Survivor's Story: Groomed at 16 by a Predator Who Assaulted Me and My Best Friend on Our Engagement Night—Uncovering a Dark Past

AS a shy teenager, growing up in Scarborough, Jenni felt she didn’t fit in with others and would often spend hours in her bedroom on social media.

The 16-year-old, who lived with her mum and sister, was intrigued when an unexpected person called Aaron Swan popped up on her page asking to be friends.

When Jenni was 16 she was love-bombed by Aaron SwanCredit: BBC Aaron Swan (with Jenni) was already on the sex offenders registerCredit: BBC He was found guilty of serious sexual offences including rape of three womenCredit: Police Scotland

“I didn’t know anyone of that name and it was only after accepting him that I looked at his pictures and I thought he was really cool and handsome,” she says. “I didn’t know how old he was but I knew he wasn’t a teenager. I was a bit intrigued so I asked him why he added me.”

She felt a tingle of excitement when he replied: “I thought you were really pretty x.”

But what Jenni did not know was that she was embarking on years of brainwashing and physical and emotional abuse with a serial sex pest and rapist who played on the insecurities of vulnerable young women… and was already on the sex offenders list.

The chilling story of his coercive behaviour and how he got away with his crimes for decades, is told in the BBC2 , Lover, Liar, Predator. which airs on Monday night.

After making initial contact with Jenni in 2009, Swan, who said he lived in but had grown up in Scarborough, love-bombed her.

“We would be texting all day,” says Jenni. “I would be texting him on my school break and as soon as I was home.

“I told him I felt like I didn’t fit in and that I had to act a certain way in front of people and he said, ‘You don’t have to act with me. You can be yourself.’ I felt like he was talking to me like an adult and not a teenager. He basically became my safe space. The person I could go to about anything.

“After only two and a half weeks he sent a message saying ‘I love you.’ I could feel the smile on my face. I said, ‘I think I love you too.’”

He arranged to meet her in Scarborough and Jenni slipped out of her house, without telling her mum, and waited for him on a bench.

“He got out of the car and was about 6ft 2in and was a really good-looking guy. I could see he was going in for a hug so I thought I’d have a hug and, before I knew it, I’d had a kiss with him.

Shannon was raped by Swan on the night of his and Jenni’s engagement partyCredit: BBC

“Everything just felt natural and right and it was the most comfortable I had ever felt in myself with someone. He was saying he never expected this to happen and that it was the first time he had felt connected to someone and properly in love. But, looking back, it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I did tell my mum I had a friend on Facebook and I really enjoyed talking to them. I had to explain that he was 24 and she said, ‘There’s no need for a 24-year-old man to be talking to a 16-year-old girl.’ But the more my family tried to hold onto me, the more it made me want to escape.”

When Swan suggested they live together at his home in Jedburgh, Scotland, Jenni’s worried mum started speaking to her daughter’s school friends and one of the girls said that she, too, had received a message from Aaron Swan.

It confirmed her theory that he was targeting girls until he got a reply. Jenni’s mum rang the police who arrived with some shocking news about his past. He had been married before and had been put on the sex offenders register in 2004 for sexually abusing a 15-year-old girl.

When Jenni confronted him about it, he told her that, in the eyes of the law he was an adult at 19 but that age was just a number and the girl was very mature for her age. Jenni accepted this and, to her family’s horror, packed her belongings and moved to Jedburgh with him.

In 2011, she was 18 and at college with a one-year-old child by Swan. But life was anything but idyllic. He was unable to look after their baby on his own because he had been placed on the sex offenders register in 2010 for a second time after child porn images were found on his iPad. He explained it away to Jenni that the device was shared by his flatmates and that he hadn’t downloaded any indecent images himself.

Swan was also cheating on Jenni with other woman and she confided in her friend, Shannon, who she had met at college.

“Everything she told me about him just got worse and worse,” says Shannon. “But there was nothing I could say that would turn her away from him. He would do a simple thing like buying her a chocolate bar and she would be elated.”

Raped best friend

In 2013, Shannon attended Jenni and Swan’s engagement party in the pub owned by his family. She went back to Jenni’s home afterwards and slept in the spare room, only to be awakened during the night by Swan who laid down beside her and forced himself on her, pinning her arms down as she struggled to push him away.

“I thought, ‘This can’t be happening,’” says Shannon. “He was repeatedly saying, ‘You can’t tell anyone about this otherwise the wedding will be off and it will be your fault.’”

