Following last year’s incident involving a person having sex with an animal, MP Mario Galea was the latest voice calling for the criminalisation (or should one say recriminalisation?) of bestiality, that is to say, any act amounting to having sex with any animal.

This legislative shortcoming had first been flagged by our courts, and, before briefly delving further into this rarely mentioned and grasped subject, it would not go amiss to give a brief outline of the legislative history leading up to the present situation.

Up to 1973, we still had in force the sodomy law which originally had been introduced by the British. Among other actions, sodomy also consisted in a person engaging in sex with an animal. However, that law was removed by legislation in 1973 under the government led by Dom Mintoff, a removal strongly opposed to by both the Nationalist Party and the Catholic Church.

Intrinsically, the sexual attraction to animals falls under the general technical term of “zoophilia” and is not limited just to the act of a person having sex with an animal. Indeed, this aspect was excellently and masterly elaborated upon by lawyer Dr Etienna Savona in his 2017 thesis, who had then already been calling for the criminalisation of bestiality in Malta.

It is important to relate to animals through legislation, giving utmost importance to their inherent value and shift animals from a simple legal object to giving them a special legal status.

It is thus important to zoophile acts from acts amounting to cruelty to animals as currently defined by our law. If bestiality is indeed to be criminalised once more, it is important for the legislator to formulate rules to cover acts that are not necessarily cruelty to animals in the strict criminal meaning of this term, but are nonetheless motivated by zoophilia.

In this sense, a number of pertinent questions should be posed, such as whether only certain forms of sexual acts performed with animals should be punishable, or any type of sexual act, whether the distribution of animal pornography should be punishable, including the possession of animal pornography.

From a comparative legislative study, it transpires that Norway, for one, has had legislation in place that covers and punishes all the above-mentioned acts. In other countries, like Norway itself, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the legal status of animals is enshrined in their Constitution.

Indeed, under the Swiss Constitution, the protection of animal dignity is unique in that it is forbidden to humiliate animals, use them as tools or alter their appearance.

Statistically, it transpires that most animals are at risk of being victims of bestiality. In The Guardian of 21 June 2017, it was stated that studies then showed how horses, dogs, cows and even snakes were frequently subjected to bestiality. And bestiality is not limited to any one particular country, but worldwide, and has been with us for quite a good number of centuries.

Criminalising bestiality should be holistically interlinked and incorporated into the related phenomenon of zoophilia. An in-depth study of the latter should provide an exhaustive scenario of what forms it can have and how they can be classified and defined.

Based on both the scientific and clinical literature, as well as some theoretical speculation, 10 different types of zoophile can be listed, namely:

Ø Human-animal role-players – those who never have sex with animals but become sexually aroused through wanting to have sex with humans who pretend to be animals.

Ø Romantic zoophiles – those who keeps animals as pets as a way to get psychosexually stimulated without actually having any kind of sexual contact with them.

Ø Zoophilic fantasizers – those who fantasise about having sexual intercourse with animals but never actually do.

Ø Tactile zoophiles – those who get sexual excitement from touching, stroking or fondling animals or their genitals but do not actually have sexual intercourse with animals.

Ø Fetishistic zoophiles – those who keep various animal parts (especially fur) that are used as erotic stimuli as a crucial part of their sexual activity (typically masturbation).

Ø Sadistic bestials – those who derive sexual arousal from the torturing of animals (known as zoosadism) but does not involve sexual intercourse with the animal.

Ø Opportunistic zoosexuals – those who have normal sexual encounters but would have sexual intercourse with animals if the opportunity arose.

Ø Regular zoosexuals – those who prefer sex with animals than sex with humans (but are capable of having sex with both). Such zoophiles will engage in a wide range of sexual activities with animals and love animals on an emotional level.

Ø Homicidal bestials – those who need to kill animals in order to have sex with them. Although capable of having sex with living animals, there is an insatiable desire to have sex with dead animals.

Ø Exclusive zoosexuals – those who only have sex with animals to the exclusion of human sexual partners.

In order to rein in these types of deviant human behaviour verging on the criminal, animal pornography should also be criminalised in as much as the same way as child pornography.

Ensuring animal welfare is a human responsibility that includes consideration for all aspects of animal well-being, including proper housing, management, nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling, prohibition of bestial cruelty and degrading treatment and, when necessary, humane euthanasia.

Dr Mark Said is an advocate