UK woman drugged by husband tells rape trial she woke up bound / Photo: Glyn KIRK - AFP
UK woman drugged by husband tells rape trial she woke up bound
A woman who was raped and drugged by her then-husband for years told a UK court Wednesday how she woke to find herself blindfolded and restrained with a stranger in her bedroom.
Philip Young, 50, has pleaded guilty to multiple sexual offences including drugging and raping his former wife Joanne Young, who has waived her right to anonymity.
Four men are on trial at a court in southern England accused of abusing Joanne Young after being invited by her husband to have sex with her, without her consent, between 2016 and 2023.
Norman Macksoni, 48, Richard Wilkins, 62, Connor Sanderson-Doyle, 32, and Mohammed Hassan, 38, are all in the dock at Winchester Crown Court. Two of them face charges of rape and two face lesser sexual assault charges, all of which they deny.
Joanne Young, 49, testified in court for the first time Wednesday, as the four men sat impassively in the dock.
She recalled during her cross-examination a night in February 2023 when she woke up to find "two people" in her bedroom while she was blindfolded and restrained, believing one of them to be her husband.
"One was touching my wrist and the other giving me oral sex," said Young. When a defence lawyer suggested the feeling around her wrist could have been twisted bedding, she insisted it was "a hand around my wrist".
Earlier, the court saw two police video interviews Joanne Young gave in 2024 and 2025 in which she described that February 2023 night.
She said that after drinks in the pub with friends she had gone to bed, only to be woken up to find another man in the room.
The next morning, her husband was apologetic and said he had been looking on "forums" and had "invited someone around the house to watch us have sex", the mother-of-three said in one video.
"I was really upset, shocked someone had been there," she added. "It was so intrusive, something that I would never ever accept or want."
- 'Fast asleep' -
Joanne Young also described the "standard pattern" of her sexual relationship with her husband of two decades, with the couple often having sex after going for drinks with friends or following a nightcap.
"More often than not I'd already be fast asleep and he would instigate sex," she said in the video interviews.
"It was almost always when I've been asleep," she said, adding she would wake up "quite dozy".
Later, when he was arrested, Joanne Young recalled in a video interview that her husband told her he had uploaded intimate images of her online.
"He never asked me if it was something I wanted," she said, adding she was unaware the pictures had being taken.
"I was just gutted, it was like a kick in the stomach ... I assume I am asleep because when did those images get taken?"
- Mutiple sex assault cases -
There are multiple cases currently before UK courts of alleged drug-facilitated sexual assault, with awareness of the crime growing following the unrelated high-profile 2024 French trial of Dominique Pelicot.
He was found guilty of secretly drugging his wife, Gisele, for years and inviting scores of men to rape her while she was unconscious.
Gisele Pelicot also waived her right to anonymity in that trial to raise awareness about sexual violence.
N.M.Shaw--EWJ
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