Animal sex offenders come in all shapes and sizes. They range in age from 10 to 80-something. They are white, black, and brown. Sometimes they have sex with animals directly; other times they manipulate or coerce someone else to do the deed. Often they know others with like-minded intentions. 

This Canadian case demonstrates all of those scenarios. In 2013, this case uncovered a young man with deviant sexual fantasies and practices, who forced young children to have sex with animals while he filmed them, and who was aided by a former girlfriend, who had sex with. her own family dog. The case was discovered in September 2013 when a 15 year-old girl asked police for help because her new 22-year-old boyfriend was pressuring her to do stuff she didn’t like. 

This simple request for help led to the arrest and ultimate conviction of Shayne Lund. In September, 2020 Lund, who was previously deemed a sexually dangerous predator, was denied parole and ordered to remain in prison indefinitely.

Although several witnesses at trial testified there were “no signs” of Lund’s deviant behavior, when Lund was 14, he raped a 12-year-old girl multiple times. The young woman held her silence until Lund was arrested at age 22.

As an adult, Lund, who lived at home with his father, a veteran Ontario Provincial Police officer, dated multiple young women, often at the same time, and conviced at least two of them - Avery Taylor, 20 and Katherine Thompson, 19 - to procure children for him to sexually assault. “Get me a little ‘un,” Lund texted one of the women. “I’m dying … I need my kinda fix."

At the time of her arrest, Taylor was taking childcare courses at a local college, and working at McDonalds where she had access to children. One victim’s mother described how Taylor kept asking if she could “borrow” her daughter to work on an assignment for class. But much later, when the mother was shown explicit sexual images of her 5-year-old, she learned her daughter had been given “taste tests” of fruit-flavored condoms being worn by Lund. 

Thompson, who admitted to having sex with her family dog, arranged for Lund to have access to children she babysat. She also admitted to having coached Lund to drug and sexually assault a 12-year-old, and chatted with Lund about having a child together so he could rape the baby. 

In October, 2013 Lund, Taylor, and Thompson were arrested and charged with conspiring to kidnap a child, making and selling child porn, voyeurism, bestiality, and sexual assault. By January 2014, additional charges were laid for coercing children to have sex with animals, and forcing them to watch sex acts. 

As the investigation progressed, police combed through hundreds of thousands of images, and identified additional child victims mostly between the ages of two and 10. One 14-year-old was forced to perform sex acts with a dog while being videotaped. She was told the images would be shown to her father if she didn’t comply with additional requests. Ultimately, nearly three dozen chld victims were identified. A 12-year-old was asked to have sex with horses and dogs. Children were blindfolded, given “noxious substances”, and photographed while being sexually abused. Images, including those of Lund committing bestiality, were shared on the internet.

Sadly, this case is not unlike many others.