I spent years in the fetish and BDSM scene – I know exactly why people die during kinky sex

‘Sex game gone wrong’ can be a hastily pieced together excuse when a woman has been murdered, but it is also a real risk – especially given the lack of proper information

When BDSM was underground and secretive it was stigmatised, but it was also self-regulated (David McNew / Getty)

Today we learned that 22 -year-old Anna Florence Reed died on holiday with her boyfriend. She is the twenty-second UK woman to die in a so-called sex game gone wrong in the past 10 years.

The details of this case are for the jury at the trial, not for us to speculate on. But the inescapable fact is that BDSM is an increasingly normalised part of sex.

A YouGov poll found that 46 per cent of people under the age of 40 either have tried, or would like to try BDSM, compared to just 18 per cent of over 40s.

In 2012 a study found that 62 per cent of young women reported having had at least one fantasy about a forced sexual act.

I am the last person who would suggest BDSM is a bad thing. I spent my late teens and early twenties cavorting around fetish clubs, a fully paid up member of the London kink scene, but I know that anyone who is having kinky or violent sex needs to be educated about how to offset any potential risks.

So much misinformation about sex survives into adulthood, and much of what we need to know to experiment with safe BDSM isn't appropriate for a PSHE lesson. But given the potentially fatal consequences of ignorance, it's time for a fully fact-checked sex education database for adults, like the NHS health website. A resource where adults can learn how to take risks in the safest way possible could actually save lives.

I only hung up my whip when work and a long-term relationship started to preclude me from staying up until 4am in the dungeon.

When I first tried to explain my sexual predilections to my friends, they were horrified and judgemental. How could you enjoy recreational pain?

As a teenager I remember wishing that BDSM were a more widely accepted and understood orientation. It seems that over the past 10 years, since Fifty Shades went mainstream and leather collars went on sale at Topshop, I got my wish.

My wish turned out to be a Pandora's box.

When BDSM was underground and secretive it was stigmatised, but it was also self-regulated. If you wanted to meet likeminded people then you had to be plugged into a community. And if you wanted to be part of that community you needed to play by the rules.

Fetish clubs have always had “dungeon masters and mistresses” who supervise play and step in if anything unsafe is taking place. But it wasn't just that kink came with supervision, it also came with genuine desire to learn.

A lot of kinky socialising came with workshops. It was a truth universally acknowledged, to butcher Jane Austen, that if you wanted to experiment with breath play (choking), bondage or corporal punishment (spanking), you needed to learn how to do it properly and safely.

“Sex game gone wrong” can be a hastily pieced together excuse when a woman has been murdered. But it is also a real risk.

One woman I spoke to said she asked her boyfriend to choke her because she’d “seen it in porn, and read that it makes your orgasm feel stronger.” They copied what they’d seen in the film and she ended up bursting a blood vessel in her cheek and hurting her windpipe.

The BDSM community was founded on the principles of education and consent, but the truth remains: when you bring consensual violence into the bedroom, you blur the lines.

In a vanilla relationship the rules are simple. No one hits anyone. But when kinky sex means a slap across the bum, or even the face, those rules change.

Another woman I spoke to said she asked her boyfriend to slap her once during sex, then a few weeks later he did it again, without permission. This is not uncommon, but it is wrong.

There is nothing wrong with experimentation. Sexual exploration can bring you closer to your partner and reinvigorate your sex life. But we need to be realistic about the level of risk involved.

Kinky people place a high value on using “safe words” and setting hard and soft limits for what happens in the bedroom. These are the parts of kinky sex that porn doesn’t show.

Negotiation might not be sexy, but it’s an essential part of responsible kinky sex.

Without wanting to sound like I’m the Responsible Sex Monitor, bondage can cause nerve damage. Hard spanking in the wrong area can hurt your kidneys. Breath play (erotic asphyxiation) can result in death.

BDSM has gone mainstream and will never return to the underground clubs and dark corners of bars.

For as long as choking is a regular activity in porn and Fifty Shades is one of the most borrowed library books, people will experiment at home. And if they don’t have proper education about how to do that safely, they will do it dangerously.

People are dying. It is time to take the risk of sex games seriously.