Animal Activists Upset at Dog Use in Child Sex Abuse - Who's Upset for Girls?

Animal rights activist upset about Supreme Court of Canada bestiality decision

Vancouver, BC, Canada / News Talk 980 CKNW
Shelby Thom


The Supreme Court of Canada, Sean Kilpatrick, The Canadian Press

An animal advocacy organization is decrying a Supreme Court of Canada decision relating to a case of bestiality in British Columbia.

Canada’s highest court has dismissed an appeal launched by Crown, after a B.C. man originally convicted of sexually assaulting his step daughters with the family dog, was acquitted of a bestiality charge.

The man , only known as D.L.W, argued he didn’t commit the offence because it didn’t involve intercourse.

The Supreme Court of Canada agrees, stating penetration is an essential element of bestiality.

Camille Labchuk with Animal Justice Canada, an intervenor in the case, says today’s decision essentially legalizes forms of sexual abuse of animals across the country.

“So as of today, Canadian law now gives animal abusers a right to use animals for their own sexual gratification.”

The highest court says any expansion of criminal liability for the offence would have to come from Parliament.

Bestiality is legal in Canada as long as

no penetration is involved,

according to a shocking Supreme Court of Canada ruling Thursday.

Paul McLeod
BuzzFeed Political Editor, Canada

While bestiality is a criminal offence in Canada, the top court ruled the legal definition is much more limited than how it has been interpreted for decades. It all goes back to the 1800s Church of England trying to ban any sex acts that were seen as unnatural.

The crime of bestiality in Canada stems from the old crime of “buggery.” The original definition of buggery meant anal sex with either another human or an animal. Both were forbidden in England, where Canada’s earliest laws came from.

Over the years the Criminal Code of Canada changed but the definition of bestiality was never explicitly expanded. The court found in a 7-1 ruling Thursday that there needs to be penetration involved for an act with an animal to be a criminal offence.

“There is no hint in any of the parliamentary record that any substantive change to the elements of the offence of bestiality was intended,” the Supreme Court ruled.

The case before the Supreme Court involved a man who sexually abused his teenaged stepdaughters.
On multiple occasions he forced them to (entice the dog into a sexual act too graphic and disgusting to describe).


Via Chris Wattie / Reuters

The man was convicted of 14 charges, including two counts of bestiality, and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. The two bestiality charges have now been overturned.

Parliament will now have to draft new bestiality laws to cover non-penetrative contact, if it so chooses.

Camille Labchuk of the group Animal Justice said the government must move quickly to close this “dangerous and disturbing loophole.”

“I think the Supreme Court decision is a wakeup call that the criminal laws protecting animals in this country are severely out of date,” she said.

There happens to be a bill before the House of Commons right now from Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith that would define bestiality as “sexual activity between a person and an animal.”

However, the government has so far opposed Bill C-246, which would also ban shark finning, ban the selling of cat and dog fur, and make it illegal to “brutally or viciously” kill an animal.

Conservative MP Robert Sopuck called it “a Trojan horse that would advance a pure animal rights agenda.”

A government representative said he worries the bill would unintentionally criminalize hunting and fishing.

Erskine-Smith insists his bill is specifically worded to do no such thing. He said the government could amend the bill for even further assurance.

Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Abella was the lone dissenter of Thursday’s decision. She argued that since penetration is physically impossible with many animals, it defies common sense for penetration to be a requirement of the crime.

“Acts with animals that have a sexual purpose are inherently exploitative whether or not penetration occurs,” she wrote.

It's astonishing to me that people are so upset that a dog was abused in a sexual act even though the dog was completely unaware it was being abused. Where is the outcry for the young girls who were abused by the dog? They knew full well that they were being abused, and they will have serious repercussions that could last the rest of their lives. There are no consequences for the dog; all the damage is done to the girls. 

The man used the animal to sexually assault the girls, and there are no consequences for him for that sick, disgusting act. 

The Supreme Court of Canada has completely missed the point, again.

What an insane world we live in when animal rights are put so ridiculously far above human rights?

Oklahoma Court of Appeals Upholds Bizarre Lower Court Ruling on Rape

Ruling is sparking outrage among critics who say the

judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming

and buying outdated notions about rape

An Oklahoma court has stunned local prosecutors with a declaration that state law doesn’t criminalize oral sex with a victim who is completely unconscious.



