Woman left traumatised by swinging says website 'facilitated abuse'

8 hours ago

Catrin Nye,

Jamie Bartlett,

Kavita Puri and

Ruth Mayer, BBC News Investigations and BBC Wales

BBC

Ruth says she continues to suffer flashbacks

Warning: This story contains details of sexual acts

When Ruth O'Grady reluctantly joined a swinging website, having been persuaded by her husband, she says, she told him she would never have sex in a car with a stranger.

However, within months she was doing exactly that, and filming it to send to him.

She says she had sex with strangers more than 100 times through the website, over an 18-month period.

Ruth says she is traumatised and continues to suffer flashbacks.

She first approached us three years ago and now, after careful consideration, has decided to tell her story using her full name. She wants it to be a warning to other women.

She feels anger towards her former husband, Chris, but she also blames the UK's biggest swinging website. It gave him access to hundreds of men, she says, who he could ask to have sex with her.

The BBC has approached Ruth's ex-husband with these allegations but he did not respond to them.

Swinging typically involves couples meeting up and exchanging partners, but it can also involve just one half of the couple having the sexual encounters.

For eight months, prompted by Ruth's story, the BBC has been investigating the UK's swinging scene. Some people told us they take part because they genuinely want to, but we found this is not always the case.

Ruth says a website called Fabswingers "facilitated the abuse" she experienced.

The site, which has more page views than any other swinging website, and claims to have 600,000 active monthly members, told us consent was the foundation of swinging.

Separately, police forces across the UK have told us the site has been mentioned in hundreds of recent crime reports.

Ruth also says that, while her story is not the same as that of French woman, Gisèle Pelicot - who insisted on a public trial of the men accused of raping her - the subsequent reaction to the Pelicot case has encouraged her to speak out.

"Everyone was so shocked," she says. "I wasn't shocked at all."

Downward spiral

From when they met in north Wales in 2008, Chris had often raised the idea of Ruth having sex with other men - but she resisted, she says.

Then, in 2021, after Ruth suffered a mental health crisis, he became her named carer. She was made to feel guilty, she says, that life had not turned out as they had planned.

Her husband brought up swinging again and eventually, Ruth says, she gave in and agreed.

"I know that can sound absolutely barmy to someone just hearing the story, but remember, this isn't overnight. Imagine being with someone for 12 years and them just convincing you of something."

The pair joined FabSwingers and Ruth says she expected they might meet other couples. Instead, she says, the arrangement quickly became something different.

Ruth was having sex with men from the site while Chris watched, waited nearby, or sometimes was not even there.

The meetings happened at their home, or outside in cars, lay-bys or car parks. If she went alone, she says, she was expected to film what happened and send it to her husband.

Within months, she was having sex with multiple men a week, Ruth says, sometimes as many as four in a day.

She did arrange some of the meetings herself, she says, and would appear enthusiastic about swinging, but she now says this was something she never truly wanted to do.

She regularly told her husband she wanted to stop, she says - telling him on multiple occasions that she had been scared and traumatised by the sex.

There would sometimes be a pause, she says, before he arranged more meetings, which Ruth went along with.

"Some men wouldn't look me in the eye, and some men wouldn't talk to me at all. It's like... I didn't exist," says Ruth

Ruth says the encounters took an horrific toll. She contracted sexually transmitted infections, she got pregnant, and while recovering from an abortion she says Chris arranged for someone to have oral sex with her.

"I realised [Chris] really doesn't care about my body or the pain I was going through," Ruth says.

"All these men are abusing my body to the point where it's getting infected, getting unwell, and now this termination is happening, and yet I'm still having to meet these men."

At times, Ruth says it was easier and safer to appear enthusiastic and perform the role expected of her than to resist it - and to get the encounter over with as quickly as possible.

"Some men wouldn't look me in the eye, and some men wouldn't talk to me at all. It's like... I didn't exist."

Details of organisations offering information about or support after sexual abuse or with feelings of despair are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline

Looking back, does she consider any of the sex to have been truly consensual?

"No," she says. "I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be on [the website] in the first place."

Chris was investigate…