Enumclaw horse sex case

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Enumclaw horse sex case
DateJuly 2, 2005
LocationEnumclaw, Washington, United States
TypeZoophiliac
CauseAcute peritonitis caused by traumatic perforation of the colon
ParticipantsKenneth Pinyan (Mr. Hands),[1] James Michael Tait, an unidentified male, and a stallion
Deaths1 (Kenneth Pinyan)

The Enumclaw horse sex case was a 2005 incident in which Kenneth Pinyan[2] (June 22, 1960 – July 2, 2005), an American Boeing engineer residing in Gig Harbor, Washington,[3] died from injuries received during receptive rectal sex with a stallion at a farm in an unincorporated area in King County, Washington, near the city of Enumclaw. Pinyan distributed zoophile porn under the alias Mr. Hands.[4]

During a July 2005 sex act, videotaped by a friend, Pinyan suffered a perforated colon from receptive anal intercourse with a stallion 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.[5] It was informally referred to as the "Enumclaw horse sex case".[6] Video footage of Pinyan and a horse was later disseminated through the Internet.[7]

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 a death penalty.

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,[8] and played at numerous regional festivals in the United States thereafter.[9] 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.[10][11]

Background

Kenneth Pinyan had worked for the company for eight years.[2] He was previously married to a woman and had children with her. He had previously moved from Seattle to Oak Harbor, Washington.[12] Before his death Pinyan was building a new house and a barn, in which he planned to place a horse, on the Key Peninsula Highway in Gig Harbor, Washington. He was about to begin making payments on his 30-year, $144,000 mortgage on it.[2]

Pinyan previously lost the ability to experience certain sensations after suffering from a motorcycle accident, and became involved in increasingly extreme sexual acts such as dildos, fisting, and sex with horses. He was a part of a group of men who received anal sex from horses and sometimes had sex with one another afterwards. In 2015 Charles Mudede of The Stranger wrote that the men had a sexual fixation on large penises "that may have had nothing to do with horses."[1] He also believed Pinyan did not truly love horses and was not a true zoophile.[1]

Death

The incident occurred at a 40-acre (16 ha) farm,[13] located in an unincorporated area in King County, Washington,[14] northwest of the city of Enumclaw.[13] Pinyan, and a man named James Michael Tait (who lived in a trailer next to the farm), plus another unidentified man, often visited the farm to engage in sexual intercourse with the horses inside.[2]

Prosecutors later determined that the horse had not been injured by being forced to engage in sex in this manner.[14][15] According to the Medical Examiner's Office, Pinyan "died of acute peritonitis due to perforation of the colon",[13] and the death was ruled accidental.[16]

He was anonymously dropped off at the Enumclaw Community Hospital.[13][17] On July 2, 2005, a man asked hospital staff for medical assistance for his companion. Pinyan was found dead in the emergency room, aged 45. The man who brought Pinyan into the hospital had disappeared by the time hospital staff came to contact him.[13]

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 having sex with one horse, the prosecutors could only charge Tait with trespassing.

— Charles Mudede, The Stranger[2]

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[18]

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.[13] The police tracked down the rural Enumclaw-area farm, which was known in zoophile Internet chat rooms as a destination for people who want to have sex with livestock, and seized hundreds of hours of videotapes of men engaging in receptive anal sex with horses. One of the videotapes featured Kenneth Pinyan shortly before he died July 2.[13]

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.[19]

A video of Pinyan engaging in sexual acts with a horse circulated around the internet after Pinyan's death where he gained notoriety and the infamous name of Mr. Hands.[1][20]

Criminal charges, guilty plea, and sentencing

The photographer, 54-year-old James Michael Tait,[14] was charged with criminal trespassing in the first Degree; because the owners of the farm, a third party, were not aware that the men entered the property to engage in bestiality. The third man was not charged since he was not visible in the videos seized by investigators.[2] On November 29, 2005, Tait entered an Alford Plea,[21] and Judge David Christie gave him a suspended one-year sentence, a $300 fine, and one day of community service. Judge Christie ordered Tait to never visit the farm again.[2]

Aftermath

After Pinyan died,[2] Pam Roach, a member of the Washington State Senate and a Republican from Auburn, crafted a bill that would ban bestiality in Washington State.[19] Senate Bill 6417, which made bestiality a Class C felony, passed on February 11, 2006 with all 36 state senators voting for it. Bestiality had been legal in Washington state since 1976; It was incorporated in Washington's Sodomy criminal statute RCW 9.79.100 and repealed by the state legislature in 1975. Mudede wrote "It was an almost comically easy law to pass."[2] Bestiality had no political support in Washington state, and no group in Washington state advocated for bestiality.[2] The law is RCW 16.52.205(3). Mudede wrote that reading RCW 16.52.205 "is very much like reading hardcore porn."[2] In addition, the law prohibits "videotap[ing] a person engaged in a sexual act or sexual contact with an animal" "either alive or dead." Because of the provision against videotaping, Mudede stated that the law "points an angry finger directly at James Tait."[2]

