But Oakley said the husband, who is also in his 60s and cannot be named to protect his wife’s legal right to anonymity, had since 2004 been sharing videos and images online of himself raping and assaulting his unconscious wife at their family home in the Stockport area of Greater Manchester.
“You may think difficult to conceive how such offending could get worse, but it did,” she told the court.
The jury heard the husband had “talked about” inviting men to their home to rape his wife for years but began actually doing so from at least 2023.
The men were, the prosecution said, “well aware that she was not conscious, that is why they were there, to use her body whilst she was unaware”.
Oakley said when the husband’s Samsung Galaxy mobile phone was seized by police it acted “like a confession booth” containing his “darkest secrets” and his “barbaric sexual fantasies”.
Detectives found more than a million photographs and videos “cataloging” the husband’s abuse on that device.
Oakley said the files provided the police with “almost a script” of both the husband’s offending and that of the nine men on trial.
“Their depravity seems to have had no bounds,” Oakley said.
“They too were leading double lives. Either creeping in and out of [the home address], in the hours of darkness, quietly and carefully so that they were not seen or heard, or hiding behind the screens of their mobile telephones or computers.
“No doubt believing they were safe.”
The jury heard the men on trial included alleged “contact offenders” including paramedic Jonathan Kirk, 43; taxi driver Philip Wild, 59; amateur football coach Alan Keelan, 42, recruitment agency worker Mohammed Sabir, 28, Jordan Wallace, 31, who worked for a building supplies agency; sheet metal worker Richard Townsend, 37 and Robert Stewart, 70, who was retired.
Two of the men, Daniel Rayner and David Graves, were described as alleged “non-contact” offenders – who did not attend the victim’s home but allegedly encouraged the abuse or helped in other ways.
Oakley told the jury: “During the course of this case, you may hear references to unconventional sexual practices, such as ‘swinging’ and ‘sleep fetishes’ and other ‘kinks’.
“It may be suggested that the imagery you see is posed, and that [the victim] is in fact only pretending to be asleep or unconscious as part of a fantasy role play with her husband.
“The prosecution says that is a smokescreen; what these men did was not participation in unconventional, but consensual sexual practices.
“It was rape and sexual assault, pure and simple.”