Earlier this month an amusing police incident was reported in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Sometime last year, in the Austrian province of Lower Austria, a 35-year-old farmer and mother of two needed some work done on her farm, so she devised a rather creative way to get the labor she needed: she went online and solicited her services as a dominatrix. “Instead of providing pleasurable pain,” wrote Der Standard, “the men who had responded to the ad were put to work mowing grass while wearing rubber masks and stacking wood naked.” News reports prominently featured the term Arbeitssklaven, or “work slaves.”

At some point one of the men went to the police to file a complaint for fraud. A police spokesman stated, “We have identified two to three counts of illegal prostitution.” The police report refers to “15 submissive men,” one of whom apparently financed a roof extension on the farm!

Some wags commenting online in the Der Standard article thread wondered whether any fraud could truly be said to have taken place…. good point! Another commenter suggested that Ulrich Seidl, the Austrian movie director who recently completed an acclaimed trilogy called Paradise: Love / Faith / Hope that cast a particularly critical eye at Austrian life, may just have found the subject for his next movie.

The woman said that it was her husband’s idea.

via Spiegel Online

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Shame Wave: Greg Barris and the Dominatrix
Music Drives Me Crazy: Austrian Space Disco Band Ganymed