WHEN Ruth Byron told women’s magazines and television chat shows about a condition that caused her to experience up to 40 orgasms a day, the Department of Work and Pensions took a keen interest.

For the 50-year-old woman spoke not only about living with persistent sexual arousal syndrome — but also with a 22-year-old lodger.

Benefit fraud investigators carefully monitored media coverage about Byron and realised that Simon Leach, the man she claimed was her lodger, was in fact her lover. They found that she had been overpaid £6,097 in housing and income benefits after lying to the department.

Yesterday Byron was sentenced to a two-year community rehabilitation order and told to pay £50 costs after she admitted four counts of benefit fraud.

And when the mother of ten appeared before magistrates in Blackpool she revealed that Mr Leach was now her husband.

Byron had told the benefits department that he was simply a paying guest at her home in Blackpool. But in media interviews she had claimed that it was he who was partly responsible for her sexual condition.

Warren Spencer, for the prosecution, said: “She claimed benefit from December 2001 as a single parent. At the time of her original claim she lived with her ex-husband and dependent children.

“Inquiries revealed that Simon Leach lived at her home as a lodger from July 2003. It is the prosecution’s case that from August 10, 2004, Byron and Mr Leach maintained a common household.”

When interviewed by fraud investigators, she had said that her husband had moved out and Mr Leach had lived there as a lodger since July 2003.

“But she was interviewed again on March 2, 2005, during which she was referred to a magazine article published over a year before in which she describes her relationship with Mr Leach and the fact he had moved his belongings into her bedroom. The article effectively described how they lived together as a couple since that time.”

One article, with the headline “Britain’s Most Orgasmic Woman”, told of her passionate relationship with Mr Leach, who is a year younger than Byron’s eldest daughter.

Chris Capadil, for Byron, said: “I must stress that you are dealing with a woman of good character who has some bizarre but serious health issues which are dealt with in the report on her.”

After the hearing, Mr Leach said that his wife’s condition had been diagnosed after she went to a doctor. “The gift of unending orgasms is also a curse. Ruth gets exhausted and seriously lacks sleep,” he said.

“She cannot wear tight clothes, like jeans, because that sends her off too. I can’t deny it, at first I felt like a stud. But as the weeks go by I sometimes wish it would end.”

MYSTERY SYNDROME

The medical profession has failed to find one single cause for persistent sexual arousal syndrome

Only a few dozen women have been identified with the condition in the past few years

Treatments for the condition have included muscle relaxants, counselling and local anaesthetic

Researchers are also planning to carry out brainwave studies to see if there is an arousal in the brain that fails to shut down after reaching climax

The male version of the condition is priapism

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