Website FabSwingers has been mentioned 329 times in police reports across the UK
Fifty women have told the BBC they were forced into swinging, in response to Catrin Nye’s investigation into the site FabSwingers.
These women told the BBC that they took part in swinging because they feared the consequences of saying no.
The podcast series, called Swingers, follows a woman called Ruth O’Grady, who said she was pressured into having sex with over 100 people.
The women who came forward gave thanks to Ruth for her bravery and honesty.
Ruth reluctantly signed up to the swinging site, FabSwingers, after being pressured into it by her former husband Chris. What she thought might be meeting other couples turned out to be a different arrangement entirely.
Ruth was having sex with men under the instruction of Chris, while he watched or waited nearby.
“He was basically telling them what he wanted to do, what he wanted them to do to me,” Ruth told Catrin in the podcast.
Adding: “If I made them come too quickly, because I wanted them gone, especially if I really didn’t like them, he would say ‘go for round two’.”
After leaving her husband, Ruth went to the police for help. They investigated Chris for coercive control, but no charges were made.
Like Ruth, many of the women who came forward had used the website FabSwingers.
One told the BBC: “I felt like I had been given away. I felt used. I felt so dirty.”
Several women had reported their abuse to the police. In fact, the site was mentioned 329 times in police reports across England and Wales since 2013.
FabSwingers told the BBC it has moderation policies and is not “responsible for private off-platform conduct between adults”.
Adding: “We do not accept any suggestion that FabSwingers is indifferent to misuse.”
Catrin has explored if someone can say yes to sex they don’t want. Ruth never wanted to do swinging, but at the time she sent enthusiastic messages about swinging.
She spoke to Professor Nicola Gavey, who has studied unwanted sex since the 1980s.
Professor Gavey said: “It’s quite possible for people to appear to consent to sex they don’t want.”
Without investigative journalists like Catrin Nye, these women’s stories may have never been heard.