After biting him, he got off and left the room for his own bedroom and then started having sex with a sleeping Jenni, telling her he had just had sex with Shannon.

“Jenni walked into the room saying that Aaron had just told her that he and I had just had sex,” recalls Shannon. “The devastation of hearing that… it was just like a ringing in my ears. I knew in that moment the friendship was over.”

Jenni and Swan were married and she had recently given birth to their second child when he told her that he had been having an affair with a work colleague who was pregnant with his child.

‘We could have a bit of fun’

Robyn, now 19, had fallen under his spell after they first met when she was 18.

Robyn recalled being pushed to the floor as Swan continued to rape herCredit: BBC

“He was funny and charismatic and easy for someone of my age to get along with,” she says. “He basically outright said, ‘We could have a bit of fun.’ I tried to deter him to begin with but then realised how much I was enjoying the attention.

“He would wait until late at night and pick me up at a car park. I was a teenager with an older man in a car, taking me out. I thought it was quite thrilling – probably because I knew it was something that I shouldn’t be doing.

“I would spend all day, waiting for him to message me. He would tell me, ‘I’ve never felt this way about anybody.’ I was obsessed by him.”

I was obsessed by him

Robyn

After Jenni kicked him out, he moved in with Robyn, but she soon came to realise that she was walking on eggshells with a man who had violent mood swings.

“He could be very cold and distant,” she says. “He would often remind me that he gave up his family for me so I should be more grateful.

“He would sit in the house and pine after Jenni. Other days would be great and we would be like best friends. I began to dread being intimate with him but I also knew that in order to keep him I had to do what he wanted.

“It all culminated one night in February 2020. He was getting a little bit more sexually aggressive than he usually does.

“I was crying and telling him I wasn’t enjoying myself and I would really like it if we could stop. He said, ‘Too bad,’ and pushed me to the floor and continued having sex, asking if he was scaring me. I knew what he’d done was wrong but I never would have called it rape because I didn’t want to believe that that was what had happened to me.”

‘I felt trapped’

After Jenni told her mum and sister, Sarah, she had split with Swan, they visited her and while they were there, she got a call from him, late at night, threatening to kill himself if she didn’t meet him. She drove to meet him by the river, not saying where she was going.

Swan eased himself back into Jenni’s lifeCredit: BBC

A concerned Sarah called Jenni and then heard her arguing with Swan, saying, “No, Aaron. No,” before the line went dead.

“He started accusing me of sleeping with other people and took my phone,” says Jenni. “Then he pushed me to the ground. I tried to scream for help but he had me by the throat and I could hardly breathe.”

Meanwhile, Sarah located where Jenni was on her own phone and called Swan’s sister who rang the police. When they arrived, they viewed it as a domestic situation and advised them to pick a better time and place for conversations in future. Then Sarah turned up and took her sister home, as Swan glared at her.

Gradually, Swan eased himself back into Jenni’s life, staying longer and longer after he dropped the kids off and moving his belongings back. But he was still dividing his time between Jenni and Robyn.

“I felt trapped,” says Jenni. “One night, before we went to bed, he was complaining that his back was sore from sleeping on the sofa. I woke up to him touching me. I grabbed his wrist and said ‘No,’ but he was a lot stronger than I was.

“I pleaded with him to stop. He replied, ‘Stop f…… crying. I’ll finish and it will be all over.’”

Jenni tried but could not keep him out of her life.

“Another time, when he dropped the kids off, he came into the house and said that I was going to get back with him or he would make my life a living hell.

“He said there would be some changes and started going through who I was allowed to have as friends and what I could and couldn’t do.”

‘Stop f…… crying. I’ll finish and it will be all over.’

Swan

Walking to the bathroom, Jenni texted his sister, asking to send her dad round. Instead, she turned up herself and when Aaron asked why she was there she replied, “Because you told me today that the only way you would get over Jenni is if you killed her.”

Jenni told him to get out and she took Aaron’s sister advice to call the police to get an injunction against him. Aaron’s dad arrived shortly after the police had left, to check on Jenni’s wellbeing, and he took a call from his son who said he was at home and about to go to bed.

However, looking out of the window, Jenni’s saw his car driving slowly by.

You told me today that the only way you would get over Jenni is if you killed her

Jenni's sister

“I panicked because I was sure he was waiting for his dad to leave before he forced his way in and either killed or raped me.”