After the laws changed, people who engaged in bestiality moved to other states which did not yet criminalize bestiality since they did not wish to be prosecuted for their acts. In 2015 Mudede said that he was unaware of any bestiality arrests in Washington State since the Pinyan incident.[22]

In 2009, Tait and two other people were jailed in Maury County, Tennessee, accused of engaging in bestiality.[23] In January 2010 Tait pleaded guilty in a Tennessee court to engaging in sexual acts with animals, and he was placed on probation.[24]

Mudede wrote that at the time of the incident the residents of Enumclaw were shocked and angered by the incident. In 2015, ten years after the incident, Mudede wrote that Enumclaw residents were unwilling to acknowledge the incident.[12]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Sokol, Zach. "The Strange, Sad Story of the Man Named Mr. Hands Who Died from Having Sex with a Horse". vice. vice.com. Retrieved 1 January 2016.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 Mudede, Charles (February–March 2006). "The Animal In You". The Stranger. Retrieved 2006-04-30.
  3. ↑ Skager, Shawn (July 12, 2006). "Film to focus on aftermath of Enumclaw incident". Enumclaw Courier-Herald. Retrieved 2008-11-02.
  4. ↑ Horse Riding Mr Hands, Washington
  5. ↑ "Horse sex story was online hit". The Seattle Times. December 30, 2005. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  6. ↑ Macdonald, Moira (2006-07-03). "Infamous Enumclaw horse sex case to be made into movie". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  7. ↑ "A Lyrical Approach to a Subject That Shocks". The New York Times. April 1, 2007. Retrieved April 22, 2013. "The sex in “Zoo” is merely glimpsed and barely discernible in a few seconds of a video that the police had confiscated and that was circulated on the Internet after Mr. Pinyan’s death."
  8. ↑ Westneat, Danny (December 3, 2006). "New movie is the spawn of horse sex". The Seattle Times.
  9. ↑ Dentler, Matt (2007-05-04). "Matt Dentler's Blog: Cannes Countdown: Directors' Fortnight Lineup Impresses". Archived from the original on 2007-09-29. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
  10. ↑ "Zoo, which opens today in NY and LA, has just been selected as one of the features of the prestigious Directors Fortnight sidebar at this year's Cannes Film Festival". Zoo: Inside the Controversial Documentary about Bestiality
  11. ↑ Eugene Hernandez, "'07: Slate Set for 49th Directors' Fortnight", IndieWIRE, May 3, 2007.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Mudede, Charles. "Revisiting the Town of the Most Famous Horse Sex Death in Recorded History ." The Stranger. July 22, 2015. Retrieved on April 11, 2016.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 Sullivan, Jennifer (July 15, 2005). "Videotapes show bestiality, Enumclaw police say". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Rick Anderson (November 9, 2005). "Closing the Barn Door". Seattle Weekly. "Tait, a truck driver who lives near the Southeast 444th Street farm where the death occurred, "
  15. ↑ Foundas, Scott. "Zoo." Variety. Friday May 18, 2007. Retrieved on September 17, 2010.
  16. ↑ Sullivan, Jennifer (July 15, 2005). "Enumclaw-area animal-sex case investigated". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  17. ↑ Keegan, Rebecca Winters (January 28, 2007). "Have You Seen the Horse Sex Movie?". Time. Retrieved September 17, 2010.
  18. ↑ "Charge filed in connection with man who died having horse sex". The Seattle Times. Associated Press. October 18, 2005. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Messer, Lesley (July 18, 2005). "When a Man Dies in a Sex Act with a Horse -- What's a Reporter to Do?". Editor & Publisher. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  20. ↑ Lim, Dennis. FILM — A Lyrical Approach to a Subject That Shocks. The New York Times. April 1, 2007. Retrieved on October 13, 2010. "The sex in Zoo is merely glimpsed and barely discernible in a few seconds of a video that the police had confiscated and that was circulated on the Internet after Mr. Pinyan's death."
  21. ↑ "Man in infamous Enumclaw horse-sex case faces new charges in Tennessee ." The Seattle Times. October 20, 2009. Updated October 21, 2009. Retrieved on February 7, 2016.
  22. ↑ Sokol, Zach. "The Strange, Sad Story of the Man Named Mr. Hands Who Died from Having Sex with a Horse" (Archive). Vice. July 16, 2015. Retrieved on February 7, 2016.
  23. ↑ "3 accused of having sex with animals in Maury Co". WKRN. 19 October 2009. Retrieved 2016-05-11.
  24. ↑ Sullivan, Jennifer (16 April 2010). "Felon accused of running animal-sex farm in Whatcom County". The Seattle Times. Retrieved 2016-05-11.

External links

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