The Supreme Court will have the opportunity to go to bat for women in 2010. The judges have decided to consider "reinstating the sex trafficking and forced labor conviction " of Glenn Marcus, a formerly convicted sex trafficker who has been presented by the cutesy alliterative title "S&M Svengali" in the media.
Marcus was initially convicted in 2007 for the brutal abuse of a woman, only known as Jodi, for his S&M website between 1991 and 2001. Although it appears that Jodi initially entered into a "master-slave" relationship on her own accord, descriptions of the relationship quickly descend into the realm of torture and captivity. According to a news report , "Her head was shaved and he [sic ] word 'slave' was written on her stomach by Marcus with a knife. She claimed she was whipped regularly, hung by her arms from posts, and subjected to a range of humiliating poses." Even more graphic descriptions of the abuse (that would be considered blatant human rights violations in other contexts) can be found in earlier articles
It should come as no surprise to feminist readers that the gravest violation of the law, as far as sentencing is concerned, was actually "forced labor," rather than anything actually related to the physical abuse. Jodi testified that she was forced to write about these experiences on Marcus's website. A prior court ruling in New York indeed found that she did not receive financial compensation for Marcus's business venture, as he maintained all the profits.
Given the murky boundaries of consent with S&M practices, nay-sayers assert that Jodi consented and willingly submitted to the defendant's treatment. They claim that she signed a contract thereby wittingly becoming a voluntary "slave." Some proponents of Marcus went as far to claim that the experience was pleasurable. However, Jodi maintained in her testimony that she did not have freedom of movement and felt that she was held against her will.
The appeal to the conviction (and his nine-year prison sentence) was successful in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2007 . Marcus's attorneys argued that the initial ruling was based upon a law that was applied to the case retroactively. The conviction cited the Trafficking Victims Protection Act; however, the act did not apply to some of the incidents that Jodi described, prior to the enactment of the law in October 2000.
From all appearances, the defendant's position seems analogous to the "But she really meant yes when she said no!" routine. Keep an eye out for U.S. v. Marcus, 08-1341 coming to a media outlet near you, next year.
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In the future, it would be considerate to put a warning at the beginning of your post when you are going to be describing violence in such graphic detail.