Videotapes Show Bestiality, Enumclaw Police Say

Newspaper article

By: Jennifer Sullivan

Date: July 16, 2005

Source: "Videotapes Show Bestiality, Enumclaw Police Say." The Seattle Times (July 16, 2005).

About the Author: This article was written by Jennifer Sullivan, a staff reporter at The Seattle Times

INTRODUCTION

On July 2, 2005, a forty-five-year-old man died on a farm near Seattle, Washington, after having sex with a stallion. The horse's penis caused the man severe internal injuries: Enumclaw Police Commander Eric Sortland told a reporter, "Basically, his colon was ruptured, along with his lower organs in that region, and he bled out." The man was dead on arrival at Enumclaw Community Hospital. Police found hundreds of videotapes of sex with livestock cached in a field on the farm. Other animals kept on the farm, apparently a destination for men around the United States seeking sex with livestock, were sheep, goats, ponies, and dogs.

The man's sexual act was not illegal because the state of Washington was, at the time of his death, one of the seventeen U.S. states in which bestiality (sex with animals, also known as zoophilia) was not forbidden by law. It was not found that other persons were criminally involved with the specific acts that led to the man's death, no evidence was found that the horse had suffered during the incident, and an animal cannot be charged with a crime, so despite the occurrence of the death no felony charges were brought in the case. A local truck driver who videotaped the fatal sex act, James Michael Tait, was charged in October 2005 with criminal trespass, a misdemeanor. In November 2005, Tait was given a one-year suspended sentence with eight hours of community service and a $778 fine ($300 fine plus court costs).

Reaction to the incident ranged from titillated fascination to disgust. A state senator, Pam Roach (R-Auburn), introduced a bill to ban bestiality in Washington, which passed in February 2006 with a 36-0 vote (thirteen lawmakers excused). Bestiality is now a Class C felony in Washington, punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

PRIMARY SOURCE

ENUMCLAW—Authorities are reviewing hundreds of hours of videotapes seized from a rural Enumclaw-area farm that police say is frequented by men who engage in sex acts with animals.

The videotapes police have viewed thus far depict men having sex with horses, including one that shows a Seattle man shortly before he died July 2, said Enumclaw police Cmdr. Eric Sortland. Police are reviewing the tapes to make sure no laws have been broken.

"Activities like these are often collateral sexual crimes beyond the animal aspect," said Sortland, adding that investigators want to make sure crimes such as child abuse or forcible rape were not occurring on the property.

Washington is one of 17 states that does not outlaw bestiality. Police are also investigating the farm and the two men who live on the property to determine whether animal cruelty—which is a crime—was committed by forcing sex on smaller, weaker animals. Investigators said that in addition to horses, they have found chickens, goats and sheep on the 40-acre property northwest of Enumclaw.

Officers talked with the two men, but neither has been arrested. Neither man could be reached yesterday for comment.

According to King County sheriff's spokesman John Urquhart, the farm is known in Internet chat rooms as a destination for people who want to have sex with livestock.

However, authorities didn't learn about the farm until a man drove up to Enumclaw Community Hospital on July 2 seeking medical assistance for a companion. Medics wheeled the man into an examination room before realizing he was dead. When hospital workers looked for the driver, he was gone.

Using the dead man's driver's license to track down relatives and acquaintances, authorities were led to the Enumclaw farm. Some earlier reports had said hospital-surveillance cameras were used to track down the driver.

The dead man was identified as a 45-year-old Seattle resident. According to the King County Medical Examiner's Office, he died of acute peritonitis due to perforation of the colon. The man's death is not being investigated because it did not result from a crime, Urquhart said.

The Seattle man's relatives said yesterday they never suspected he was involved in bestiality. They said they were surprised when they learned he had purchased a Thoroughbred stallion earlier this year. The man told his relatives he boarded the animal with some friends in Enumclaw.

While the man's relatives were unsure how many horses he had boarded at the property, one Enumclaw neighbor said the Seattle man was keeping two stallions there.

Police and neighbors said the people renting the property have also had dogs and bull calves on the farm. Yesterday there were several horses and ponies grazing near a barn.

