Sarah Cassidy is a headmistress at an elementary school in England who has never had sex – and she doesn’t intend to. To be sure, she fastens something like barbed wire around her thigh each night to suppress her desires.

She’s a Roman Catholic and apparently one of the higher-ups in Opus Dei, a controversial force of the church. The type of masochism Cassidy practices is a normal thing for this group, which has 87,000 members worldwide.

Each night, Cassidy attaches the barbed wire device to her leg and leaves it there, digging into her skin for two hours. Another woman who does this says for her, fasting is more difficult than the self-torture and a bikini wax is more painful.