Women in their early 20s are the focus of a stark warning from forensic and research experts who say the “normalisation” of sexual strangulation could leave a generation with an increased risk of brain injury.
Dr Amelia McLean, from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, said the number of patients who had been sexually strangled had increased so strikingly that clinicians were worried about the long-term consequences. The warning comes after a 16-year-old Sydney girl died in August following what police believe was strangulation during consensual sex.
In response, the federal government has floated banning choking pornography, which has been identified as the main source of the popularisation of reducing oxygen to the brain to heighten sexual sensation. McLean said she was also alarmed by TikTok and YouTube tutorials outside pornography offering advice on how to slow blood supply in the neck’s main vessels “safely”.
“There are some TikTok clips, also on YouTube, including one that has gone viral which basically is a young woman explaining how to strangle yourself or someone else ‘safely’,” she said. She described tutorials that point to the carotid arteries and explain how to compress them to cut off blood supply to the brain in a practice referred to as being someone’s “hand necklace”.
Clinicians say the pattern is already cause for concern.