Man
allegedly had sex with guide dog
 Tallahasseean charged with
breach of peace
By James L. Rosica
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER
Local
prosecutors are apparently in a bind: How do they charge a blind Tallahassee man who has
been accused of having sex with his guide dog?
Florida, like many other
states, has no bestiality statute - that is, a law specifically prohibiting
sexual contact between humans and animals.
So Alan
Yoder, 29, originally was charged with felony animal cruelty, but court records
show that charge was dropped last Friday and replaced with a misdemeanor -
disorderly conduct.
Yoder now
is charged with a "breach of the peace, by engaging in sexual activity
with a guide dog," according to a court document.
One of two
prosecutors on the case, Assistant State Attorney Owen McCaul, did not return a
call Thursday. The other, Assistant State Attorney Stephanie Usina, said she
could not answer specific questions, including explaining why the charge was
lowered to a misdemeanor.
Yoder,
reached by telephone Thursday, declined to be interviewed. James D. Varnado,
his attorney, said he has filed a not-guilty plea on his client's behalf but
declined to discuss details of the case.
"However
lurid the allegations may be, we should resist a rush to judgment," he
said.
Here's what
happened, according to Tallahassee
police reports:
Yoder, who
lives in a local apartment complex, last month asked a female acquaintance to
join him in a sex act with the dog, a male yellow Labrador
named "Lucky."
She
demurred, but later told a friend about it. That person called a social worker,
who called police.
Investigators
spoke to Yoder on June 16, who admitted performing certain sex acts with the
dog, even going into detail with them, but denied doing others. He was arrested
and booked June 22, charged with animal cruelty.
An
animal-control officer took the dog to Dr. Sondra Brown, a veterinarian at Northwood Animal Hospital,
who could not determine whether the dog had been sexually abused.
Warren
Goodwin, who recently retired after 30 years as an assistant prosecutor, said
he could not recall a similar case in Leon County.
Annemarie
Lucas, a New York-based special investigator for the American Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, said sexual contact with animals
"probably happens more than it's actually reported."
Bestiality
- illegal in New York
state - is "just not a natural thing," she said. "Animals can't
consent ... They're probably fearful and in physical pain. It's like any kind
of abuse.
"It's
a cowardly act," added Lucas, who also appears on "Animal
Precinct," a program on the Animal Planet cable-television network.
"It's a domination thing, something an animal would never instigate."
Stephanie
Shain, spokeswoman for the Humane Society of the United States, said her
organization takes a similar position.
"It's
doing something to an animal that they have an inability to stop," Shain
said.
Last year,
an Ocala man
pleaded no contest to felony animal cruelty after being charged with having sex
with his then-fiancee's female Rottweiler, according to the Pet-Abuse.com Web
site.
A judge
withheld adjudication and ordered five years of probation and a psychological
evaluation. He also prohibited the 27-year-old man from "owning pets of
any kind while on probation and from having unsupervised contact with other
people's pets," the site said.
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