[Archive 2007-10-21] BDSM as business: An interview with the owners of a dungeon

Historical archive — originally published 2007-10-21. This report records what was known on that date. It is not current news; subsequent events may have changed the situation. Wikinews closed in May 2026.

Torture proliferates American headlines today: whether its use is defensible in certain contexts and the morality of the practice. Wikinews reporter David Shankbone was curious about torture in American popular culture. This is the first of a two part series examining the BDSM business. This interview focuses on the owners of a dungeon, what they charge, what the clients are like and how they handle their needs.

When Shankbone arrived on the sixth floor of a midtown office building, the elevator opened up to a hallway where a smiling Rebecca greeted him. She is a beautiful forty-ish Long Island mother of three who is dressed in smart black pants and a black turtleneck that reaches up to her blond-streaked hair pulled back in a bushy ponytail. "Are you David Shankbone? We're so excited to meet you!" she says, and leads him down the hall to a living room area with a sofa, a television playing an action-thriller, an open supply cabinet stocked with enema kits, and her husband Bill sitting at the computer trying to find where the re-release of Blade Runner is playing at the local theater. "I don't like that movie," says Rebecca.

Perhaps the most poignant moment came at the end of the night when Shankbone was waiting to be escorted out (to avoid running into a client). Rebecca came into the room and sat on the sofa. "You know, a lot of people out there would like to see me burn for what I do," she says. Rebecca is a woman who has faced challenges in her life, and dealt with them the best she could given her circumstances. She sees herself as providing a service to people who have needs, no matter how debauched the outside world deems them. They sat talking mutual challenges they have faced and politics (she's supporting Hillary); Rebecca reflected upon the irony that many of the people who supported the torture at Abu Ghraib would want her closed down. It was in this conversation that Shankbone saw that humanity can be found anywhere, including in places that appear on the surface to cater to the inhumanity some people in our society feel towards themselves, or others.

Below is David Shankbone's interview with Bill & Rebecca, owners of Rebecca's Hidden Chamber, a BDSM dungeon.

Bill: Nothing other than it seemed like it would be profitable; we had a third partner who knew someone who was involved in this business. It was supposed to be a business that we weren't going to run, if you recall.

Bill: Precisely. But there were some setbacks; we ended up running it ourselves, learning a lot about the business and doing it really well. I had a doctorate in psychology; my wife is probably the best salesperson I've ever seen in the world. Together, we've been able to put together a nice model business. We're probably the best S&M-fantasy-role-playing dungeon in Manhattan. We are that way because we think of the client first. What makes us different than all the other dungeons: we treat them like human beings first.

Bill: A couple of things. We run it like a business. We do not run it like a club. We did our homework and found most of the places in the city are run by people that aren't the smartest, aren't the sanest, aren't great businesspeople; they don't have a business background. They are people more inclined to be interested in S&M. Where my wife and I, we're sort of interested in money first.

DS: How is it that you're able to run a business that's centered around S&M and caters to those clients, when you don't have that inclination for yourselves?

Rebecca: We're still looking out for their needs. They're still human beings, and they have needs. So each and every person, I look out for their needs. And they all think I'm their best friend.

Rebecca: I think my almost-seventeen-year-old would be okay with it. My middle one I don't think would be very happy, and my youngest would probably want to do it.

Source and licence

Text adapted from BDSM as business: An interview with the owners of a dungeon by Wikinews contributors under CC BY 2.5. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. Contributor history.