I’m 35 now but back when I was in my early 20’s I was living in Los Angeles (went to school out there and basically just living life and having fun) my girlfriend at that time had applied for this job to be a dominatrix, well she got the job and the dungeon was located in Bel Air which is a very private and prominent neighborhood there. Needless to say the people that had access to that dungeon were prominent figures and people in power (politicians, doctors, lawyers, etc)
I remember one night she came home telling me about one of the clients *now mind you there is no sex at all involved, these people were not into sex) A man came in and requested her because she was small and petite. They went down to one of the rooms, and he basically gave her $1500 dollars to beat him. So she did, he stopped about 5 mins in and said“That is not good enough, I need you to hit me with something more” So she brought out a cat of nine tails whip instead of just the standard one, again she started to flog him. Again he stopped, this time irritated with her saying “I’m paying you good money and this isn’t cutting it, I need more!” So she looked around the room and saw a 2×4 laying there, she picked it up got into a baseball hitter’s stance and started to whale on him. This went on for about 20 mins, needless to say he loved it and did not start to flinch until about the last 5 mins of the flogging. Shortly after that client she ended up quitting and getting a “normal” job as it was just a getting a bit much for her as that really wasn’t her lifestyle.
But alot of these people that are hardcore into that are in positions of high power and not so much the pain they are into but the whole control thing they are in control of every aspect of their life and need a break. It’s not necessarily that they were abused as a child (I’m sure there are those that are though) but it’s not always the case. I mean she would tell me about black men that would want their doms to dress up as slave owners or Jewish men that wanted theirs to dress up as Nazis. Now to me that is a completely sick idea but all these people that wanted this stuff were your doctors, your lawyers…married men, family men and could afford very high dollar to get this type of punishment. So I would say that someone would be into this sort of pain and punishment solely because they were abused wouldn’t be accurate but also maybe depends on the position they lead in life and need a break from it (albeit what I said is very extreme and very disturbing) but they are really out there.