UK prosecutors detail husband’s role in abuse of unconscious wife by other men

MANCHESTER, England (CN) — A U.K. trial involving nine men accused of sexually abusing an unconscious woman heard Tuesday how her husband shared images of her with other men and sought drugs to incapacitate her so they could rape and sexually assault her.Prosecutors described years of online conversations in which they said the husband discussed his plans with others, including one man who supplied him with tablets and advised him to hide them in his wife’s food.Five men, including the husband, have already pleaded guilty to offenses connected to the abuse.The woman’s husband, who cannot be named because doing so could identify his wife, pleaded guilty to 62 charges dating back to 2004, including rape, assault by penetration and administering a substance with intent to commit a sexual offense.The nine men now on trial deny wrongdoing.Prosecutor Louise Oakley said David Graves, 60, met the husband in an online chat group before moving their conversations to Skype. Graves offered him tablets and relaxants and repeatedly promised to send medication, the jury heard.The tablets arrived in March 2021 but were difficult to dissolve in liquid, turned wine cloudy and tasted bitter, Oakley said, so Graves suggested crushing them into food.In one message, Graves said putting them “in the food or drink small and often will get her out of it,” prosecutors said.The prosecutor traced the husband’s search for someone to share his wife with to 2015, when he was said to have met Robert Stewart, 70, through Craigslist.Oakley said the husband shared images of his wife while drunk, unaware or unconscious and discussed date-rape drugs and spiking her drinks with Stewart.Stewart gave the husband medication and later asked whether she was “out of it” so he could visit, the jury heard. He visited once but left when she stirred, the prosecutor said.Oakley called the encounter the husband’s “first big step” toward realizing his fantasy and said it became a “blueprint” for future offending.The husband continued collecting images of his wife and discussing his desire to render her unconscious, Oakley said; he researched how to obtain date-rape drugs, including searching Reddit for “where do people get date rape drugs.”By 2019, he had bought medication online, but the Covid lockdown disrupted his plans, leaving him to continue sharing images, Oakley said.New Year messages and Bill Cosby imagesOn New Year’s Eve 2021, the prosecutor said the husband sent Stewart an image of his unconscious wife with the message “hope you have a great new year.”In March 2022, Oakeley said the husband received an image of Bill Cosby with the words, “she can’t say no if she’s unconscious,” which Oakley told jurors “sums up the entire case.”A video of the woman asleep, which prosecutors said was sent to Stewart, was played in court. The screens were not visible to the public, but the woman could clearly be heard snoring.“She’s snoring,” Oakley said, asking how anyone could fail to recognize the woman was asleep. She said Stewart was fully aware by May 2022 of what the husband was doing.By summer 2022, he had joined a swingers chat group and referred to his wife as “unaware” or “out of it,” the court heard. Oakley said he was careful about language to avoid being expelled.Jurors also heard about a separate messaging group that required men to share images of themselves abusing women. The husband uploaded an image of his wife alongside a piece of paper bearing the group’s name, Oakley said.Nine men stand trialThe trial at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester began Monday.Opening the prosecution case, Oakley said the woman’s life as she knew it ended when police arrested her husband in October 2025.He had been sexually abusing her while she slept or was unconscious for more than 20 years, the jury heard.From at least 2023, Oakley said, the husband asked other men to the couple’s home to rape and sexually abuse his unconscious wife. He filmed the encounters and shared the imagery online.The prosecution also cited a message they say Stewart sent the husband in September 2025, warning him to delete images from his phone and referring to “the guy in France.”The reference was to Gisele Pelicot, a French woman whose husband was convicted in 2024 of asking dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious.Pelicot became a global symbol in the fight against sexual violence.The woman in Manchester described the marriage as “uneventful” and their sex life as “normal.” She told police she had not had sex with her husband for nine years before his arrest and had never agreed to involve other people, Oakley said.Prosecutors have divided the nine defendants into two groups. Seven are accused of visiting the couple’s home: Stewart, 70; Philip Wild, 59; Mohammed Sabir, 28; Jordan Wallace, 31; Alan Keelan, 42; Richard Townsend, 38; and Jonathan Kirk, 43.The other two, Graves and Daniel Rayner, 42, are accused of maintaining their involvement through online communications rather than visiting the home.Courthouse News reporter James Francis Whitehead is based in England.Subscribe to our free newslettersOur weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.Additional Reads