A man who sexually assaulted two female goats in Tasmania’s north-east last year has avoided jail after pleading guilty to two counts of bestiality.
WARNING: This story contains references to bestiality and sexual assault
The Launceston Supreme Court heard how Branxholm man Jacob Heatlie Johnston, 21, took a ‘much loved family pet’ goat from a nearby cafe and animal farm business into the amenities block at the local campground during the early hours of a June morning last year.
In his passing comments on the sentence, Justice Pearce said a witness heard the goat screaming for “over a period of up to two hours” during the incident.
A veterinary examination following the assault found that the goat had noticeable swelling to its vulva and vaginal wall.
Five months later, a goat in a different part of Branxholm was also discovered with an altered gait, a swollen and bleeding vagina and contained DNA evidence linking Johnston to both crimes.
Justice Pearce said that Johnston, who was 20-years-old at the time, “is of extremely low intelligence consistent with a mild intellectual disability” and has “been the subject of significant deprivation and hardship since he was a baby”, which may have contributed to his actions.
Johnston, who spent a “good deal of time in the bush”, building himself a shack, doing woodcutting, building, cooking and fishing, began using cannabis at the age of 12 and started using methamphetamine at 18, Justice Pearce said.
Justice Pearce recognised the “moral outrage” surrounding the crimes but chose a community corrections order and therapy engagement over imprisonment.
“There may well be occasions on which imprisonment is required for this crime but this is not one of them and it is not a course I am going to adopt,” Justice Pearce said.
“A fair and just society does not send a young man in the defendant’s circumstances to prison, at least for these crimes.”
He said the “morally repugnant” actions had resulted in him losing friends, his job and now living in a “dilapidated caravan” in his father’s yard.
As part of the sentence, Johnston was placed on a two-year community corrections order, the sex offenders register for five years and ordered to compensate the goats’ owners for veterinary bills.
