Lawmakers approve ban on bestiality

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Missouri lawmakers passed legislation Friday intended to boost the battle against computer and sex crimes and cleared up a mistake by restoring a ban on bestiality.

The bill, given final approval by an announced 117-4 House vote, allows the Missouri State Highway Patrol to establish an office devoted to fighting computer crimes.

The Missouri Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory would combine local, state and federal resources to fight computer and Internet-related crimes.

The bill restores a ban on sex between humans and animals that was accidentally left out when the state's criminal code was rewritten in the 1970s.

First-time offenders under the new crime of "unlawful sex with an animal" could be charged with a misdemeanor. Repeat offenses could face felony charges.

Beginning in 1969, a team of Missouri legal experts spent four years poring over law books and case history, huddling in smoky committee rooms to rewrite the state's hundreds of pages of antique criminal law. Old, quirky provisions were thrown out, and modern, court-tested language was inserted.

It then took legislators four more years of extensive review, hearings and debate to finally approve the revisions in 1977. But for all their work, they inadvertently left out the ban on bestiality.

Three years ago, the lack of such a law caught international attention when a London television show featured the late George Willard, a resident of Carl Junction, Mo., introducing his live-in pony, Pixel, as his wife.

Willard also authored a 1994 book, written under the pen name Mark Matthews, titled: "Horseman: Obsessions of a Zoophile."

The London Evening Standard published a column, titled "The Trouble with Stable Relationships," that called Willard's revelations about Pixel the "zoophilic confessions from Missourian trailer-trash."

Zoophilism is defined as extreme love for animals, specifically an abnormal sexual attraction.

The publicity got the attention of two lawmakers, who have been trying to pass the bill since 2000.