The ruling, a unanimous decision by the state’s criminal appeals court, is sparking outrage among critics who say the judicial system was engaged in victim-blaming and buying outdated notions about rape.

But legal experts and victims’ advocates said they viewed the ruling as a sign of something larger: the troubling gaps that still exist between the nation’s patchwork of laws and evolving ideas about rape and consent.

The case involved allegations that a 17-year-old boy assaulted a girl, 16, after volunteering to give her a ride home. The two had been drinking in a Tulsa park with a group of friends when it became clear that the girl was badly intoxicated. Witnesses recalled that she had to be carried into the defendant’s car. Another boy, who briefly rode in the car, recalled her coming in and out of consciousness.

The boy later brought the girl to her grandmother’s house. Still unconscious, the girl was taken to a hospital, where a test put her blood alcohol content above .34. She awoke as staff were conducting a sexual assault examination.

Tests would later confirm that the young man’s DNA was found on the back of her leg and around her mouth. The boy claimed to investigators that the girl had consented to performing oral sex. The girl said she didn’t have any memories after leaving the park. Tulsa County prosecutors charged the young man with forcible oral sodomy.

OK, first time I've heard that charge.

But the trial judge dismissed the case. And the appeals court ruling, on 24 March, affirmed that prosecutors could not apply the law to a victim who was incapacitated by alcohol.

“Forcible sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation,” the decision read. Its reasoning, the court said, was that the statute listed several circumstances that constitute force, and yet was silent on incapacitation due to the victim drinking alcohol. “We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language.”

Why not, if it is clearly inadequate?

Benjamin Fu, the Tulsa County district attorney leading the case, said the ruling had him “completely gobsmacked”.

“The plain meaning of forcible oral sodomy, of using force, includes taking advantage of a victim who was too intoxicated to consent,” Fu said. “I don’t believe that anybody, until that day, believed that the state of the law was that this kind of conduct was ambiguous, much less legal. And I don’t think the law was a loophole until the court decided it was.” To focus on why the victim was unable to consent, he continued, puts the victim at fault.

But several legal experts declined to fault the appeals court, saying instead that the ruling should be a wake-up call for legislators to update Oklahoma’s laws.

Michelle Anderson, the dean of the CUNY School of Law who has written extensively about rape law, called the ruling “appropriate” but the law “archaic”.

“This is a call for the legislature to change the statute, which is entirely out of step with what other states have done in this area and what Oklahoma should do,” she said. “It creates a huge loophole for sexual abuse that makes no sense,” she said.

Jennifer Gentile Long, who leads a group, AEquitas, that guides prosecutors in sexual and domestic violence cases, agreed. She said the Oklahoma law was an example of a gulf that still exists in some places between the law and evolving notions around consent and sexual agency.

Oklahoma has a separate rape statute that protects victims who were too intoxicated to consent to vaginal or anal intercourse, Long noted. But “there are still gaps in the ways laws are written that allow some cases to fall through the cracks,” she said. “This case” – because it did not involve vaginal rape but an oral violation – “seems to be one of them”.

In the wake of the ruling, Fu has said he will push for lawmakers to change the code. Many states have engaged in a broad overhaul of their rape laws in recent years, Anderson said, part of a movement to fall in line with the modern understanding of rape.

“There is a recognition that social mores have changed, that the law should now try to protect sexual autonomy as opposed to sexual morality,” she said. Often, the law changes after an outcry over unpopular court rulings.

The Oklahoma appeals court declined to make the ruling a precedent. But Fu said he has learned that other defendants are nevertheless making the same argument in other parts of Oklahoma to avoid charges.

The defendant’s attorney, Shannon McMurray, was not available for comment. She told Oklahoma Watch, which was first to report the ruling, that prosecutors were clearly in the wrong to charge the young man with forcible sodomy, and not a lesser crime of unwanted touching.

“There was absolutely no evidence of force or him doing anything to make this girl give him oral sex,” McMurray said, “other than she was too intoxicated to consent.”

Unbelievable! There was penetration (oral) and there was no consent! Isn't that the very definition of rape? Good grief! Use some common sense, judges. I mean the girl was stupid to get passed-out drunk, but that shouldn't make her fair game for rape.