They Meet Online
In 1998, “Jodi,” a Wisconsin woman, met a man in an Internet chat room who went by the moniker, GMYourGod. Jodi was about to embark on a long, sordid journey that would end in the U.S. Supreme Court; her dramatic and salacious case would be one of the weirdest the Supreme Court has ever seen. The chatroom was dedicated to sadomasochism, and GMYourGod, in reality one Glenn Marcus, would soon become her “master.”
Jodi had dabbled in two prior sadomasochist relationships before she met Marcus, but Marcus operated on an entirely different level. Marcus had a reputation as a hardcore master.
For one thing, he didn’t use safe words — something the mainstream bondage, dominance and sadomasochistic (BDSM) community generally uses. In a dominant-submissive relationship, safe words are a code for an activity — flogging, for example — to stop. They are the primary means by which the submissive partner could communicate that the activity was no longer consensual.
He referred to his submissives as slaves and referred to himself as master.
In October 1998, Jodi left on a trip from the Midwest to Baltimore to meet Marcus. As she would for years, she kept a diary for readers of Marcus’ website, Slavespace.com:
She wrote: “I have felt, am feeling, so many different things, millions of different things that I have never felt before.
“Mostly right now though, it is just total excitement! I am also very scared. The fear though, has changed over the weeks, and right now everything that I am afraid of boils down to being afraid that I will not please Sir.”
“Sir” was the name she and the other slaves called Marcus.
Jodi’s nickname became Poochie or, simply, Pooch.
In her first diary entry, reflecting on how she had felt before her first meeting, she wrote at length about her conflicting feelings of fear and excitement, which mingled and seemed to create a greater anticipation for her:
“There was a point a few weeks ago, when I just started to think, ‘What is wrong with me?’ This did not last long! But it surprised, and even scared me a little. I just started thinking, how could I need this? What is wrong with me? I want to give EVERYTHING to Sir. I want Him to own me, all of me, everything.”
She ended her diary entry: “This is everything.”
Jodi arrived at the airport, brimming with excitement. Another slave of “Sir,” “Doggie” was her escort. The two women immediately got along. Jodi wrote in her online diary, “She is even more beautiful in person! I felt very comfortable with Doggie, almost immediately.”
In the midst of their camaraderie, though, the two girls got lost and showed up at Marcus’s house later than expected.
For her first visit, Jodi was blindfolded, bathed, and given an enema. Later, still blindfolded, she had sex with Marcus. Her induction included being walked on all fours to the grass and relieving herself in front of Marcus.
According to her diary, Jodi — or Pooch — was elated. “There was no hiding, just completely exposed for him. He owns EVERY part of me. There was nothing to be embarrassed about, nothing because it all belongs to him.”
Her second day didn’t go so well. She was to practice and perform a dance and to play piano for him. But when she got in front of Marcus, Jodi messed up her song and dance, and began to cry. After her poor performance, she was put in a cage.
By then, another slave, who went by the name “Nameless,” had showed up, with her master. Jodi was brought out of the cage and muzzled with a washcloth and tied up while Marcus inserted a speculum into her.
She had not eaten for two days when Marcus finally fed his “slaves.”
They explored the full gamut of BDSM: choking and asphyxia, anal sex (according to the diary, Jodi’s first time), golden showers, lesbian sex, and beatings. At the end of a weekend most people would consider to be actual torture — and which she would later contend was — she wrote,
“When it was time for Poochie to leave, I felt very sad, but also VERY happy and at peace too. Being there, was beyond, way beyond, anything I imagined it would be. There is just no one else like Sir. He is extraordinary. He is funny, hilarious!, brilliant, talented in hundreds of different ways, and…….oh yeah! he is mean and scary too! :-O Beyond all of that, Sir is real. Everything he told me, before I came to him, was true. Absolutely everything.”
When Jodi met Marcus, she had a mop of long, unruly, dark and curly hair. She looked like what she was — a woman from the Midwest taking a very scary walk on the wild side. In most photos from the early days posted on the pages of Slavespace.com — whether she was blindfolded, shown naked with clamps on her nipples, or with needles spelling out GM stuck in her belly — she is grinning ear-to-ear.
As she visited him again and again, the visits became more intense. During her second trip, Marcus’s treatment sharpened — he stuck his fingers up her nose to lead her around, he whipped her, he choked and asphyxiated her until she blacked out. She wrote: “Sir had been so patient with Poochie about this. Sir could very well have gone ahead and done it, could have strangled and killed Poochie if he had wanted to. There was one point in which, after several attempts, Sir had his hands around Pooch’s neck, and Pooch was so much in a “freaking out state,” that it started panicking right away, and begging begging Sir to please please please “wait!”
