Hmm, an interesting and plausible scenario. It seems unlikely, however, that the police wouldn’t have found evidence of such interests on her computer, phone or while investigating her background. I wouldn’t think that someone would just develop an interest in such things out of the blue, especially to the degree of following through with another party, without having shown evidence of it somewhere.
Still, yours is an interesting idea and once again brings me back to the subject of the guy in Michigan who she was attempting to meet up with, and whether an investigation of him would reveal such interests. Even though she never met up with this particular guy, she could have met up with someone else who had the same proclivities, with a scenario like you describe being the result. It’d be interesting to know whether the authorities have looked into an S&M/submission/bondage scenario regarding Michigan Man and/or Sherri herself.
Between this case, the Norwegian submarine guy, and the two women lost on a sailboat event’s new revelation that the follower was a dominatrix, it’s starting to look like getting kinky with strangers is a real high risk activity.
Not that Philster’s theory is sure to be true, but something in that general direction sure fits most of the evidence we have.
One thing’s for sure: crimes (and sea stories) are harder to solve when the victim(s) are actively dissembling.
A red flag: The hubbie referred to her as being ‘branded’ … and people in sex slave trades and those who willingly register with a slave registry, will get a unique number, and some might tattoo this number on themselves.
Like any tattoo, it’s called a ‘tattoo’. Someone unwillingly tattooed, be it with a slave number (and/or bar code) or image, will call it a tattoo. It’s… a tattoo.
She escapes… she has this tattoo… she refers to it as a ‘branding’ … and this word sticks, such that even the husband uses it (really?) and this is where the flag pops up. Between her and her Dom/Master/Owner/Whatever, the ultimate fantasy word for the unique tattoo is ‘branding’.
I’m seeing this as ‘off’ – because – and maybe I missed this – but she was tattooed. It’s branding in another sense… but I honestly can’t see the word branding being the one anyone who was kidnapped and tattooed calling it. Nor anyone close to them speaking in the 3rd person.
And it highlights the naivete of the husband… and gives us an insight into the words SHE is using. Sans that, I don’t know what she is telling anyone, but SHE used the word branding…
IMO the early announcements when she resurfaced totally had the sound of being written by an attorney or similar who was trying to write as if they were a PR person.
The style is “A spokesman for Papini said …” even though the words were read out by the husband as a supposedly self-written piece mostly speaking his own mind.
Og knows illiterate folks write some incomprehensible shit. Even more so under major stress. This was different; bad in very unlikely ways.
Don’t really understand the “branding” thing. When I’ve read about sex cults, like the one allegedly featuring that Smallville actress 2nd in command, I always read about them branding victims and victims being branded. I don’t hear/read about them being called tattoos.
Sex is such a bizarre realm. I don’t know of any other area of human behavior where so many odd, freaky, risky, damaging compulsions occur, or at the other end where so many people freak out over things that are fairly minor.
So I really just came in here for the kink, but it sounds like if the prevailing theory is true, she tried to do a consensual BDSM thing and ended up being held captive, raped, and beaten instead. Her only choice then would be to tell the truth about what happened to the public, thus inviting ignorant people to blame her for her own victimization, or to be quiet about it or outright lie about it, leaving people to speculate.
Agree. I was struggling with what terminology to use. I chose massive understatement.
My overall point was a response to the folks wondering why she wasn’t trying to cash in on her proverbial 15 minutes of fame. Assuming she’s fully rational (c.f. Appel the non-sailor) my POV is that she believes there’s some major downside to her trying to do so.
If reality is as AK84 suggests, she’d be able to play the victim / plucky survivor / not-quite-hero fairly successfully. There’d always be trolls insisting she deserved it because all women do, but that vicious crap is just part and parcel of being a celebrity. The payback for getting trolled by a tiny minority of the usual jerks is cashing in from everybody else.
If OTOH reality is a BDSM scene gone very bad, then as you say she’s *really *in a no-win situation. She sure didn’t deserve what she got, but now the trolls will be the majority of the public who believe kinky=Eeeevvvviiiillll. So she’s
A) likely to fail at victim / plucky survivor / not-quite-hero AND
B) likely to fail at cashing in.
That’s a powerful motivator to go into hiding & shut up. When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Even if you only dug a couple percent of it yourself and the rest is a cave-in.
My own pet theory:[ol]
[li]She ditched her husband for a weekend of crazy sexytimes with some lover in some hotel.[/li][li]Husband, knowing only that she disappeared, concocts the “found the phone” story to create some urgency in the media. This was not part of her plan.[/li][li]Her new squeeze sees on the news that she’s missing and there’s a manhunt in progress, says “hell with this noise”, and takes off.[/li][li]She holes up for a little while, concocting a plausible story; meanwhile, she has no cards and very little cash, so she’s losing weight.[/li][li]She finds a few things that she can use as restraints, and puts her “escape” plan in motion. She cuts her hair and inflicts some reasonably convincing injuries.[/li][li]She sprints toward the highway so that if anyone sees her on the way, she can say she just escaped her captors.[/li][/ol]
