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The applicants, K.A. and A.D., are two Belgian nationals who were born in 1945 and 1949 respectively and live in Belgium.

At the material time K.A., who was a judge, and A.D., a doctor, took part in sadomasochistic practices with the wife of K.A. Between 1990 and 1996 they frequented a sadomasochism club, whose owners became the subject of a judicial investigation that was extended to the applicants.

On 30 September 1997, on the basis of Articles 398 and 380 bis of the Criminal Code, the Antwerp Court of Appeal found the applicants guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and also found K.A. guilty of incitement to immorality or to prostitution. K.A. was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment and fined 100,000 Belgian francs (BEF) (equivalent to 2,478 euros (EUR)), those penalties being suspended and accompanied by other sanctions including disqualification from public duties, employment or office for five years, while A.D. was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment and fined BEF 7,500 (equivalent to EUR 185), those penalties being suspended.

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In those circumstances, the Court considered that the Belgian authorities had been entitled to consider that the prosecution and conviction of the applicants had been necessary in a democratic society for the protection of the “rights and freedoms of others”. It therefore held that there had been no violation of Article 8.

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Besides the extreme cruelty of those practices, it appeared from video recordings seized during the investigation that the defendants had, in particular, ignored several pleas by their victim for their activities to stop. The Court of Appeal considered that the practices in question were so serious, shocking, violent and cruel as to undermine human dignity, and the fact that the defendants continued to maintain that their activities had merely amounted to a kind of sexual experience in the context of sadomasochistic rituals played out behind closed doors between consenting adults did not alter that conclusion.



The Court of Appeal also found it established that K.A. was guilty of incitement to immorality and to prostitution, seeing that he himself had suggested to the management of a sadomasochism club that his wife be employed there as a “slave” to indulge in extremely violent practices amounting to immorality and prostitution, that he had implicitly consented to the publication of classified advertisements to that end and that for months he had provided material assistance by driving his wife to the club in question on several occasions, each time coming to collect her and receive her earnings.

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In the present case, the Court considered that on account of the nature of the acts in question, the applicants’ conviction did not appear to have constituted disproportionate interference with their right to respect for their private life. Although individuals could claim the right to engage in sexual practices as freely as possible, the need to respect the wishes of the “victims” of such practices – whose own right to free choice in expressing their sexuality likewise had to be safeguarded – placed a limit on that freedom. However, no such respect had been shown in the present case.



The applicants’ undertaking to intervene and put an immediate stop to the practices in question when the “victim” no longer consented did not appear to have been honoured. In addition, as time had gone on, all sense of organisation or control of the situation had been lost. There had been an increasing degree of violence and the applicants themselves had admitted that they had not known where it would end.