Humpjones

The Mostly Illegal World of Kidnapping Fetishes

Posted Apr 13, 2007 4 comments

There’s nothing journalists love more than a wacky fetish.  It’s much easier to point fingers at weirdos than it is to discuss coherent ideas—and let’s face it, hiring someone to kidnap you is pretty weird. Especially when you’re not doing it to collect ransom money, fake your own death and move to Peru. 

Everything becomes a business eventually, and kidnapping is no exception.  Even shitty rappers are getting in on this emerging market—on the more respectable end of the spectrum, insurance companies are providing kidnapping policies for executives and high-risk employees.  Somehow, there is still no consensus on wether or not kidnapping is bad meaning bad, or bad meaning good. Dig this Guardian article:

Brock Enright looks and sounds like any other New York guy in his mid-twenties. He describes himself as an artist. Indeed, he holds a masters degree from Columbia University. But now he is also the chief executive of a successful kidnap business, which violently abducts its clients from the street - or their homes - for up to $4,000 a time.

The sophisticated kidnap system he has developed resembles a version of countless adversarial video games. It’s a more sado-masochistic version of urban paint-ball. Clients come to him wanting to test themselves and go through the ‘real’ experience of violent abduction, incarceration and something that most people would describe as torture.

Fine Line, Grey Area, Slippery Slope

When you’ve been a weirdo for as long as I have, you get an intuitive sense of the hidden laws that govern reality.  One of them is Inverse Expectations—for instance, although you’d expect Satanists to be raving lunatics, eating their own shit and blood, they’re mostly exquisitely cultured, calm and refined people.  There are of course notable exceptions, like Hillary Clinton or the Bush family, who give the rest of them a bad name. The same holds true for the world of BDSM—Bondage, Domination, and Sado-Masochism.  For people who get off on pain and abusive power games, they’re amazingly polite humans. 

The prime currency of BDSM is communication—clear, honest, and detailed negotiations about exactly what will and will not fly once the games begin.  As Ms. Lauren of Two Big Meanies puts it:

In my experience, folks in the BDSM scene are much, much more scrupulous about negotiating consent, sexually and otherwise, than people in almost any other walk of life.  Informed consent and mutual pleasure are the building blocks of what we do.

The stakes are high.  It’s easy to cross the line right into some criminal charges, or make a dumb mistake that gets your partner killed.  As Robert Frost famously said, “getting killed under circumstances involving bondage is never good.” You might remember the Isreali diplomat running around San Salvador buck naked with a rubber ball strapped to his mouth.  He got fired, but people will remember Tzuriel Refael’s name. If anyone knows the name Simon Burley, it’s because he was acting out a “neo-Nazi hangman” fantasy and wound up getting hung. 

Neighbour Leslie Walker told the inquest she heard arguing. But Ms Hallam insisted it was part of the bondage sex game, the Sun reports.

That’s a tough one to explain to a jury whose idea of “kinky” is anything beyond missionary sex in the dark.  This is exactly why people like Brock Enright keep their bases as covered as possible, and then some:

Before an abduction contract is agreed, Enright sits down and discusses the client’s desires at length. They agree the basic ingredients, such as how much force should be used, and whether they will be blindfolded and bound throughout. But after that it becomes more spontaneous.

The two parties agree a time-scale over which the small kidnap team, whom Enright refers to as his ‘birds’, will strike. The thrill comes in not knowing exactly where, or when.

The Banality of Eeeeevil

Of course, the flip side of Inverse Expectations is that normal, decent, regular folks are the most insane, brutal and dangerous human beings on Earth.  Although I just made that up, it’s mostly true.  After all, consider the most high-profile kidnapping case in recent years, involving a NASA astronaut who either went batshit insane or had quietly been there for many years:

A NASA astronaut was arrested Monday on battery and attempted kidnapping charges after allegedly trying to subdue a romantic rival with pepper spray and abduct her from a parking lot at Orlando International Airport, police said.

Inside a bag Nowak was carrying, the officer found a tan trench coat, a new steel mallet, a new folding knife with a 4-inch blade, 3 to 4 feet of rubber tubing, large plastic garbage bags and about $600 in cash, the report said.

Did you know if you’re related to a Scientologist, or even just buddies with one, you can legally kidnap them in the UK? Stephen Cooper kidnapped his younger friend or “friend,” Kathleen Wilson, claiming she was being brainwashed by Scientology.  He confessed to police the full details of how he plotted to abduct her, and the jury found him innocent. 

It’s a disturbing precedent on a lot of levels—as much as I despise Scientology as the half-assed OTO knockoff it is, how committed am I to “Cognitive Freedom”?  Can the government force you to take drugs?  Can they forcibly deny you drugs?  Was Timothy Leary kidding when he said that most books needed warning labels?  Just because everyone in the room disagrees with you, does that make you crazy?

Normal is Still Relative

Ah, Kyrgyzstan.  I still vividly remember the first time I heard about their tradition of “Bride Kidnapping” because I was finishing up some unusually potent Afghani stuff I’ve never found since and sitting on a couch in my boxers.  This was probably the first time I’d worn underwear since I was in 8th grade, but see...it wasn’t my couch.  I still have those boxers, just in case.

There was some documentary on public television about the rather curious custom of stalking women, then having your family abduct them and hold them hostage until Stockholm Syndrome sets in and they finally give up.  To me that’s viciously fucked up, but to Kyrgyzstan folks, that’s the story of how I met your Mom. 

Although bride kidnapping has been illegal in Kyrgyzstan since 1994, it is a law that is rarely enforced, and one in three rural ethnic Kyrgyz women have been forced into such marriages.

Here in the Civilized World

The War of the Magicians is still raging, just like always, and it’s happening in plain sight, just like always.  It is a war of beliefs, a fight over the contents of the human mind and who gets to control them.  Here in the civilized world, you do your own thing, man....just as long as you’re not trying to make any changes....and no matter what Your Thing is, there’s someone ready to sell it to you. 

Kidnapping can be fun.  Bill O’Reilly knows this—and he brought his usual penetrating insight to bear on the case of 15 year old Shawn Hornbeck, who was abducted at the age of 11 by pedophile Micheal Devlin and sexually assaulted for four years straight.  Bill urged his viewers to focus on the lighter side of young boys getting sodomized:

There was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances. The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn’t have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted.

As Kurt Vonnegut would often say: “Don’t look at me.  I just got here myself.”

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