Enumclaw horse sex case

File:Kenneth Pinyan.jpg

Kenneth Pinyan.

Kenneth Pinyan (June 22, 1960 - July 2, 2005) was an American Boeing engineer residing in Gig Harbor, Washington who engaged in receptive anal sex with full-size stallions at a farm in an unincorporated area in King County, Washington, near the city of Enumclaw. He videotaped those sex acts and distributed them informally under the name Mr. Hands.

During a July 2005 sex act, videotaped by a friend, he suffered a perforated colon and later died of his injuries. The story was reported in The Seattle Times and was one of that paper's most read stories of 2005. It was informally referred to as the "Enumclaw horse sex case".

Pinyan's death rapidly prompted the passing of a bill in Washington prohibiting both sex with animals and the videotaping of the same. Under current Washington law, bestiality is now a Class C felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

A documentary of the life and death of Pinyan, and the life led by those who came to the farm near Enumclaw, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival 2007 under the title Zoo. It was one of 16 winners out of 856 candidates for the festival, and played at numerous regional festivals in the United States thereafter. Following Sundance, it was also selected as one of the top five American films to be presented at the prestigious Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

The media outlets that reported the story withheld Pinyan's name. His name was revealed on national radio by talk show host Tom Leykis in the summer of 2005.

Death

The incident occurred at a 40-acre (16 ha) farm, located in an unincorporated area in King County, Washington, northwest of the city of Enumclaw. Prosecutors later determined that the horse, an Arabian stallion nicknamed "Big Dick" by the participants, had not been injured by being allowed to engage in sex in this manner. The photographer, 54-year-old James Michael Tait, was later charged with trespassing, since this act took place on a third party's property. A third man alleged to have been present was not charged. According to the Medical Examiner's Office, Pinyan "died of acute peritonitis due to perforation of the colon", and the death was ruled accidental.

Other factors surrounding the death were apparently that the deceased, concerned about appearing in a hospital with an unusual internal injury and the effect on his security clearance as an engineer for aerospace company Boeing, had apparently refused his friends' urging to go to the hospital for several hours after being aware he was internally injured. He was anonymously dropped off the Enumclaw Community Hospital. On July 2, 2005, a man asked hospital staff for medical assistance for his companion. Pinyan was dead when he was placed into the emergency room. The man who brought Pinyan into the hospital had disappeared by the time hospital staff came to contact him.

"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."

Media reports at the time of the trial suggested that despite seizing and examining carefully a large number of such videos from the property, no evidence of injury to the horses was found, precluding animal cruelty charges, and that the trespass charge against Tait were brought due to lack of grounds for any other matter:

It was only after Pinyan died, when law enforcement looked for one way to punish his associates, that the legality of bestiality in Washington State became an issue [...] The prosecutor's office wanted to charge Tait with animal abuse, but the police found no evidence of abused animals on the many videotapes they collected from his home. As there was no law against humanely fucking one horse, the prosecutors could only charge Tait with trespassing.

— Charles Mudede, The Stranger

The prosecutor's office says no animal cruelty charges were filed because there was no evidence of injury to the horses.

— Associated Press at the The Seattle Times

Investigation

After Pinyan died, the authorities used his driver's license to find acquaintances and relatives. Earlier news reports stated that the authorities had used surveillance camera footage to track down Pinyan's companion. Using the contacts, the authorities found the farm where the incident occurred.

Media reporting

Jennifer Sullivan, a Seattle Times staff reporter, said that originally the King County Sheriff's Department did not expect the newspaper to report on the event, because "it was too gruesome." After an Associated Press report stated that the farm where the event occurred attracted "a significant number of people" who wanted to partake in bestiality, the Seattle Times decided that it needed to write articles about the case, since multiple people were involved.

Aftermath

After Pinyan died, Pam Roach, a member of the Washington Senate and a Republican from Auburn, crafted a bill that would ban bestiality in Washington State. Senate Bill 6417, which made bestiality a Class C felony, received bipartisan support. The bill passed on February 11, 2006 with all 36 state senators voting for it. Bestiality had been legal in Washington state for 117 years, until the passing of Senate Bill 6417. Charles Mudede of The Stranger said "It was an almost comically easy law to pass." Bestiality had no political support in Washington state, and no group in Washington state advocated for bestiality.

See also

• List of horse accidents
• List of unusual deaths

External links

• Trespassing charged in horse-sex case, The Seattle Times, October 19, 2005
• Boeing condolences archive, September 2005
• M. Brown, C. Rasmussen, «Bestiality and the queering of the human animal», «Environment and Planning D: Society and Space», 2010, 28(1) 158—177.