BDSM” Are Used Interchangeably; the Latter Two Used As Abbreviations for Ease of Syntax
1 CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION People must sometimes be protected from themselves.1 On February 8, 1992, the British Guardian carried a story illustrated by a photograph of a man, sitting in his somewhat drab living room. He had a conservative haircut and moustache, reading glasses balanced on his nose, and a very worried look on his face. He had good reason for concern. His partner of twenty years had died of AIDS, he was nursing another friend with the same illness, and he was expecting to be sent to prison. His name was Anthony Brown. Brown was part of a group of homosexual men who met at a private residence to participate in sadomasochistic sex. The activities varied from mild to extreme in nature, but no ‘victim’ had ever required medical treatment, and all had participated consensually, for their own sexual pleasure. The group had, from time to time, taken video footage of their activities – for viewing within the group – and, in 1987, one of these videos fell into the hands of the police Obscene Publications squad. Police believed that they were viewing a snuff movie, that is, a movie in which a person is sexually tortured and then killed. In response, they launched a massive, expensive investigation, codenamed Operation Spanner. Gardens were dug up, looking for bodies. None, of course, were ever found. Criminologist Bill Thompson explains that “despite looking extremely foolish, the police went ahead with a charge of conspiracy to corrupt public morals to get a ‘result’. They 1 Rant J, sentencing a defendant in the Brown case, as reported in the Guardian newspaper, 21 November 1990, p.
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