Extreme Behavior: Weird Fetishes and Addictions

In June, a masochist, with tastes similar to those of the Ontario man reported here three months ago, was sentenced to four years in jail for encouraging two underage girls near Bicester, England, to kick him repeatedly in the groin until he could no longer handle the pain.

In Singapore in June, a 36-year-old man was sentenced to 14 years in jail and 18 strokes of the cane after he was convicted of 23 counts of molesting women on elevators and other places, mostly by sniffing their armpits.

There's really no way to explain people's fetishes, said University of Cincinnati campus police Capt. Karen Patterson, describing the arrest of Dwight Pannell, 43, for allegedly crawling under a library table, squirting liquid from a syringe on a female student's shoe, and photographing it. Pannell told police he was just trying out his new camera.

Not Quite Rehabilitated: A prominent anti-drug motivational speaker, who uses his own sordid life story to inspire troubled kids to turn their lives around, was arrested in May and charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting at his girlfriend and an old buddy from prison following a long evening of alcohol and methamphetamines. Said the prosecutor in Isanti County, Minn., of the rampage by Russell Simon Jr., 45, "We're lucky we don't have a multiple homicide on our hands."

News of the Weird reported on "objectophilia" in June 2007, based on a prominent German sexologist's belief that people can develop romantic-type relationships with inanimate objects (beyond mere fetishists, who derive only short-term arousal from items like shoes or underwear). In May 2008, Britain's Channel Five produced a documentary with on-camera interviews with several such "mechaphiles," including a 57-year-old American from Washington state who claims his "girlfriend" is a white Volkswagen Beetle (but who said he has had "sex" with 1,000 cars), and a 54-year-old woman in Sweden who claims she has been "married" to the Berlin Wall since 1979.

Track coach Lawrence "Poppy" Vincent, 74, of Bracken Christian School in Bulverde, Texas, was arrested in May and charged with indecent exposure to an undercover police officer; Vincent was wearing floral women's panties and a bra.

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