A woman who was allegedly sexually assaulted by men invited by her ex-husband into their family home described how she would wake in the middle of the night restrained and blindfolded and feeling “hazy”.
Joanne Young said that on one occasion she managed to remove her blindfold and was shocked to glimpse a stranger in her bedroom whom her then husband, Philip Young, had allegedly arranged to have sex with her.
On another occasion she came around feeling “terrified”, with her husband asking her: “Wouldn’t you like it if somebody else was here?”
Philip Young, 50, “advertised” Joanne Young on dating and swinging websites, presenting it as a “kink” for both of them, Winchester crown court has heard.
He has pleaded guilty to multiple charges of abuse, but four men who allegedly sexually assaulted Joanne Young, having been invited into the couple’s home by Philip Young, are on trial.
Recorded video interviews of Joanne Young, 49, telling her story to the police were watched by the jury on Wednesday.
Joanne Young said she and her husband had been married for 20 years and had three children. She said they were a straight, monogamous couple. “It was always just the two of us,” she said.
On one occasion early on in their marriage, he “joked” about watching her when she was having sex with someone else but she “laughed it off”. She said: “That was never part of our relationship and was never going to be.”
He liked to restrain and blindfold her during sex. “I didn’t object – it was fine,” she said.
But she said she would wake up not knowing how she had come to be restrained. “I’d wake up and there would be a blindfold on and restraints and I wouldn’t always remember them going on. It was a bit like, when did that happen?” She described feeling “hazy” when she woke.
On a night in February 2023, Joanne Young woke up and removed the blindfold and restraints. “I wasn’t comfortable,” she said. “I don’t know what was bothering me.”
When she got the blindfold off, she realised there was a stranger in her room. Philip Young told the second person to “get down” and he ducked out of sight.
“I was in shock,” said Joanne Young. “There was this man in my house and I was naked.” She hid in a bathroom and the next day asked her husband: “What was that?”
He told her he had invited someone to watch them have sex. “I was shocked someone had been there. It was so intrusive.” He claimed it had not happened before. “I thought it was a one-off,” Joanne Young said.
She said she decided to “stick my head in the sand” and carry on. “You can’t forgive. You have to hope it won’t happen again.”
Joanne Young said that on the day of his arrest, her husband admitted to her that he had shared explicit images of her. “That was totally out of the blue. It was a kick in the stomach. How could he do that to me? That is so intimate. It’s not allowed.”
She asked him if the incident in February was the only time such a thing had happened. Joanne Young said: “He stood there and looked at me and said: ‘No.’”
After the arrest, Joanne Young recalled a “vague” incident some years before when she had woken up feeling “terrified” and saying: “No, no.”
She said: “I remember him [Philip] saying: ‘Wouldn’t you like it if somebody else was here?’ I was scared.” The next day she put it down to a nightmare.
Joanne Young briefly gave evidence in person on Wednesday afternoon, glancing occasionally towards the defendants in the dock. At one point Mr Justice Saini asked her to keep her voice up.
When Tom Godfrey, the barrister for Mohammed Hassan, one of the defendants, asked about the incident in February 2023, she said that there were two people other than herself in the room, one who was touching her wrist and the other performing a sex act on her.
Godfrey suggested the touch on her wrist may have been bedclothes. She replied: “I disagree – it was a hand around my wrist.”
In statements read out in court, friends of the Youngs said the pair ran a business together and he was a school governor. Philip Young was described as opinionated and arrogant but had not shown misogynistic behaviour. During nights out he would often be on his mobile phone and some of them would wonder why.
Jurors were also shown videos recorded by Philip Young allegedly showing three of the defendants allegedly sexually assaulting his wife. Some members of the panel looked distressed. Before the videos were played, the public gallery was cleared.
Four men are charged with sexually assaulting Joanne Young jointly with Philip Young.
Connor Sanderson-Doyle, 32, of Swindon, Wiltshire, denies sexual assault by penetration and sexual touching in June 2016. Richard Wilkins, 62, of Toothill, Swindon, has pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and one of assault by penetration in July 2016.
Norman Macksoni, 48, of Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, denies one count of rape in February 2017. Hassan, 38, of Swindon, has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual touching in February 2023.
Young will be sentenced after the trial.
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