16. A Series of Perverted Scandals
The Marquis de Sade’s first big scandal occurred in 1768. That year, he lured a street beggar to his home with an offer of a housekeeping job, then tore off her clothes, tied her to a sofa, and alternated between flogging and pouring hot wax on her. His victim finally escaped out a second-floor window, but his rich and influential family made the ensuing investigation go away with a royal decree that removed the case from the jurisdiction of the courts. Another scandal followed in 1772, when de Sade and his body servant sodomized working women in Marseilles after they incapacitated them with doses of Spanish fly.
They skipped the trial, fled to Italy, and were sentenced to death in absentia. They were caught and imprisoned in Savoy, but escaped after a few months and hid in de Sade’s rural castle in southeast France. There, de Sade had a high turnover of employees. He frequently hired youngsters as domestics, only for them to quit within a short time, with complaints of the Marquis’ sexual predation and mistreatment. When the parents of local boys and girls complained to the authorities, de Sade was forced to flee to Italy once more, until things quieted down.