A photo of her in this diary entry shows her completely wrapped up in saran wrap from her neck to her ankles, with only her breasts and pelvic area exposed. Her head was completely wrapped in gauze, like a mummy. A tiny hole was left for her to breathe. Her mouth was stuffed with a chain, which Marcus then pulled.
She wrote: “At one point, Poochie felt itself swaying, and thinking that it might pass out. The saran was very hot!”
While she was bound, Marcus wrote obscenities on her forehead. Later he put her in a bathtub and submerged her, giving her only a turkey baster for air. Jodi loved it, sort of.
She wrote: “Pooch had a little trouble in the beginning, with getting water in its nose, and choking on it. After this happened a few times, Sir stuffed something into pooch’s nose, to keep it from trying to breathe through it. Pooch also had some trouble with not keeping its lips pressed tightly enough around the tube, and water would get into pooch’s mouth, and it would have to swallow it.”
The climax of the trip was graphic. While blindfolded, she was cut repeatedly by Marcus with a knife, the word “slave” slashed into her stomach.
It was decided then that she would move to be closer to her master.
The final thoughts in her diary about the visit? “About being relocated…there are no words to describe how HAPPY and EXCITED and BOUNCING HAPPY poochie is!!!Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou SIR!!!”
“Sir does a beautiful drawing on poochie”
Glenn Marcus was originally described by Jodi as being, “just SO cute, and handsome, and striking!!”
Jodi described him in her diary as being the kind of man that, if “poochie were vanilla (ack) and out in a club, and didn’t know Sir, and Sir was just sitting there, poochie knows, that it would be doing EVERYTHING in its power to get that man’s attention!!!”
On the free part of Slavespace.com, there was no picture of the Master, just pictures of his slaves being debased. The image that they painted of him was one of strength: a tall, powerful, handsome man, fearsome and awe-inspiring. On the website, he posted his rules for his submissives, the contract to which his slaves were expected to adhere.
“I am nothing more than an object — an instrument to be used by my Master for HIS pleasures.”
“I will never look into the eyes of my Master without His permission. My eyes must be cast down in the presence of my Master. “
“My place is on my knees before my Master.”
“I will not hesitate in my obedience to my Master.
“My life is empty without Master to please.”
Many of his demands were in accord with usual practices of the BDSM community. But a few weren’t.
For instance, number 36. “Although I can ask for PERMANENT release at any time, I may not do so while I am being punished.”
Perhaps it was number 78 that would become the lynchpin for the federal government’s case against Marcus. “The money I earn in my career is mine to keep, however, I must ask my Master how I should spend or save it. I may present ways to Him for His approval. I will accept the responsibilities He gives me in the handling of my finances. It is important to my Master that I learn to handle money wisely so, if needed, I can reach my goals.”
But the quotidian reality S and M svengali Glenn Marcus, was quite different. The New York Post described him as “a chubby and balding man who appeared in court in an ill-fitting suit and thick glasses.” In real life, he was a sad sack. Forty-something at the beginning of his relationship with Jodi, he was living in his parent’s basement on Long Island, selling comic books by day, pretending to be lord of the universe by night.
He would travel to the house of his other “slave,” Doggie — real name: Joanna — in Baltimore to meet Jodi and the others.
According to the New York Daily News, Marcus’s sole possessions were a 1994 Jeep Cherokee and $250.
Some master.
By the time she had moved to be closer to her master, Jodi was fully branded. Literally. The master had burned a “G” on her buttocks.
According to court records, “the branded skin subsequently developed into a severe burn, but the defendant did not permit Jodi to seek medical attention.”
Soon after, Marcus had shaved Jodi’s hair off, and had her sever her ties with her friends and family.
According to court documents, when he was away from the apartment, his slaves were to recite the list of rules (known and posted on Slavespace.com as “Master’s Expectations”).
They were directed to wear butt plugs and breast clamps — failure to do so would be mean more punishment; either ordered by Marcus, or meted out by him. Punishment took the form of whippings and being caged.
Though this sort of role-playing is not unusual in BDSM communities, Jodi later asserted that, after a few years, she no longer enjoyed it and felt trapped by her literally confining relationship.
