A man was found with “stomach churning” photos and videos of people having sex with horses and dogs on his phone when police went to his farm. A court has heard that though some of men seen in the images “bear similar personal characteristics” with the 39-year-old defendant – and one of the dogs caught on camera looks like his dog – the prosecution is not brought on the basis that he is the male depicted.
David Singh, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court that in October 2021 police executed a search warrant at Jason Birch’s farm near Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in relation to other unrelated matters. A number of Samsung phones were seized and when examined were found to contain 137 pictures and videos of co-called “extreme pornography” showing “acts of a sexual nature between adults and animals”. The prosecutor said the pictures included a man penetrating the anus of a dog with his penis and a horse “mounting” a male and inserting its penis into the man’s anus. The court heard that while the man in the some of the images “bears similar personal characteristics” with the defendant the prosecution was not brought on the basis that Birch is the man depicted.
The court heard that in his first interview the defendant denied any offending and claimed he had been “framed.” In his second interview, conducted in November 2022 after a full download of the phone, he denied he was the male depicted in the photos but did accept one of the dogs seen in the pictures looked like his own dog. For the latest court reports sign up to our crime newsletter here.
Jason Birch, aged 39, formerly of Little Dumpledale Farm, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, but now of no fixed abode, had previously pleaded guilty to possession of extreme pornography when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has no previous convictions. The court heard Birch took “full responsibility” for the offending and at a previous hearing no evidence had been offered against his partner, Rachel Brown, who had initially been charged in relation to the same offending. A formal not guilty verdict has been recorded for Miss Brown.
Dyfed Thomas, for Birch, said his client had been open with the author of the pre-sentence report and he said there was very little he could say about the offending other than “the pictures are illegal and rightly so.” He said the defendant and his partner were heavily in debt – including having to pay for rented accommodation for Birch away from the farm – and said there had been a local “reaction” to the nature of prosecution which had seen “some people going far too far.”
Judge Paul Thomas KC said the material found on Birch’s phone was “stomach-churning” and he said it was clear from everything he had read that the defendant has “a long-standing, deviant sexual interest in animals” which needed to be addressed. He said there had already been “ramifications” for the defendant including financial ones and “the understandable public abhorrence” at his offending. With a one-quarter discount for his guilty pleas Birch was sentenced four months in prison suspended for two years and was ordered to complete a rehabilitation course which will include a programme to address his sexual offending. The judge called the delay in the case “inordinate and inexcusable.”
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