Fifty women have told the BBC they were pressured or coerced by their partners into having sex with strangers – with most encounters arranged through the website FabSwingers, which claims to have more than half a million UK active monthly accounts.
The women got in contact after an earlier BBC investigation told the story of one woman who said she had been pressured into having sex with more than 100 people she did not know. Many said they had sex through swinging despite not wanting to, either because they feared the consequences of refusing or felt they had to keep their partners happy.
“Fifty women tell BBC they were pressured into sex with strangers via FabSwingers; six say they were raped.”
One woman recalled: “I remember many nights of my partner keeping me up all night screaming at me, threatening me, and attempting to gaslight me into believing this was something I wanted. It was never what I wanted.”
Another told the BBC: “I felt like I had been given away. I felt used. I felt so dirty.”
Six women said they had been raped by men met through the site. One said her partner had forced her to have sex with more than 90 men through FabSwingers – and on one occasion, he held her down by the ankles, she told us.
Sixteen women said intimate photos of them had been uploaded to the website without their permission.
FabSwingers says it has moderation policies and is not “responsible for private off-platform conduct between adults”. It added: “We do not accept any suggestion that FabSwingers is indifferent to misuse.”
But the former minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, Labour MP Jess Phillips, believes FabSwingers “should be shut down”. She said police should recognise coercion or pressure to take part in swinging as a form of adult sexual exploitation, adding: “Calling it swinging implies consent, and therefore puts the blame at the feet of the women, and that makes it silencing for those women.”
Experts have told the BBC it is important to understand that people can be manipulated into consent. Partners who pressure women into swinging can then use the resulting shame as a means of control, they say.
The investigation raises questions about the idea of consent and whether abuse can exist behind the language of sexual freedom. Some of the women who got in touch accuse FabSwingers of facilitating abuse and failing to tackle illegal behaviour – accusations the site rejects.