What was thought to be a video of domestic violence in the City of Waukesha turned out to be consensual rough sex streamed live through a PlayStation 4 U-Stream. But before the error was discovered, multiple cities and detectives investigated.
The strange incident began when Capt. Ron Oremus of the Waukesha Police Department received a voice mail from a news station in Madison asking whether police knew about a live streaming video in which a man was physically abusing a woman for a significant period of time.
An Internet director at the news station told Oremus that the incident was streaming live through PlayStation 4 U-Stream. Through using the profile information from the PlayStation site and with research on other social media sites such as Facebook, the news station thought it knew who the suspect was.
The station sent Oremus an email with the information, which included a couple of YouTube links showing clips of the recorded video. Two additional emails were received later from individuals who had either seen or learned of the video.
Detective Dave Carpenter, who specializes in digital forensics, contacted YouTube and Facebook to obtain more information and learned the identity of the alleged victim.
He also learned that she had ankle surgery within the past couple of weeks.
"This coincided with the crutches in the background from the video and with the possibility that the victim appeared to be in a 'drugged' state," Oremus' incident report noted.
Police were able to track down a man and woman at a Waukesha apartment — but that's where the twist in the story came, when the two gave consistent stories and said their behavior in the video was consensual.
According to Oremus' incident report, the woman said she likes "rough sex" and again said that everything that happened in the video was consensual.
She was adamant that she was there of her own free will and not being held against her will, the report indicates.
According to the report, the female said she did not sustain any injuries and there wasn't any evidence of any injuries.