Jailed for abusing two girls, photographer who boasted of wife’s ‘affairs’

A PHOTOGRAPHER was jailed for abusing two girls yesterday – in the same court where he had been cleared of sexual abuse exactly eight years earlier.

James Swan, 46, had told one victim, aged 13, that he fantasised about the alleged infidelity of his wife Freya, 40, a teacher at £30,000-a-year Durham School.

The father- of-three groomed her online, boasting of an open relationship with his wife, Teesside Crown Court heard.

He pinned his other victim, who was 18 at the time of the attack, against a wall, and she feared she was going to be raped.

Swan had been cleared of sexual assault at his home in Rookhope, County Durham, on December 18, 2009. His teenage accuser had told a jury Swan said he was aroused by his wife’s alleged infidelity, but Swan – a former director of photography at Madame Tussauds – said he had a strong marriage.

However, when two further accusers came forward last year over incidents in the 2000s, Outside court: James Swan yesterday police seized his computer and found 10,000 messages to the girls, including those mentioning his wife’s alleged affairs. Richard Bennett, prosecuting, said the previous case was ‘significant background evidence’. Of that case, he told the court: ‘Swan’s wife was out for the night. He began to discuss his wife’s infidelity and how much it turned him on. He told her how he and his wife Freya Swan had an open marriage and both had affairs.

‘He told his victim he believed his wife was out that night cheating on him, telling her what he thought his wife was up to sexually. He allegedly told her what he would want other men to do to his wife, and how this aroused him.’

In the latest case, the court heard Swan’s 13-year- old victim had been bullied and was ‘very lonely’, leaving her vulnerable to the ‘well- spoken, handsome man’. But when Swan, who has three daughters, invited her to his house, he encouraged her to take her clothes off before massaging and groping her.

Over ten months, he then sent her 7,296 online messages via MSN ‘for his sexual gratification’. Two years later he attacked her as she lay half-dressed in his spare room under the pretence of a ‘foot massage’. His other victim, whom he pinned against a wall, thought he was going to rape her, but Swan was forced to stop his attack when his wife rang to say she was nearly home.

In a statement, the older victim said: ‘I tried to fight James off but he wouldn’t listen. I have replayed that memory in my life so many times, it made me feel powerless.’ Jailing Swan, who ran his own pho-

‘Acting out your sexual fantasies’

tography business, for five years, Judge Stephen Ashurst told him: ‘During the period you exchanged thousands of messages and they were particularly disgusting and inappropriate. You were discussing the most explicit sexual activities, what you were up to, what your wife was up to and what you thought your wife was up to.

‘You were acting out your sexual fantasies with two young girls who were so much younger than you.’

Swan, of Nenthead, Cumbria, admitted sexual assault, causing sexual activity without consent, and two counts of sexual activity with a child.