The facts I know so far are thus: The two men in custody, Michael Wilson and William Fritsch, made contact with the alleged victim in an Internet chat room. Wilson and Fritsch sent the man a bus ticket, and he traveled from Seattle to Portland, where they picked him up. Eight days later, he left their home and went to a neighbor's house, saying he'd been held against his will. The police were called, and they arrested Wilson and Fritsch on charges of kidnapping, rape, and assault. Wilson and Fritsch confirmed the Seattle man's account of events in the house, but claim it was consensual sexual role-playing.
Cases like this are unsettling to me, both personally and as a BDSM activist. It's never okay for any participant in an SM scene to keep going when consent has been withdrawn. I have no sympathy for people who use SM as a cloak for assault or abuse; they taint responsible players and give fodder to those who want to see our sexuality criminalized or stigmatized.
But I have a feeling I don't yet understand everything that may have happened in this case. I can't count the number of people who have asked me to do exactly this type of scene with them. They call it a "kidnapping, no escape" scene, or a "no safe word" scene, or a "no limits" scene. They want the experience to be like a roller coaster--once they're on, they can't get off--and explain that it's the only way they can really feel like they're giving up control.
I don't do scenes like this, and this case is an excellent example of why. The reason for assigning a specific safe word is that the bottom can then beg and plead for mercy, and the top can know for a fact that the bottom--if he or she hasn't used the safe word--hasn't withdrawn consent. Without a safe word, how can the top know when consent has been withdrawn in a "kidnapping, no escape" scene? In those cases, the top must treat anything that might mean withdrawn consent as the end of the scene--or risk arrest.
I don't know what the Seattle man asked for, or what he was expecting. But I do know that any top who thinks they can negotiate a scene in which the bottom doesn't have the power to stop the action is a news story waiting to happen.
