If you respond to an ad for S&M sex, how credible are rape claims?

It turns out that one of San Francisco’s premier sexual harassment attorneys enjoys a little S&M fun on the side.  So much so that he likes to run Craig’s List ads seeking women who like it rough:

His lawyer, Stuart Hanlon, said the women had all come to Hoffman’s Van Ness Avenue apartment to engage in what his ads in Craigslist’s “Men Seeking Women” section billed as dominant-submissive sex.

“His ad clearly said he was seeking dominant sex with submissive women,” Hanlon said. “It talked about getting controlled, getting hit and getting their hair pulled.”

Fine.  Each to his own taste, as long as it involves consenting adults.  The problem for attorney Robert Michael Hoffman is that some of the women who responded to the ads seeking abusive sex and who, in fact, participated in the abusive sex, are now crying rape:

A San Francisco employment lawyer who specializes in sexual harassment cases has been charged with rape and other crimes for allegedly attacking three women who came to his apartment in response to his Craigslist ad for rough sex.

[snip]

In at least two cases, the women had sex with Hoffman voluntarily before the incidents in which they accused him of sexual assault, Hanlon said.

The lawyer is now being held in jail, with bail having been set at $3 million.

Perhaps I’m simply too naive to understand the nuances of a situation in which women show up at a stranger’s apartment in response to an advertisement promising them violent sex, but it seems to me that they run the risk of having sex with a man who sees their protests as part of the agreed-upon game.  In other words, is Hoffman guilty of rape if the women, by showing up in response to his ad, tacitly or explicitly agreed to violent, abusive sex.  If they’re screaming “No,” how in the world was he supposed to understand that they meant it, when they’d already agreed that he was going to hurt them and enjoy their suffering.  And presumably, they in turn, would get pleasure out of that pain.

It all reminds me of a terrible old joke:

The sadist and the masochist get together.  The masochist grovels on the floor:  “I want to suffer.  Make me miserable.  Hit me!  Hit me!  Hit me!”

The sadist sneers down at him:  “No.”