A young autistic woman was allowed to have sex with numerous men because her carers were said to believe that high-risk encounters with strangers might help her to “learn from her mistakes”, it can be revealed today.

The woman, 23, who has severe learning disabilities and an IQ of 52, was repeatedly exploited during a court-approved, two-month trial period this summer in which random men were permitted to visit her Manchester care home between 10am and 4pm each day.

She was also taken to shisha bars and had sex in public on numerous occasions, including in a taxi and at the back of a bowling alley, because the care company paid to look after her would not physically intervene. In August carers reported that the woman was “offering her telephone number to any number of Asian males” with whom she came into contact. She “doesn’t always recognise them when they arrive at the door and they sometimes don’t recognise her”.

The sexual activity was brought to an end after two months. Last month, in a report to the court, a psychiatrist warned that allowing her to continue to be exposed to such a “high level of risk” was unacceptable, unprofessional and might lead to “sexual abuse, violence, injury or death”.

Details of the case are being disclosed today after the court ordered the release to The Times of documents revealing the danger to which she was exposed. The woman cannot be named for legal reasons.

The recent events have horrified her family. Relatives accused care authorities of approving an “experiment” that led to the “pimping out of a highly vulnerable young woman”.

Court papers submitted by Manchester city council, which is responsible for the woman’s care, describe a troubled childhood. She had a history of running away from home.

From the age of nine, she was reported missing ten times in five years and “significant concerns arose that [she] had been subjected to sexual activity with men, particularly Asian men”. This included “sexual violations and rapes” while she was still a child.

When she became a teenager, she was assessed as being among “the small percentage of young women with autism whose obsessional interest relates to men”, particularly “men from different ethnic or cultural backgrounds”.

Since the woman’s 18th birthday in 2013 her care has been guided by the Court of Protection. Its role is to safeguard vulnerable adults who lack the mental capacity to make decisions for themselves.

A judge ruled in 2015 that the woman was able to consent to sex but lacked the capacity to “make decisions on her contact with men”. Care authorities feared that she would be “at significant risk of sexual harm if she was allowed unescorted access to the community”.

Under a court-approved care plan, the council employed a specialist company, Engage Support, to provide her with 24-hour support. At home, a carer was always with her; in the community, she was accompanied by two care workers.

Twelve months ago the woman is said to have embarked on a series of increasingly risky attempts to engage sexually with men she barely knew. She sent dozens of “nude photographs of herself” to a man who worked in a shisha bar. Other new “boyfriends” included a taxi driver whom she was “facetiming naked, as he had asked her to do this”.

When the woman began to seek sex in public, Engage Support is said to have threatened to terminate its care contract with Manchester council unless the restrictions on her freedom were reduced.

According to court documents, the local authority told the court that a psychologist employed by the company believed that giving her “unsupervised contact with men” was in her best interests. A safety net would mean that she could contact her carers by phone if necessary. The council opposed the plan, arguing that to withdraw support in the community would “inevitably expose her to a very significant risk of sexual harm, violence, abuse and trafficking”.

In June, however, Judge Jonathan Butler gave Engage Support permission to leave the woman alone at home “to have sexual relations with others during daytime hours [10am to 4pm]”. If she sought sex in public, carers were “not expected to intervene physically”, nor to “remain present during such acts”. She had promised the judge that she would no longer have sex in public. Over the next few weeks, she had sex with at least six men in her bedroom and continued to seek sex in public. On one July night alone, she left home and had sex with three men before police brought her back at 4.30am.

In 2015 the woman had met a restaurant waiter who was a Bangladeshi citizen. After a supervised courtship, the pair “expressed a wish to marry”. In 2016 the court gave its blessing and a wedding was held last year.

The woman continued to receive 24-hour care but the couple were given privacy on the five nights a week when her husband stayed with her. Their families say that he is devoted to her.

He was not informed of the court’s decision to allow his wife to have sex with men when he was not at home. When he discovered what was happening, he felt “devastated and betrayed”.

In late August Engage Support “indicated that they would no longer allow men to visit”. This decision was made after concerns were raised over her sexual behaviour and the welfare of its staff. Engage Support withdrew from the contract early last month. Its former client has been moved to a different location, run by a new care provider. The case has gone to the High Court.

Manchester council refused to say how much money it had paid the care company over the four years of the contract.