Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence Volume 3 | Issue 2 Article 2 March 2018 Sadomasochism: Descent into Darkness, Annotated Accounts of Cases, 1996-2014 Robert Peters Morality in Media & National Center on Sexual Exploitation, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity Part of the Applied Behavior Analysis Commons, Clinical Psychology Commons, Community- Based Research Commons, Courts Commons, Criminal Law Commons, Criminal Procedure Commons, Criminology Commons, Domestic and Intimate Partner Violence Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Judges Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Society Commons, Sexuality and the Law Commons, Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons, and the Social Psychology Commons Recommended Citation Peters, Robert (2018) "Sadomasochism: Descent into Darkness, Annotated Accounts of Cases, 1996-2014," Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence: Vol. 3: Iss. 2, Article 2. DOI: 10.23860/dignity.2018.03.02.02 Available at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/iss2/2https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/iss2/2 This Resource is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sadomasochism: Descent into Darkness, Annotated Accounts of Cases, 1996-2014 Abstract A collection of accounts of sadomasochistic sexual abuse from news reports and scholarly and professional sources about the dark underbelly of sadomasochism and the pornography that contributes to it. It focuses on crimes and other harmful sexual behavior related to the pursuit of sadistic sexual pleasure in North America and the U.K. It is intended to be a resource to educate people about how sadomasochism can lead to harmful and even deadly sadistic sexual behavior. Keywords Sadomasochism, violence, cases, rape, children, abuse, murder, sadism, masochism Creative Commons License Creative ThiCommons works is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Acknowledgements Dignity thanks the following students for their time in editing this document: Hope Simas, philosophy and gender and women’s studies major, and Lily Lachapelle, psychology and gender and women’s studies major, and Arabic minor. This resource is available in Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/ iss2/2 Peters: Sadomasochism: Descent into Darkness, Cases 1996-2014 Volume 3, Issue 2, Article 2, 2018 https://doi.org/10.23860/dignity.2018.03.02.02 SADOMASOCHISM: DESCENT INTO DARKNESS ANNOTATED ACCOUNTS OF CASES, 1996-2014 Robert Peters National Center on Sexual Exploitation (Morality in Media) KEYWORDS Sadomasochism, violence, cases, rape, children, abuse, murder, sadism, masochism his collection of accounts of sadomasochistic sexual abuse from news re- ports and scholarly and professional sources is about the dark underbelly of T sadomasochism and the pornography that contributes to it. It focuses on crimes and other harmful sexual behavior related to the pursuit of sadistic sexual pleasure in North America and the U.K. It is intended to be a resource to educate people about how sadomasochism can lead to harmful and even deadly sadistic sexual behavior. I was prompted to write this paper by the release of the film Fifty Shades of Grey which portrays sadomasochism much in the same that Pretty Woman por- trays prostitution (Hughes, 2015). This collection of press accounts is a comple- ment to a paper I wrote more than a decade ago entitled The Link between Por- nography and Violent Sex Crimes (Peters, 2004). Unlike the earlier paper, this paper is not about violent sex crimes as such. A warning about the content of this paper Although there is nothing in this paper that is pornographic or “erotic,” the reader will be confronted repeatedly with graphic accounts of horrific sadomaso- chistic sexual abuse. Reading these accounts will be troubling and even unbearable for some readers; and if the reader finds descriptions of such abuse to be arousing, the paper may be a temptation to seek out pornography that depicts these types of abuse. There is a tension between the need to fully inform the public and the need to withhold information for law enforcement purposes and to protect public sensibil- ities and privacy. The press has been known to “sensationalize” sex crimes. This leads to desensitization. But there are also occasions when the public needs to know the whole truth, however unpleasant, but is kept (partly) in the dark. This leads to a lack of resolve. Published by DigitalCommons@URI, 2018 1 Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence, Vol. 3, Iss. 2 [2018], Art. 2 Be careful what you open the door of your life to For those contemplating sadomasochism as a means to “spice up” their sex lives, I say, “Be careful what you open the door of your life to because you don’t know what S&M will lead you or a partner into sooner or later.” Craig Johnson (1985) described the problem this way: Sadomasochism is indulged in…People like it. This is precisely one of the great dangers…A person tries it and finds it really gives him far out kicks. He may achieve orgasms like he’s never achieved before. It happens. Then he may come back to it, again and again…S/M works. (So, does LSD). But…he may forget (or never learn) that there are other, more deeply sat- isfying means to sexual fulfillment. S/M is very like using drugs to achieve sensation…He can become a ‘pain junkie.’ He may need more and more pain (or, if he is a sadist…to inflict more and more). Sexual addictions of any kind are difficult to break free from (Kheriaty, 2015). In his monograph Pornography’s Effects on Adults and Children (2001), Victor B. Cline described the problem this way: The second phase was an escalation-effect. With the passage of time, the addicted person required rougher, more explicit, more deviant, and “kinky” kinds of sexual material to get their “highs” and “sexual turn- ons.”…If their wives or girlfriends were involved with them, they eventu- ally pushed their partners into doing increasingly bizarre and deviant sex- ual activities. In many cases, this resulted in a rupture in the relationship when the woman refused to go further – often leading to much conflict, separation or divorce. Many of the accounts in this paper demonstrate that sadomasochist practices can start voluntary but lead to coerced behavior even murder. As in rape cases, trial judges and juries sometimes struggle to find perpetrators guilty in these situations, The role of pornography in sadistic sex crimes Sadomasochistic sexual abuse and pornography have much in common. If an individual becomes sexually aroused by binding a person and/or by forcing sex on a person, and/or by hurting, injuring or killing a person, he will also likely be sex- ually aroused by viewing depictions or reading descriptions of such behavior. Therefore, many men who commit sadistic sex crimes also view pornography that depicts bondage, rape, sexual torture, and sexual homicide (Cline, 2001). Pornography, however, does not have to depict sexual violence to serve as fuel or a trigger for sadistic sexual violence. Imagine an attractive young woman walk- ing by two young men who are sitting on a park bench. Both look up and see her walk by. One sees a person he would love to meet and spend time with. The other sees a woman he wants to hogtie, rape, torture and strangle. If the latter views non- violent pornography, he can also see a woman he would like to overpower and vi- olate. I will add that just because a news report or court opinion does not state that the (alleged) perpetrator possessed or viewed pornography doesn’t mean he didn’t do so. These cases, however, demonstrate that many perpetrators regularly view sadomasochist pornography. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol3/iss2/2 2 DOI: 10.23860/dignity.2018.03.02.02 Peters: Sadomasochism: Descent into Darkness, Cases 1996-2014 The link between sadomasochism and sex trafficking For almost a decade, I read detailed investigative reports prepared by two re- tired law enforcement agents who followed up on citizen complaints about possible violations of federal internet obscenity laws. The hardcore sexual conduct depicted on some websites was so horrific that it defied the imagination that the women had voluntarily consented to participate. Of course, as Donna Hughes (2010) has pointed out in her article, “Sex traffick- ing of women for the production of pornography,” women who perform in hard- core pornography for pay often consent without (fully) comprehending what they will be subjected to: Women used in the production of commercial pornography in the U.S. are often subjected to violence and coercion during filming. Often, they pro- test and try to stop the filming or back-out before filming begins. Their protests are ignored, or they are pressured by their agent or the director to continue. Their experiences of coercion and trickery often meet the criteria for sex trafficking. Sex trafficking is a federal felony. Regardless of whether the conduct meets the criteria for sex trafficking from start to finish or only after a point in time, the point is that as S&M becomes ap- pealing to more people and as the pornography they