A retired judge has called for erotic asphyxiation to be banned, a week after a UK woman apparently died in a sex game gone wrong.
Erotic asphyxiation involves strangling or suffocation to heighten sexual arousal, but retired US Superior Court Judge Eugene Hyman has compared it to domestic violence.
Last week's alleged victim, 22-year-old Anna Florence Reed, is among more than 20 UK women believed to have died in the sex game gone wrong in the past 10 years, news.com.au reports.
"How can you consent to what is the equivalent of playing Russian roulette?" Hyman reportedly said during a conference at Bond University on the Gold Coast.
"When there's an increase of 600 percent [risk] when the person has been non-fatally strangled before, in my opinion the choking sex game thing can't be legal."
The act of auto-erotic asphyxiation - doing it solo - gained public attention following the death of INXS frontman Michael Hutchence in 1997.
Judge Hyman argues consent is not a legitimate defence in a strangulation case.
"If I were a judge handling a strangulation case and the defendant said 'my defence is consent', I would not permit the defence because in my opinion you can't consent to it.
"My personal belief is that if you've got non-fatal strangulation and domestic violence and there's a child custody issue, in my opinion that means that the batterer should not be able to make decisions regarding legal aspects - in other words, what school they go to, what religion, what medical treatment, all those kind of things, because that gives them power of control in terms of disagreeing with the other parent."
Newshub.
