and raping his wife and was inviting others to join in - while also sharing images of her.

The user was linked to a phone number registered to the husband, enabling Greater Manchester Police to obtain a warrant to search his address.

Oakley said when the contents of his phone were downloaded, material was found in a secure folder titled "visits", which also had messaging apps he had used to contact other defendants.

She said the jury would only be given a selection of the files involved, but the police had viewed every single one "line-by-line".

The husband has pleaded guilty to 62 offences including rape, adminstering a substance with intent, sharing intimate images and assault by penetration.

Keith Fotheringham, 59, from Dundee in Scotland; Sean Peers, 38, from Stockport; Graham Brougham, 74, from Northwich in Cheshire, and Karl Lindsay, 55, from Taunton in Somerset, have also pleaded guilty to a number of offences.

The trial continues.

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