By 1999, nearly a year after her first meeting with her master, the bloom had come off the rose. According to court records, she had started burning herself with a cigarette and told Marcus what she was doing. Instead of telling her not to do it anymore, he did the opposite: He instructed her to burn herself more. In their next meeting, he slapped her and burned her forehead, arms, the bottom of her feet, the back of her neck and her vagina. She later testified: “I felt like I was literally in hell. I felt like I was on fire; I couldn’t put it out.”
In submissive-dominance play, the slave is expected to please the dominant person: Jodi, though, had lost the distinction between fantasy and reality and became convinced that she was not good enough to be Marcus’ slave. She was convinced that she had let him down, somehow, and she became depressed.
She tried to do better to please her master, but his requests were so sordid she could not comply. First, according to court records, he asked her to convince her younger sister to come visit them at their house in Baltimore; he wanted to give the sister Rohypnol, commonly referred to as Roofies — the date-rape drug — and allegedly wanted to rape her. Jodi refused to comply. He then asked that she find another sex slave for them via their website. When she was unable to do so, court documents say, he told her “the next time he visited, she would be so severely punished that she might not be able to work for some time afterwards.”
In October 1999, according to court documents, Marcus came down from Long Island to Baltimore again. Among his first orders of business was to handcuff her to the wall. Then, he went to take a nap. At this time, Jodi later testified, “she had a moment of clarity and decided she wanted to leave.”
Marcus had a new “slave” at the house at the time, Celia. Jodi told Celia that she wanted to leave. Celia, understanding that the relationship was no longer consensual, unlocked her handcuffs and released her from the wall.
But, in the meantime, Marcus had been woken from his nap by Doggie. He was not pleased. Jodi was retied to the wall and a whiffle ball placed in her mouth. He put a hood over her head and he sewed her lips together with surgical needles.
Later, he whipped her and had sex with her.
Then, according to court documents, she was placed on a flat board, handcuffed, and Marcus “attempted to sew Jodi’s vagina closed using a sewing needle and thread, only stopping when the needle broke.”
Horror movie writers would have struggled to come up with tortures as cruel.
The outrage had crossed a line. She later testified she had felt “completely beaten down, trapped and full of terror.”
She and the other slave, Joanna, both now wanted to leave; but Marcus wouldn’t let them. He threatened harm to their families and exposure: he promised to send videos of the things he’d done to Jodi to her father.
Adding insult to injury, Jodi was now the one running Marcus’ website, Slavespace.com. In January 2000, she was instructed to move to New York to live with another woman, named Rona, where she would be working for Slavespace, which charged money for the exclusive content — including herself naked, in chains, tied up and gagged.
It was then, Jodi would later contend, that she was forced to write her gleeful diary entries, which were posted on the site along with photographs taken during her torture session, where, to Slavespace.com readers it seemed she was happy to be tortured.
The labor she did on the website turned out to be one of Marcus’ biggest mistakes in dealing with Jodi.
According to court documents, she worked full eight-plus hour days; posting pictures, diaries and clicking repeatedly on the page so that Marcus could tally higher page views. She would testify that she only worked for the website because she was scared of the repercussions that Marcus would inflict on her. And she had reason to be afraid. According to court documents, when web traffic had not met Marcus’ expectations, she had been tied up, her mouth had been gagged with a washcloth, and her labia had been pierced with a safety pin and locked by padlock.
Additionally, Jodi would contend, she wasn’t paid for her work; rather Marcus received all the profits from the website — court records indicate it was hundreds of dollars per month.
Jodi’s tenure as the webmaster and slave to Marcus continued until March 2001, when she tried yet again to leave. But first she would have to be punished.
She went to see her master, terrified, but fearing she had no choice.
In a Long Island house that belonged to a woman named Sherry, she was sent to the basement. When she tried to say she didn’t want to go, Marcus forced her by smashing her head into a beam.
She was tied up by her wrists and ankles to the beam and flogged. She was drugged with a Valium. He pierced her tongue with a surgical needle and left her to hang from the ceiling for another 45 minutes. Adding insult to injury, another Pooch diary was written about this — complete with photos.
The May 18, 2001 diary entry read: “OVER 25 NEVER BEFORE SEEN PICS are now up in the slavespace MEMBER SECTION! These BRAND NEW PICS include poochie being hung by its wrists and ankles with ropes for hours!!, pooch with a VERY VERRRRRRRRRRY loooooong needle through its tongue, pooch being severly whipped while having clothespins on its nipples and clit, and………much much MUCH MORE!!! Sir has once again allowed pooch to put up a preview picture here! Thank YOU SIR! 🙂 To see the larger image, click on the picture to the left!!”
