Fifty women report coercion into swinging; FabSwingers faces scrutiny

Fifty women have come forward with accounts of being pressured or coerced by their partners into having sex with other men, often through a website called FabSwingers that claims over half a million active UK users each month. Their stories emerged after the BBC published an investigation into one woman's experience of being forced into sexual encounters with more than a hundred strangers. What unites these accounts is a pattern of control: partners who threatened, screamed through the night, gaslit their wives into compliance, or simply refused to accept refusal. The women describe not excitement or adventure, but coercion dressed up as a lifestyle choice.

Six of the fifty women say they were raped by men they met through FabSwingers. One woman reported that her partner forced her to have sex with more than ninety men via the platform, holding her down by the ankles on at least one occasion. Sixteen women say intimate photographs of them were uploaded to the site without their permission. Many did not recognize what was happening to them as abuse at the time. They had, after all, technically agreed to try swinging. But agreement extracted under pressure, fear, or the threat of a partner's anger is not consent. One woman told the BBC that had she not seen the investigation, she would have had unwanted sex that very evening—a situation she had endured for twelve years.

Emily from Derbyshire was pushed into attending a swinging club while pregnant. Her husband wanted more encounters, so they joined FabSwingers. For years, her evenings were consumed by the site. When her young daughter would not fall asleep by seven o'clock, her husband would come into the bedroom and pull her away, telling the child that Mummy had to leave. Emily's daughter would cry because the bedtime story was unfinished. Emily eventually left the marriage, estimating she had sex with between twenty and thirty men. She did not think of it as sexual abuse until much later, because she had agreed to try swinging. She does now. Another woman, identified as Susie to protect her identity, was married to a serving police officer who spent years talking about his fantasy of her having sex with other men. He eventually persuaded her to join FabSwingers. At one hotel meeting, he sat on a sofa and watched her have sex with a stranger—a practice called hotwifing. The experience broke her. She stopped sleeping, drank heavily every night, and is now divorced and taking antidepressants.

When these women tried to report their abuse to police, many encountered indifference or victim-blaming. One woman was twenty-one when her boyfriend put her on FabSwingers and controlled her entire profile. She did not even know the identities of some of the men she was forced to have sex with because her boyfriend ensured she could not see or speak to them. When she went to police, officers eventually dropped her case, telling her that she looked like she was enjoying the sex in the videos they had reviewed. She had explained that her ex-boyfriend would become angry if she did not appear enthusiastic enough, and would force her to have sex with someone else as punishment. The police made her feel disgusting. Another woman could not go to the police at all because her husband was a serving officer. Sixteen users reported abuse or non-consensual image sharing to police; only three cases led to convictions. Ten raised concerns about how their cases were handled.

FabSwingers itself has shown little urgency in addressing these harms. Nine users reported abuse directly to the platform and received no response, including one man reporting the sexual assault of his female partner. Three women say FabSwingers failed to cooperate with police investigations. Multiple users reported facing repercussions for flagging concerns, including being banned from chat forums where they could report wrongdoing. Three former site moderators told the BBC they had received no training on safeguarding. Two had worked in exchange for free membership; one worked voluntarily. Unlike some competing swinging sites, FabSwingers does not require identity verification, making it harder for police to identify suspects and allowing banned users to simply create new accounts. Since 2023, the website has been mentioned in at least three hundred twenty-nine police reports across the UK, including allegations of rape, sexual offences, coercive control, harassment, blackmail, stalking, and assault.

FabSwingers has told the BBC it has moderation policies and is not responsible for private off-platform conduct between adults. It says reports of coercion, sexual assault, and non-consensual image sharing are prioritized, and that it works with police without penalizing those who report concerns. The platform claims its moderation involves up to five site administrators, moderators, AI, and automated controls. But the evidence suggests these systems are not working. Jess Phillips, the former minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, believes FabSwingers should be shut down. She argues that calling it swinging implies consent, which silences the women who were coerced. Police need better training to recognize coercion and pressure to engage in sexual acts as forms of domestic abuse, according to Dame Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales. The National Police Chiefs Council acknowledged that victims deserve to be listened to and supported consistently across the country.

Ofcom, the regulator responsible for online safety, says it is extremely concerned by the BBC's findings and is speaking to the site's provider, but it has not launched an investigation. Phillips has called on Ofcom to look into FabSwingers very seriously and shut it down under the Online Safety Act, which requires platforms to remove illegal content and reduce risks of harm including controlling and coercive behaviour. For now, the women who came forward remain largely in the shadows. Many said they felt less alone after hearing Ruth O'Grady's story—the woman whose experience sparked this investigation. One woman said she was still not ready for anyone she loved to know what had happened to her. But at least, she said, she felt a little less alone.