Bestiality is an insidious crime that involvves a range of behavior. Animals are regularly abused sexually, sometimes while shared with another person. Bestiality-related cases are often complex, involving multiple jurisdictions as well as mutltiple crimes. Child pornography is frequently found, and sometimes a child or vulnerable partner is coerced or manipulated into performing sex acts while being filmed by the offender. Offenders often trespass on other properties to gain access to animal victims, and animals in this situation are often injured.

There has been a steady rise in the number of incidents being reported, but this is more a reflection on the passage of new and improved laws rather than an increase in the behavior. Bestiality happens far more often than most people realize, and as our understanding of the behavior grows, so does our desire to inhibit it. 

Louisiana lawmakers made bestiality a criminal offense in 2018. Under Louisiana law, offenders can be sentenced to five years imprisonment and/or fined $2,000.  Offenses include not only having sex with an animal, but having or making pornographic images involving an animal, forcing or aiding another person to commit an act of bestiality, or obtaining or providing an animal for sexual purposes.

Prior to passage of the law only 12 or thirteen cases involving bestiality had ever been prosecuted. In most cases, the offender was charged with animal cruelty or for other crimes committed at the same time (e.g. indecent behavior, trespass, or possession of obscene material). Since passage of the law, 23 offenders have been arrested on bestiality-related charges - three of them f this just this month.

-  Koshaun Dipon Baker, 23 was arrested after being caught on surveillance camera after breaking into a stable and sexually abusing two horses, including a police mount.

-  James Millet, 79 was shot by a Sheriff’s Deputy after refusing to surrender to police during a search warrant of his home. Millet was charged with 36 counts of bestiality and 7 counts for possession of child pornography.

-  During an investigation for child pornography possession and distribution, Mark Fabian, 22 was arrested on five counts of bestiality.

In Idaho, Nathanial Allen Pickering, 42 was arrested in January after sharing links to child and animal pornography on swinger sights used to arrange hookups with other couples.

In Texas, officers found a video of child engaged in bestiality while investigating a San Antonio police officer for selling information on a domestic violence case to the offender. 

These cases demonstrate merely a portion of the range of criminal behavior found in bestiality cases.