Two neighbors, a married couple who declined to allow use of their names, said yesterday they had no idea what had been going on at the farm. They said they've known one of the men who lived on the farm for years.

On Thursday, police showed the couple videotape seized from the farm showing men having sex with horses. The couple identified one of the horses as belonging to them, Sortland said. The couple also said it appeared at least part of the tape was filmed in their barn, which left them shocked and angry.

"We couldn't believe what we were seeing," said Sortland. "In the rare, rare case this happens, it's the per-son doing the animal. I think that has led to the astonishment of all of the entities involved."

Thursday night, in reaction to the man's death, Susan Michaels, co-founder of Pasado's Safe Haven, posted a letter on the local animal-rights organization's Web site calling for people to e-mail legislators in an attempt to change state laws.

"This [the death] gives us credence of getting a bestiality law passed," said Michaels. "It's not natural for animals to do this."

State Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, said she plans to draft legislation as early as next week making bestiality illegal in Washington.

"This is just disgusting," Roach said yesterday. "It's against the law to harm children; it should be against the law to violate an animal."

SIGNIFICANCE

The man who died in this incident was mentally ill by the standards of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR, 2000, the American Psychiatric Association's authoritative list of all mental disorders). DSM-IV-TR states that bestiality or zoophilia, like other "paraphilias"—nonstandard sexual desires and practices—is a diagnosable disorder if it causes "clinically significant stress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning"—which was certainly the case with this fatality.

However, in the aftermath of the Seattle bestiality case, the public comments of legislators and others were focused not on the danger of zoophilia to mentally ill human beings, but on the sexual innocence of animals. "It's really a bill that will protect animals, who are innocent, by the fact that they can't consent," the bill's sponsor, Sen. Roach, said. She also said she felt it was important to ban the performance or video recording of what she termed "abhorrent" acts. As quoted in the primary source, a local animal-rights activist urged passage of an anti-bestiality law on the grounds that "It's not natural for animals to do this." No concern for the fate of the mentally ill man involved, or for others who might be injured by similar practices, appears to have been reported from any source.

Expressions of concern for animal "consent" do not seem to be consistent with the terms of U.S. law: the notion of animal "consent" does not appear anywhere in law. Animals may be legally castrated, hunted, or butchered, all without their consent, as long as animal-cruelty statutes are not violated. Furthermore, sex acts that cause pain to small or ill animals are illegal under those statutes even in the absence of special anti-bestiality laws. Because sex with animals does not necessarily cause physical pain or emotional distress to the animals involved, the Washington state law passed in the wake of Enumclaw had to make sexual contact with animals cruel by definition: "A person is guilty of animal cruelty in the first degree when he or she … [k]nowingly engages in any sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal."

It is difficult to find any record of any expression of concern by legislators or others for the welfare of human beings involved in zoophilic acts. It may be concluded that many or all laws banning zoophilia are not primarily motivated by a concern to protect mentally ill humans from danger or to protect animals from pain. Many persons view zoophilic acts as immoral, unnatural, or offensive; it is these beliefs that are expressed in the laws banning such practices.

Sex with animals is forbidden in some of the world's earliest legal and behavioral codes. The biblical book of Leviticus, for example, immediately after forbidding homosexual intercourse as an "abomination," also forbids bestiality: "Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion" (Leviticus 18:23, King James Version). Zoophilia and zoophilic pornography are banned in many countries. Yet sex with animals is not rare. While preferential or exclusive interest in sex with animals is, according to psychologists, an unusual condition, a 1991 study found that the prevalence of bestiality, defined as "actual sexual contacts and sexual fantasy" involving animals was ten percent among the general population of hospital in-patients, fifteen percent among professional psychiatric staff, and fifty-five percent among psychiatric patients.

FURTHER RESOURCES

Periodicals

Alvarez, W.A., and J.P. Freinhar. "A Prevalence Study of Bestiality (Zoophilia) in Psychiatric In-patients, Medical In-patients, and Psychiatric Staff." International Journal of Psychosomatic Disorders. 38 (1991): 45-47.

Web sites

Washington State Legislature. "SB 6417-2005-06: Prohibiting Sexual Conduct or Sexual Contact with an Animal." 〈http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/summary.aspx?bill=6417〉 (accessed April 1, 2006).