“I Love To Dominate”: Sexual Harassment Lawyer Cleared Of All Charges In Rough Sex Case

Attorney Robert Michael Hoffman is a free man. Hoffman has been at the center of a bizarre case where multiple women accused him of sexual assaulting them. The complication in the case was that the women had answered his Craigslist invitation for rough sex. He insisted it was merely rougher than they anticipated while they said it was forced sex. The case began to unravel in September 2011 when six of nine counts were tossed by Judge Bruce Chan after a secret tape contradicted the testimony of two of the women. Now the remainder have been dismissed against the San Francisco attorney. Hoffman specializes in sexual harassment cases.

Hoffman placed ads in the “Men Seeking Women” for dominant-submissive sex that looked for submissive women who were willing to be controlled, hit, and treated roughly. Hoffman stated in the ad “I would love to dominate and humiliate and degrade you, privately of course.” He was later accused of sexually assaulting a 36-year-old East Bay woman, a 19-year-old San Francisco woman and a 25-year-old East Bay woman. The case raised difficult question of drawing the line between consensual rough sex and assault.

In the earlier hearing, one woman was shown a tape that contradicted parts of her testimony. A second woman was confronted with text messages where she refers to the encounter as consensual and has consented to rough sex on two prior occasions. Statements given to the police were found to be untrue.

Judge Bruce Chan had dismissed six out of nine counts in September 2011 after Hoffman’s lawyer introduced a secret sex tape and text messages at a preliminary hearing that contradicted allegations by two of the women. The tape showed one of the women having consensual sex with Hoffman, and the texts contradicted a second accuser’s claim that she had never sent Hoffman sexually explicit messages, according to prior news coverage.

The prosecutors has acknowledged that “New video evidence came to light at the preliminary hearing. The video evidence did not corroborate the allegations made by the victims in this case. Based on the totality of the evidence, our office re-evaluated the case after the preliminary hearing. Our burden is to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. Based on the totality of the evidence, we were unable to sustain our burden and dismissed the case.”

I am a bit curious why it took so long to dismiss the cases with the existence of such tapes and evidence. However, this prosecution has taken years and appeared to be collapsing from the start. What is missing is an account of why this evidence did not prompt this action earlier.

The case is chilling in another respect. Once an individual consents to rough sex, it will be difficult without a third witness to state beyond a reasonable doubt when the roughness became nonconsensual. The normal signs of assault like bruising are part of this particular fetish – making this a particularly challenging case for prosecution.

Source: ABA Journal