A woman who was allegedly sexually assaulted by men invited by her ex-husband to the family home has described how she would wake up in the middle of the night, blindfolded, and feeling “foggy”.
Joanne Young said that on one occasion she managed to remove her blindfold and was shocked to see a stranger in her bedroom with whom her then husband, Philip Young, had allegedly arranged to have sex with her.
On another occasion, she arrived “terrified,” and her husband asked her, “Don’t you wish someone else was here?”
Philip Young, 50, “advertised” Joanne Young on dating and swinging sites, presenting her as a “problem” for them both, Winchester Crown Court heard.
He pleaded guilty to several abuse charges, but four men who allegedly sexually assaulted Joanne Young, after being invited to the couple’s home by Philip Young, are on trial.
Recorded video interviews of Joanne Young, 49, telling her story to police were viewed by the jury on Wednesday.
Joanne Young said she and her husband have been married for 20 years and have three children. She said they were a heterosexual, monogamous couple. “It was always just the two of us,” she said.
On one occasion, early in their marriage, he “joked” about watching her when she was having sex with someone else, but she “laughed it off”. She said: “It has never been a part of our relationship and never will be. »
He liked to hold her and blindfold her during sex. “I didn’t object – it was good,” she said.
But she said she would wake up not knowing how she had been held. “I would wake up and there would be a blindfold and restraints and I wouldn’t always remember what was happening. It was kind of like, when did this happen?” She described feeling “foggy” when she woke up.
One night in February 2023, Joanne Young woke up and removed her blindfold and restraints. “I wasn’t comfortable,” she says. “I don’t know what was bothering me.”
When she took off her blindfold, she realized there was a stranger in her room. Philip Young told the second person to “get down” and hid out of sight.
“I was in shock,” Joanne Young said. “There was this man at my house and I was naked.” She hid in a bathroom and the next day asked her husband, “What was that?”
He told her that he had invited someone over to watch them have sex. “I was shocked that anyone was there. It was so intrusive.” He claimed this had never happened before. “I thought it was an isolated case,” Joanne Young said.
She said she decided to “bury her head in the sand” and move on. “We can’t forgive. We have to hope this doesn’t happen again.”
Joanne Young said that on the day of her arrest, her husband admitted to her that he had shared explicit images of her. “It was totally unexpected. It was a kick in the gut. How could he do that to me? It’s so intimate. It’s not allowed.”
She asked him if the February incident was the only time such a thing had happened. Joanne Young said: “He stood there, looked at me and said, ‘No.’ »
After her arrest, Joanne Young recalled a “vague” incident a few years earlier, when she woke up “terrified” and said, “No, no.”
She said: “I remember he (Philip) said: ‘Don’t you wish someone else was there?’ » I was afraid. The next day, she put it down to a nightmare.
Joanne Young briefly testified in person Wednesday afternoon, occasionally glancing toward the defendants in the dock. At one point, Justice Saini asked him to keep his voice high.
When Tom Godfrey, the lawyer for Mohammed Hassan, one of the defendants, asked about the February 2023 incident, she said there were two people other than her in the room, one touching her wrist and the other performing a sexual act on her.
Godfrey suggested the contact on his wrist may have been due to bed clothes. She replied: “I disagree – it was a hand around my wrist. »
In statements read to the court, friends of the Youngs said the two ran a business together and he was a school principal. Philip Young has been described as opinionated and arrogant, but has not displayed misogynistic behavior. During the evenings he was often on his cell phone and some of them wondered why.
Jurors also saw videos recorded by Philip Young showing three of the defendants sexually assaulting his wife. Some members of the panel seemed distressed. Before the videos were released, the public gallery was emptied.
Four men are accused of 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, pleaded not guilty to one count of rape and one count of assault by penetration in July 2016.
Norman Macksoni, 48, from Sharnbrook, Bedfordshire, denies one count of rape in February 2017. Hassan, 38, from Swindon, pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual touching in February 2023.
Young will be sentenced after the trial.
Gn world
