Lawyer: NYC 'sex-slave' relationship consensual

A man had a consensual relationship with a Wisconsin woman who alleges he held her captive as his sex slave for more than a week after she answered an apartment ad on Craigslist, his lawyer said.

John Hopkins, 45, pleaded not guilty to rape and other charges Friday. Police say Hopkins told the 27-year-old woman she could live with him for free in his Brooklyn apartment if she cooked and cleaned when she answered the ad last month.

Hopkins' attorney, Andrew Stoll, said Hopkins and the woman knew each other for two years and had a consensual relationship. The woman even wanted to return to the apartment after Hopkins kicked her out for excessive drinking, Stoll said.

-------------

But Assistant District Attorney Christopher Laline said in court that Hopkins "set up slave rules" for her, along with a list of punishments if she disobeyed, including flogging her and chaining her to a radiator, forcing her to drink water and preventing her from using the bathroom, and sexually molesting her.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/03/11/state/n183044S79.DTL#ixzz1GVG1lIAB

No more than you can consent to being raped or murdered.

The question here isn't whether or not she consented to "slavery" the question is whether or not she consented to whatever acts they participated in.

There are all sorts of freaky submissive and masochistic types out there that enjoy being abused or treated in ways that most of us would find bad.

I don't know that she was one of them, he may be a monster, or she may be a drunk who is getting back at him for kicking her out.

It's all for a jury to decide.

The key to such relationships - and there are more than lots of people would like to admit - is setting up mutually agreed upon boundaries. And those boundaries might include being chained to radiators. The problem as I see it is that most dom/sub relationships I know don't write this stuff down. If it went south I could easily imagine one party using their consensual but non-normative sexual behavior against the other.

Now, if this agreement took place on Craigslist, there should be (and if there isn't there SHOULD HAVE BEEN) a record of what was agreed upon. Don't people know how to use CL yet?



Oh, I guess not.

(Hmm, I should qualify...my use of Sen. Lee (R-Dumbassistan) is not meant to suggest that he was into freaky S&M, only that too people aren't thoughtful of consequences before using CL)

who does exactly that.

Not saying that is what occurred here, frankly the article didn't have a lot of concrete facts mostly just statements from lawyers, but your statement is not universally true.

No exceptions to the general rule, that is.

where one works for the other and suffers abuse all as part of a voluntary sexual practice is perfectly legal.

Again, I'm not saying that is what happened here, but it *does* happen at times.

Look up BDSM some time.

Not on a work computer though.

again I ask, S&M is slavery?

If so, there are about a million slavers in this country, if not more.

If you want to count floggings, hot wax drips, handcuffs and other restraints, bindings, pee and poop play (yeah disgusting but people do it), and all of the other freaky "slave-like" sexual acts done just in this country.

I think it's creepy, but I'm not about to tell someone what they can and can't do in the privacy of their own home. That I leave to the Regressive Party.