'Perverted' dog owner jailed over bestiality

A 39-year-old man has been jailed after pleading guilty to a total of 12 sex offences, including bestiality.

Graham Marshall coerced his partner Paige Reaney, 33, into acting out his "perverted" sexual fantasies, Sheffield Crown Court heard.

Marshall, of no fixed abode, was jailed on Monday for five and a half years, with an extended licence period of four years.

At the same hearing, Reaney, formerly of Bowman Drive, Sheffield, was given a nine-month sentence, suspended for two years, after admitting bestiality and animal cruelty offences.

Marshall was also placed on the sexual offenders register for life, while Reaney was told to carry out 30 requirement activity days and placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Meanwhile, Marshall and Reaney were both banned from keeping animals.

Warning: This story contains details readers might find distressing

Judge Jeremy Richardson KC told the court the offending first came to light in August 2021 when police had seized devices from the couple's home after receiving information about the possession of illegal images of children.

The devices contained bestiality content which had been carried out by both defendants over a three-year period and involved their pet dog.

Marshall's devices also contained voyeuristic material and indecent images of children and he had also taken an indecent image of a child, the court was told.

When Reaney was arrested in January 2023, she told officers she had been forced to sexually abuse their dog as part of Marshall's "fantasy", and in a later interview, she told officers he had previously sent her sexual images of dogs.

Reaney denied knowledge of Marshall's other offences.

Judge Richardson accepted Reaney had been "under a level of coercion", but said she "went along with what happened" and had "played your role to the full".

The judge told Marshall he had "wallowed in a swamp of sexual depravity" and would likely reoffend.

"You were the author and director of this appalling sexual depravity," he said.

"You have deeply ingrained harmful sexual perversions within your character which embrace serious criminal conduct."

Marshall had previously pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring intercourse with an animal, three counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image and seven counts of making indecent photographs of children.

He had also pleaded guilty to one count of taking an indecent photograph of a child and one count of voyeurism relating to a camera installed in a toilet.

The court heard in mitigation that Marshall had been sexually and physically abused as a child and exposed to bestiality.

Since the couple's abuse of their dog had come to light, he had been ostracized by his family and was living in a tent in the woods.

Judge Richardson told the defendants their offending was "perhaps the worst example of a case of its kind that I've ever come across" in 45 years.

Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.