Bestiality in New Zealand: The latest figures, plus forensic psychologist Dr David Jones on how he helps his patients

“It’s across a life span. I’ve got guys ranging from 18 up to their 70s.” He says 10 therapy sessions can help some of the younger ones, 20 sessions can help most – and some are ingrained, longer-term cases.

Jones worked in the sex offender unit at the department of corrections inside Paremoremo prison for 15 years, and has a PhD that focused on sex offender recidivism.

“I do think I can help them. Sex offenders have some of the highest success rates and lowest reoffending rates in the prisons.”

Auckland forensic psychologist Dr David Jones has worked in prisons and in the community, treating sex offenders, including around 25 patients for bestiality-related issues.

Even though the work can feel bleak and toxic at times, he says he’d never turn someone down. “I believe everyone deserves some help.”

Some of Jones’ patients have had sex with animals, others have traded in material depicting it.

Both are crimes, and almost all Jones’ bestiality clients have already been arrested.

Successful completion of treatment can be a consideration in sentencing.

Bestiality and the law

There are three laws that deal with bestiality in New Zealand.

Actual sex with an animal is punishable by up to seven years in prison under the Crimes Act 1961.

The Ministry of Justice has released exclusive figures to the Herald revealing how prevalent criminal charges are.

Fourteen people around the country have been charged with bestiality in the 10 years to 2025.

The Herald has reported on some cases: a Far North man who committed bestiality with cows and indecent acts on calves, and a Nelson man with a sexual interest in dogs and an array of other species.

Occasionally people get caught if they record themselves, or it’s recorded on security cameras, but prosecutions aren’t common because, as Jones points out: “We don’t get much disclosure of bestiality because the animals can’t talk.”

It’s also illegal to import indecent or obscene items under the Customs and Excise Act 1996 – and that includes bestiality material.

Any imagery depicting bestiality is illegal – regardless of whether it features real animals or is animated, cartoon or computer-generated. The law doesn’t discriminate.

Simon Peterson, Chief Customs Officer for the child exploitation operations team, told the Herald that so far this year, Customs has seized at least 5512 bestiality files – and this is considered a typical number.

Bestiality material involving children isn’t included – because it’s categorised as child sexual abuse material. If it was added, the number would be higher.

Simon Peterson said Customs has seized at least 5512 bestiality files this year – and this is considered a typical number. Photo / Greenstone TV

Finally, the creation, possession and distribution of bestiality material is prosecuted under a third law: the Films, Videos and Publications Classifications Act 1993 – that’s the one McSkimming broke.

Tim Houston, manager of the child digital exploitation team at the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), told the Herald bestiality content has always been around and they’ve always detected it, but like most types of objectionable content, they’re seizing more than they used to.

“The rates by which we detect it in amongst offenders’ collections has increased – I think due to the accessibility the internet provides.”

He said recently his team has discovered a couple of people making publications of themselves committing bestiality or indecency with animals, which was unusual.

“This is not normal. It’s certainly not typical for us.” He said the cases haven’t yet reached court and it’s too early to tell if it’s a trend.

Tim Houston said the DIA has recently discovered a couple of people making publications of themselves committing bestiality or indecency with animals – not a normal discovery for his team.

‘Go and look at their childhoods’

Court documents show McSkimming made 432 searches on his work devices, intended or highly likely to return objectionable material.

His search terms included “nude girl and dog”, “captioned dog sex”, “AI nude bestiality”, “animal v nude girl”, “nude girl with pets” and “nude human milk cow”.

While he was being investigated, he confided in a colleague that he had needed different types of pornography to make him feel anything – and it had just kept escalating.

Jevon McSkimming told a colleague he needed different types of pornography to make him feel anything – and it had just kept escalating. Photo / RNZ, Mark Papalii

Jones told the Herald he has never met McSkimming but it sounded like a fairly typical scenario.

“It sounds like a textbook satiation curve – where you need more stimulation to get the same effect.

“From what I’ve read in the papers he doesn’t sound like a bestiality guy – he sounds like a stimulation seeker.

“There are a couple of types of objectionable publication downloaders. One group has specific material he’s looking for: usually children, sometimes animals. Then there’s the more common type – looking for anything with shock value. Bestiality material gives them a psychological effect.

“They’re filling a gap in their lives. They’re not perfectly well-balanced people.

“It’s a bit of a cliche but yeah go and look at their childhoods – you’ll find abandonment, loneliness, alienation, relationship problems. Every case is slightly different.

“You get satiated with one level and continually look for the next. It’s stimulation, it’s excitement, for people who feel trapped and bored and depressed and lonely.”

He said it often arrives in huge downloads of child sex abuse material and other illicit content swapped with other users.

“Those files are invariably a grab-bag of whatever deviance is going,” Jones told the Herald.

“Almost all of these guys are getting busted with a wide range of material outside their interests.

“The range is huge: car crash videos, execution videos, whatever junk a reasonable person would never want – arrives. There’s a large community on the internet catering to that race to the bottom.”

‘You want someone who’s happy’

Clinically, bestiality is treated in a similar way to paedophilia.

Jones helps patients identify factors that created the problem – usually boredom, frustration and lack of emotional intimacy in relationships – and they discuss the negative consequences of the behaviour.

“Emphasise the damage done to the victims – these are real children and you are contributing to their suffering – that’s not so effective with the animals.

“Then make a plan so life gets better. If a major contributing problem was unhappy intimate relationships – work on those. If the problem was emotional regulation and depression – work on those.

“There’s a small subset that actually has the deviant sexual interest in animals and for those there are more targeted treatments – mostly behavioural – so you would teach somebody essentially to masturbate to more appropriate material and increase their arousal to what they should want.”

Of the objectionable material offenders he says “you can help someone to stop being an offender but you don’t want an angry, unhappy non-offender.

“What you want is someone who’s happy in their life.”

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