The story about the story (for immature adults only)
Sorry, but you have to wonder when someone searches for this:
26/07/2005 23:05:32 sex farm Enumclaw Communitys Sex with animals (Google)
Well, the Seattle Times has the story:
King County sheriff's detectives are investigating the owners of an Enumclaw-area farm after a Seattle man died from injuries sustained while having sex with a horse boarded on the property.
Investigators first learned of the farm after the man died at Enumclaw Community Hospital July 2. The county Medical Examiner's Office ruled that the death was accidental and the result of having sex with a horse.
A surveillance camera picked up the license plate of the car that dropped the man off at the hospital, which led detectives to the farm and other people involved, said sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart.
Deputies don't believe a crime occurred because bestiality is not illegal in Washington state and the horse was uninjured, said Urquhart....
The farm was talked about in Internet chat rooms as a destination for people looking to have sex with livestock, he said....
Susan Michaels, co-founder of local animal-rights organization Pasado's Safe Haven, said she has been fighting to have bestiality made illegal. "It's animal cruelty behind closed doors," Michaels said.
And there's a story about the story in Editor and Publisher:
How do you report a story about a man who dies while having sex with a horse? With a snigger? Or straight?
Last Friday, the Seattle Times got wind of an Associated Press item about a local man who died after having sex with a horse. "The sheriff's department didn't expect us to report it because it was too gruesome," said Jennifer Sullivan, the Seattle Times staff reporter who would eventually author two stories on the ordeal....
Sullivan said, "We thought if there was more than one person participating in this, it needed to be reported."...
"We tried to make it as tasteful as possible keeping out the cause of death. As a surprise, I had at least 70 emails from people and the vast majority wanted to know what killed this guy," she said. "So on the second day we had to be more specific."
Although she never reported the man's name, in her second article Sullivan did say that he was 45 years old and added that he died of acute peritonitis due to the perforation of the colon....
Perhaps the most lurid detail she added, however, was that when they searched the farm, police had found hundreds of hours of videotape showing men having sex with horses....
When asked if the reporting was especially difficult due to the subject matter, Sullivan explained that she's been working on the crime and court beat for the past six years, three of which have been at the Times, and so is rarely shocked by anything anymore. The community of Enumclaw, however, was not braced for this type of scandal....
She said that the man's family -- whom she interviewed for the second story -- asked for anonymity, which the newspaper granted. They never suspected that he was involved in bestiality, and were surprised when they learned that he had purchased a thoroughbred stallion earlier in the year, apparently one of a pair he kept at the farm.
Sullivan also spoke with two neighbors -- a husband and wife -- near the farm who had no idea that this kind of activity had been going on. A few days ago, they were shown a tape of men having sex with horses -- one of which belonged to them.
"It was a really rural community," Sullivan explained. "They were pretty devastated."
But so far, despite the subject matter, public response has been positive, she said. She explained that out of the many emails she's received, only one has been negative. Most of them express sympathy to Sullivan for having to write such a horrific story and thank her for leaving out gratuitous aspects, or using phrases like "horsing around."...
Apparently Ms. Sullivan is more tasteful than I would be...
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