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Valle is expected to take the stand to make the case that it was all role-playing fantasy. The defense also is planning to call experts to explain the fetish subculture and to show jurors the videotaped testimony of the fetish website’s co-founder Sergey Merenkov.
Merenkov called the site "a clone of Facebook, but it is oriented to people with fetishes that are not considered standard." Asked about the most popular fetishes, he responded, "All sorts of asphyxiation" and "peril cannibalism."
Tiger Howard Devore, a psychologist and certified sex therapist who specializes in dealing with sexual dysfunction and fetishes, said the cannibalism fetish known as voreaphilia isn’t common.
"For most laymen, they’re going to think about it as cannibalism," Devore told The Associated Press in an interview Monday. "But what it really is, is an obsession about consuming the flesh of the other, and this can have a whole range of expressions. ... It is mostly played out in fantasy, mostly played out in role-playing."
There are well-known criminal extremes like Jeffrey Dahmer, who saved pieces of his victims’ body parts and ate the flesh, Devore said, though "the instances of this kind of violence are extremely rare."
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