Terrified, Jodi lived in the New York apartment until August 2001 when Rona told her she wanted her to leave. Marcus let her move out, but according to court documents, “she continued to stay involved with the defendant in order to maintain a semblance of control over his use of her pictures on the website,” until 2003. One of her last encounters with him was a camping trip.
Jodi, who’d managed to mostly extricate herself from the relationship by this time, asked Marcus to remove the legions of photographs of her in compromising positions, all of which very clearly showed her face. She was trying to to restart her life and get into a new career.
When Marcus refused, claiming she had signed model release forms — a claim complex enough to prevent it from being an open and shut case — she went to the F.B.I.
In 2000, a new law cracking down on sexual exploitation was passed, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The FBI acted swiftly: Marcus’ websites were taken down and he was charged with sex trafficking, distribution of obscene materials (via his website), and forced labor, for the time period between 1999 and 2001.
During the first trial in Brooklyn, the defense hinged on a key question: Had Jodi really been doing things against her will? After all, she had continued to associate with the S and M Svengali.
Tristan Taormino, a noted expert on the BDSM community wrote in The Village Voice, “It’s possible that she regretted her participation and re-wrote her role into an unwilling victim, but it’s equally likely that Marcus lost touch with reality, believed he actually owned her, and behaved accordingly.”
The first trial revealed all the sordid details. Marcus’ other slaves testified, including Rona, the roommate, who contended that he was “a lot of fun.” The defense protested that Jodi’s continued association with the defendant meant that she had been consorting with him consensually and that the lawsuit was a way to get back at him for retaining the photos.
The prosecution argued that she had been living in fear and had been brainwashed by him.
In the decision New York Judge Allyne R. Ross wrote, “The court acknowledges that the issue of whether the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant used non-consensual force, fraud or coercion to cause Jodi to engage in a commercial sex act is difficult and complicated.”
Of course, it would seem hard to argue that such a violent relationship could be consensual, especially for jurors of conventional sexual practices, for whom being tied up during sex at all might seem beyond the pale.
In fact, the jury was discriminating: After seven days of deliberations, they acquitted him of the obscenity charges, but convicted him of the sex trafficking and forced labor charges. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
He immediately appealed the ruling, which landed in the hands of future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
The basis of Glenn Marcus’s appeal was technical. His conviction on the sex trafficking charge was based on the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which had been used previously in very different types of cases, usually involving immigrants who were brought to the U.S and forced into sex work or sweatshop slavery. But much of what Jodi alleged to have happened took place after 2000, and evidence presented during the trial had covered the entire period of Jodi’s involvement with Marcus, key points of which had occurred before the 2000 law had been enacted.
The Court of Appeals overturned Marcus’s sex trafficking and forced labor convictions based on “Plain Error.” In plain English, Marcus could not be convicted of a crime for violating a law that was only put in place after the now-illegal act was committed. The court wrote: “Marcus’s relevant conduct differed materially before and after October 2000, such that there is a reasonable possibility that the jury may have convicted him based exclusively on pre-enactment conduct.”
A retrial was ordered.
Naturally, the Justice Department appealed, and the Supreme Court took the case. Sotomayor had since become a member of the Supreme Court, but recused herself in the high court’s handling of the case. The primary question before the Court was: “Did the court of appeals abuse its discretion by reviewing as ‘plain error,’ under Rule 52(b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a defendant’s claim, raised for the first time on appeal, that his conviction violated the Ex Post Facto Clause because the relevant criminal statutes were not enacted until nearly two years after most acts charged in the indictment occurred — and, the government concedes the defendant could have been convicted exclusively on conduct that took place before the statute’s enactment?”
Or: Can a court convict someone on the basis of actions occurring both before and after the law making those actions illegal is passed?
In May 2010, the Court ruled 7-1 that Marcus’s original conviction should stay intact. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote: “Given the tiny risk that the jury would have based its conviction upon those few pre-enactment days alone, a refusal to recognize such an error as a ‘plain error,’ [and set aside the verdict] is most unlikely to cast serious doubt on the fairness, integrity or public reputation of the judicial system.”
And with that, Marcus, the master, was made a prisoner, sentenced to serving the rest of his sentence in a cage not unlike the one in which he had Jodi and his other slaves spend so many hours of their lives. And the prison guards and other prisoners don’t use safe words, either.