Going To Jail: Bagley Pleads, and It’s A Wrap

Edward Bagley, who lured a mentally disabled sixteen year old girl in foster care into living with him, kept her for seven years, tortured her in ways that even the most serious masochists think carefully before undertaking, and pimped her out to men who contacted him over the internet, has pleaded guilty about a month before his trial was to start.  Media reports indicate a twenty year sentence.  Law enforcement became involved when the woman had a heart attack after being both suffocated and electrically tortured.

I can’t say it comes as much of a surprise.  His wife changed her plea to guilty in December, and with her testimony he could not hope to refute the allegation that the girl was underage when he took her in and began grooming her, and any chance he had of getting the jury to buy an argument that what he did was consensual pretty much evaporated with his wife’s agreement to testify against him.  I don’t have time for a postmortem post now, though I may make time to write one later.  When the case first hit the news I wrote a post about BDSM ethics called Not What We Do, and I’ve given periodic updates since.  Most of those were case news, and are moot points now, but a few evidentiary issues in the pre-trial phase are of continuing relevance to the intersection of BDSM and criminal law.