Bondage and discipline: Woman tells court strangling someone unconscious isn’t BDSM

A second woman is giving evidence in the trial of a man accused of strangulation and injuring with intent to injure in the Wellington District Court.

A woman has described being choked until she was unconscious by a man while having sex, saying the experience left her scared and confused.

She’s one of two women who have accused the man, whose name is suppressed, of choking them until they blacked out. All three met on Tinder and have an interest in BDSM, but the Crown has told a jury this isn’t a case of BDSM gone wrong and the man’s actions were instead deliberate.

In her police interview, which was played to a jury in the Wellington District Court this afternoon, the woman said she was having sex on the man’s bed when he wrapped his hand around her throat.

She described his expression as “insistent.”

“He knew what he was doing, and he liked it. He looked set on looking at me and my face,” she said.

The next thing she knew she woke up on the floor.

“I just remember feeling helpless. I was really scared and confused when I came to.”

She said the man had made a joke about it and said it wasn’t what he intended. He told her she should have said something, but that was impossible when she was being choked. She said there had been no mention of using a safe word if things got out of hand.

The woman said he told her not to mention it to his partner. But she said the encounter didn’t feel right and she felt dirty afterwards. Her partner came to pick her up, but she never told him what had happened.

The woman told police she had done BDSM for 6-7 years, and had multiple people asphyxiate her, but never to the point of passing out and it wasn’t something anyone in the BDSM community would do.

In a second incident, the woman told the police they had filmed a scene where the man was really rough and started hitting her. She said she asked him to stop, but he kept going. She ended up sitting on the floor crying and clutching a soft toy, but he continued to take photos of her.

“My arse was so red and hot, but he just thought it was funny,” she said.

The woman explained the two had an interest in videos and photography. They discussed making a video, to post online which they would benefit financially from. She was impressed by the number of followers he had on social media. .

The man has denied charges of injuring with intent to injure and strangulation and maintains the incidents never happened.

Under cross-examination from his lawyer Adam Couchman, the woman said she had about half a dozen videos with the man, most involved BDSM. One involved her and the man’s partner while in another he was putting his hands around her throat in a mock strangulation scene.

But she said she eventually stopped communicating with him after receiving multiple messages from his partner and becoming aware he was allegedly hurting other women.

Couchman said to the woman she’d made no secret of the fact that she didn’t like the man.

She replied that she was abused by him.

The trial before Judge Bruce Davidson is due to finish next week.

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter, based in Wellington. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years, including at the Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently she was working as a media advisor at the Ministry of Justice.