Jack Chapman died gasping for air. Six months ago, the 28-year-old bodybuilder and Tumblr celebrity reportedly suffered a fatal pulmonary embolism; according to his autopsy record, it came as a result from injecting silicone into his testicles to make them look bigger.
Because of Chapman’s online fame, news of his death spread rapidly — from subreddits and Tumblr to international news outlets — and much of it was sensational as hell. Chapman was a “slave” in a gay, kinky, and polyamorous relationship, led by an alleged abuser who people believe played a role in his death. Buzzfeed ran a lengthy feature on the conspiracy theory, while outlets such as VICE and the New York Post focused on the sensational narrative that a young man was dead due to a strange kink. Droves of internet and Tumblr users took on the role of detectives trying to sleuth out whether Chapman’s death was a result of foul play or an accident.
But one central issue continued to plague friends and family: if, indeed, Chapman was in an abusive relationship, could his death have been avoided? Or could the relationship at least been reported?
The answer is that yes, obviously, the relationship could have been reported to police, but whether or not anything would have come from it is actually hard to say, specifically because of the way police handle cases surrounding kinky relationships.
The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2010, the most recent year the department studied abuse by sexual orientation, that almost half of LGBTQ+ people experience abuse of some kind in their relationships. Few ever come forward. In kink relationships, like Chapman’s, less than 2 percent of victims ever report their abuse to the police, according to a survey conducted by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.
Social workers and LGBTQ+ legal experts say stigma surrounding abuse within the gay world is to blame for people not coming forward. But for those in kinky relationships, some say it’s simply hard to convince the police that a crime was committed. As a result, fewer people trust that their reports will be taken seriously, and that problem also extends to the courts.
Many people who are in non-traditional relationships aren’t even out to their families, said Teal Inzunza, manager of Client Advocacy Programs at the Anti Violence Project in New York. “If we think about coming out in that way, and coming to a place and having to explain a relationship, you can imagine how difficult that would be and how negative that response could be from police,” she said.
Police are tasked with investigating all crimes the same, despite sexual orientation. And some police departments, such as in New York, have made it a point to train officers in how to properly handle assault or domestic violence cases in same sex relationships.
But there have been anecdotes where that training has failed. Inzunza pointed out a situation where a gay male couple were fighting, the police were called, and because they couldn’t decipher who the victim was, they locked them both up in adjoining cells.
“People are actually experiencing these things and having multiple negative experiences with police,” she said, adding that the training police receive at headquarters isn’t translating into the streets.
Paul Harrison Phillips, 30, says they were sexually assaulted after a night out at one of New York’s gay leather bars, The Eagle. After going home with someone and refusing to have penetrative sex, Harrison woke up to being pinned down and raped. The event was so traumatic that it took days to gather the strength to go to the police and report the assault.
When they went to the police in Queens, NY, they said they were laughed out of the room.
“It was dehumanizing,” they said.
The NYPD wouldn’t comment on specific cases or go into how cases of abuse within the LGBTQ+ community are handled, generally. But a spokesperson for the police gave a statement that said that the Department is committed to ensuring the safety of those who come forward.
In Seattle, where Chapman lived, all abuse allegations, even among LGBTQ+ relationships, are taken seriously, said Sean Whitcomb, an officer with the Seattle Police Department’s public affairs team. “I don’t think any of our officers really treat anybody differently," Whitcomb said. "It’s just — I mean, it’s 2019.”
But friends and family are skeptical as to how seriously the Seattle police would have taken an allegation of domestic or intimate partner abuse in regards to Chapman, considering how they handled the allegations of murder around his death.
When Chapman died, friends of his gathered anything they could to illustrate examples of abuse from his partner, Dylan Hafertepen, and forwarded them to detectives. The text messages, Instagram posts and Tumblr threads all painted a picture of Chapman, who was also known by his slave name “Tank,” as someone feeling trapped in a relationship and wished to escape.
“I think I can feel safe talking now,” said one message Chapman sent to his close friend. “My conversations were being monitored…I’m okay, but things are pretty awful here.”
Hafertepen flatly denies any abuse in his relationship with Chapman, and in email exchanges said that most of the problems in their relationship have been inflated by online trolls.
Whitcomb said that what was produced may have been especially damning to Hafertepen as a person, but none of it was evidence for a murder.
And this point is important to understand: evidence of a crime, especially a murder, has to show direct cause — a needle used to inject Chapman with someone else’s fingerprints on it, for example. Seattle police agree that it appeared Chapman was in a tough situation before he died, but that reliable evidence showed that Chapman may have been the one that injected himself with silicone.
“It’s hard to respond to social media accusations, especially in specific situations where there are very serious crimes,” says Jim Ritter, the Seattle Police Department’s LGBTQ+ liaison. “Rumors spread very quickly on social media and a lot of times they don’t have any basis in fact.”
Even if someone else was found to be responsible for Chapman’s death, it would be a hard case to litigate, experts say, specifically because of the kink aspect of the relationship.
“Prosecutors have told us that they believe people have been raped or injured, but they don’t know how to explain to a judge or jury how people consented to being spanked, but not having sex,” said Susan Wright, president of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, a sexual education organization.
In recent cases, such as when New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was accused by women of nonconsensual sex, he argued, effectively, that the sex was all part of a kink role-play game.
“For years, domestic violence has been seen as a woman’s issue. Only now are we starting to get a grasp on what that violence looks like within the gay world and the kink world,” says Pat Machate, a chairperson with the Domestic Violence Project and National Leather Association, who studies abuse within BDSM relationships. “If you look at a woman [in a traditional relationship] and you see bruises on her arm, you can ask, ‘What’s happening?’ and be able to mitigate that problem, but you can’t do that within the [kink] community because those bruises are not an indicator.”
As of now, there haven’t been any hints that Chapman’s death will reopen as a murder investigation.
An article in Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper, The Stranger, dedicated two issues that looked into the alleged abuse, and an Australian news show went as far to try and trap Hafertepen into admitting his role in his boyfriend’s death.
If there’s one silver lining for Chapman’s family, though, is that conversations around abuse and assault within kink relationships have continued in the wake of the death.
Online, the NCSF has instructions on how to properly ask friends in kink relationships if they are being abused, and also what warning signs to look out for.
“If you know somebody that is doing something that could potentially harm them, you have the responsibility to help them,” says the NCSF’s Wright. “You try to get them professional help so they can look at what they are doing and reevaluate.”
It’s exactly what people like Kevin Reader, a close friend of Chapman’s, wishes he could’ve done from afar: “Because of the public nature of their relationship, we’re all culpable.”
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