But police had identified the car and Swan was arrested.

Despite Jenni’s statement to police about his attack on her, there was insufficient evidence to charge Swan with rape. Instead, he was charged with harassment.

Eight years after they fell out, Shannon noticed on Jenni’s Facebook that she had split with Swan and she suggested they get together for a chat. When they met, she told Jenni that she, too, had been raped by Swan. The pair were now able to tell police that he had raped both of them.

The ex-wife

When detectives visited Robyn to say that Aaron had been arrested for raping Shannon, they asked what her relationship was like with him. But she brushed away their concerns.

Natalie met Swan when at a New Year’s Eve party when she was 17Credit: BBC Natalie became pregnant when she was 18 and the following year they marriedCredit: BBC

“I was unwilling to tell them anything that had happened, at the time,” she says. “I wasn’t willing to accept it myself. But thoughts of him being an awful person were becoming far too much for me not to listen to.

“Aaron’s sister was one of my best friends. She told me about a 12-week course called Own My Life, where there would be other women who have been in a similar situation as me. She said she thought it would be really good for me to do it.

“I attended and was made to feel very at ease. I didn’t realise how comforting having a group of women around you could be.

“When we were being told about different types of abuse, I remembered having no money and no keys and that one time he kicked me out in the freezing cold and wouldn’t let me in until about four o’clock in the morning. He had complete control over everything.

“In the week where I talked about his actual violence, I remember the look of shock on these women’s faces and that was when it really became clear to me just how much of what Aaron did was abuse.

“They played a video at the end to introduce the creator of the course. It turned out to be Aaron’s first wife, Natalie.”

Natalie had met him in 2001 at a New Year’s Eve party when she was 17.

In a familiar fashion he quickly set about love-bombing her.

“I thought he was beautiful and truly loved me,” says Natalie, who was a devout Christian and a virgin who did not believe in sex before marriage.

Natalie became pregnant when she was 18 and the following year they married.

It was always him pushing the boundaries

Natalie

“It went from this very intense, romantic love to him being very demeaning and unkind. He would say, ‘Out of ten you’re maybe a four or five.’

“I was really young and inexperienced, sexually, to deal with all the things he did to me and the things he expected me to do. I just endured what was required. That’s what I thought sex was.

“It was always him pushing the boundaries. He would say things like, ‘Let me try choking you. I just want to see what it’s like.’ ‘I really want to cut you during sex. We’ve never done that before.’

“When your only experience of sex is somebody being sexually violent, you don’t have any way to understand this is not how things should be. The idea of saying no or that hurts just didn’t exist.”

At 21, Natalie fell pregnant again. Six months into the pregnancy she reported him to the police for a violent rape. A week later the baby was born prematurely and was very ill, for which she blamed Aaron.

Jenni, Shannon, Robyn and Natalie are now firm friendsCredit: BBC

Swan was arrested and charged with her rape but was found not guilty.

Natalie moved away from Scarborough to Essex to start a new life and set up the Own My Life course to help other women who had been through similar things she had. Aaron’s sister was also a good friend of Natalie’s and together they came up with the plan of encouraging Robyn to take the course so she could realise the abuse she had been enduring.

It worked and at the end of the course, Robyn told police she had been raped by Swan.

At his trial in in November 2023, Jenni, Shannon and Robyn were all called to give evidence. He was found guilty and given a minimum six-year sentence before being considered for parole.

I wanted to face him and show him that I wasn’t scared of him anymore

Jenni

“I wanted to face him and show him that I wasn’t scared of him anymore,” says Jenni. “I think I only looked at him once before I had finished my evidence and he was just staring straight ahead with no emotion on his face.

“Standing in that box, I seemed to channel all this anger that hadn’t really come over me before,” says Robyn. “I also felt this sense of power. Like this was my chance to tell my story.”

“When I heard ‘guilty’ I had to hold onto the seat in front of me,” says Shannon. “I absolutely crumbled. When the jury was asked if that decision was by majority or unanimous and they said ‘unanimous,’ I can’t even describe the feeling. After all those years, to have 15 complete strangers say that they believed me…”

Jenni, Shannon, Robyn and Natalie are now firm friends.

“After such awful events, it’s really incredible to know that we’ve got this extended family supporting each other, throughout everything,” says Jenni.

Lover, Liar, Predator airs Monday night on BBC2