I did give it serious thought. The judge is obviously a closet pervert who chose to live out his S&M fantasy under the cloak of a judicial sentence.
No, floggings were normally applied this way otherwise the clothing becomes all smushed up in the wounds in a general mess.
20th century perverted thinking would think of a flogging in a sexual way, 18th century judicial thinking thought of it only as a punishement for various crimes.
Everything in the world is not about sex.