Animal Sex Tourism

Earlier this month, Amanda Kloer over on the Human Trafficking blog wrote about tourism packages that offer hunting, fishing, and sex with kids. Well, it's not just kids and it's not just in other countries. Last week, a man in northern Washington state was arrested for running a bestiality farm.

Douglas Spink is a convicted drug smuggler, a one-time dot-com millionaire, a horse trainer, and an alleged animal sex trafficker. His latest twisted business plan to let people come to his farm to have sex with animals was apparently hatched with a man in jail in Tennessee named James Tait, who already had a history of bestiality convictions. According to the county sheriff, "They were promoting tourism of this nature."

People who have sex with animals don't go around advertising their fetish, but since the general public would rather not believe that bestiality exists, most people aren't looking too hard for the signs. Spink and Tait were not smart men. They were caught because of phone conversations when Tait was in prison — just two felons chatting about sex with animals on recorded jail lines.

Bestiality is one of the most disturbing, taboo topics out there. It's a combination of so many things outside of people's comfort zones — animal abuse, rape of helpless victims, unnatural fetishes — that the only way people can deal with it is by turning it into a cheap joke. Sexual abuse of animals is very real, and there's nothing remotely funny about it.

Several animals, including horses, dogs, and mice, were taken from Spink's property. The search also uncovered videotapes of a man having sex with several large breed dogs. That bit of evidence helped authorities make another arrest, but at this point, they have no idea how many people visited this sick tourist attraction.

Back in January, Tait pleaded guilty to having sex with animals in Tennessee and was released on probation. He's more famously known for the 2005 Enumclaw case, outside of Seattle, where he was allowing people onto his rental farm to have sex with the neighbor's horses. One of his customers died due to related injuries. Tait was given a one-year suspended sentence.

Anyone want to ask again if animal cruelty penalties are too lenient?

After the Enumclaw case, Washington became the 34th state to prohibit bestiality, and one of 21 states to consider it a felony. Yes, that means sex with animals is still technically legal in 16 states, although injuries caused if practiced with smaller animals would fall under animal cruelty laws.

I know it's hard to read about animals as victims of sexual abuse, but as a Humane Society of the United States regional director said in 2005, at least these cases "allow us a platform to talk about sex abuse of animals." The states without laws against bestiality don't support it, they just don't want to discuss it.

It's unclear whether Spink will face charges for bestiality or just for violating his probation when he wasn't supposed to talk to other felons. Either way, it looks like the jail time ahead of him is up to five years. If his buddy Tait's rap sheet is any indication, nothing will change in that time. It's probably too much to hope for, but I'd like to see the judges find a way to ban these guys — along with their clients — from any future contact with animals.

Photo credit: pmarkham