Please read the article below. It is an appalling case. It illustrates exactly what Code d' Odalisque is not.
* * *
Three men from the state of Missouri have been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the sexual torture of a woman who was held as a sex slave for six years.For three years, the victim only could watch as prosecutors, defence lawyers and federal judges battled in court to resolve a grotesque sex torture and bondage case.
But on Wednesday, at last, was her day.
Three times the young woman, short and pretty, stood from a courtroom bench, walked to a lectern and described how the men who were to be sentenced that morning had hurt her - some through near suffocation, mutilation and even skewers through her breasts. All enjoyed applying electrical shocks, she said.
But each man, according to her descriptions, had dealt her a measure of cruelty that has changed forever how she views those around her.
"I don't know how to trust men," she said before revealing that she now has a baby daughter. "I have to protect her from men like Ed."
Edward Bagley, whom both she and prosecutors have described as her chief tormenter, remained in his seat just a few feet away, looking forlorn while dressed in orange jail scrubs and a pair of blue Crocs clogs.
US District Judge Dean Whipple had just sentenced the Lebanon, Montana, man to 20 years in federal prison.
In quick succession, Bradley Cook of Kirkwood also received a 20-year sentence, and Dennis Henry, a former postmaster from Wheatland, was sentenced to 10 years.
Three other defendants, James Noel of Springfield and Michael Stokes and Bagley's wife, Marilyn Bagley, both of Lebanon, await sentencing on Thursday.
When prosecutors filed the case in September 2010, they described the young woman as "mentally deficient" and said the indictment's allegations were "among the most horrific ever prosecuted in this district".
The allegations of torture were so wrenching that prosecutors chose not to mention them in official statements and a press release.
For five years, according to the indictment, the woman endured sexual torture with techniques described as "flogging, whipping, shocking, choking, piercing, sewing" and "stapling".
Her tormenters nailed intimate body parts to slabs of wood, sewed private orifices shut and forced high levels of electric current through the most sensitive parts of her body.
Defence lawyers responded almost immediately that they hoped to prove that the young woman had consented to the sadomasochistic sex, which would have made it all completely legal.
But as the lawyers reviewed the images and videos of the woman's condition, and weighed the prospects of presenting them to a jury, defendants began to plead guilty.
The victim, now in her mid-20s, said on Wednesday that her suffering was real.
"It started bad and got worse and worse," she said. "Ed told me I wasn't good for anything except to be used by him."
Bagley, 46, pleaded guilty in January to having a sexual relationship with the victim before her 17th birthday and then grooming her with bondage and sadomasochistic videos for life as his sex slave after she moved into his trailer home.
The woman elaborated in her statement, describing a hard life in and out of foster care before meeting Bagley when she was 15 or 16. He promised to protect her, she said. He had his wife model sexy clothes for her, and he showed her pornography and talked about how he was going to make her look beautiful.
"I was so excited about my new life," she testified before recounting the electric shock torture that "shoots your arms and legs out, and you want to die".
She added: "Ed killed me and brought me back to life."
Cook, 34, admitted at his December 2011 plea hearing that he often watched Bagley abuse the young woman during live online sessions.
Several times, Cook travelled to Lebanon to abuse and torture the woman, leaving Bagley with gifts of hard drives containing images and videos of bondage, domination, sadism and masochism. Cook said at his plea hearing that he believed that the woman had not consented to the acts and that it was the "most extreme he had ever seen".
Henry, 53, confessed in March 2011 to meeting the young victim in 2004 when Bagley invited him to Lebanon because he "had something to show him". There, Bagley presented the girl, who wore chains on her legs and restraints on her wrists.
Henry acknowledged having sex with the victim and whipping her in what he described as Bagley's "play room".
