Jury out in bondage trial
- Toby Walker
- 8th August 2008
A JURY has retired to consider the fate of a woman whose husband died during a kinky bondage session at their Beerburrum home.
In a three-day trial in Brisbane's Supreme Court, Jean Margaret Meiers, 58, maintained that her husband, Geoffrey Clarence Braunack, 47, had always escaped during the hundreds of times she had tied him up.
She was charged with manslaughter after Mr Braunack died of asphyxiation on November 1, 2004.
Meiers had wrapped his body in tape, including his eyes and mouth, and used rope, tape and a dog chain to tie him to a concrete post on the patio of their home in Caves Road.
After tying him up, Meiers left him to take a shower. When she returned, Mr Braunack had stopped breathing.
He could not be revived.
Meiers told the court that Mr Braunack was excited by submissive sexual practices and had instructed her to tie him up in a number of locations hundreds of times during their 20-year relationship.
She said Mr Braunack treated such excursions as a challenge and would goad her to tie him up "so he couldn't escape", but would always manage to do so, even when she would bind him at home and then leave to go to work or out shopping.
"I couldn't quite believe it, I still don't believe it to this day," Meiers said of finding her husband dead on their patio.
Meiers barrister, Peter Goodwin, sought to portray the death as a tragic consequence of sexual misadventure.
However, crown prosecutor Greg Cummings suggested Meiers had been resentful about Mr Braunack's heavy drinking, "degrading" requests and the breakdown of their marriage in 1997.
He appealed to the jury to see Mr Braunack's death as the end result of a "malevolent" act, whereby Meiers may not have set out to kill her husband but to scare and inflict pain on him.
At the very least, he said, Meiers should have been aware of the risks and taken the necessary steps to protect Mr Braunack from any fatal mishap.
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