After Senate fails to act, Wisconsin remains a safe haven for animal molesters
by the Green Bay Press Gazette
It sounds like we were just one blush away from having a reasonable law against molesting animals.
So near, yet so far.
The Wisconsin legislature apparently was just a little too prudish to deal with it.
Now, if someone like Sterling Rachwal gets caught sneaking into a barn and molesting someone’s horses, the law can do nothing much beyond frowning sternly and tsk-tsking in disapproval.
If not for the inaction of a squeamish Legislature, acts like his would have meant prison time for the next offender. And mandatory treatment.
This is a real-world issue. Rachwal, 54, was recently convicted in Brown County Circuit Court for molesting horses. It’s a misdemeanor charge, and he got two years’ probation for it, even with a record of similar offenses going back 30 years.
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The penalty is so light, the deterrence factor so minimal, that Rachwal was entirely unintimidated by the notion that he was under investigation for the crime. In between interview sessions with Brown County sheriff’s investigators, Rachwal snuck off across the county line and molested more horses, according to court records.
There oughta be a law.
Rep. Andre Jacque, R-De Pere, thought so. He drafted one. He got the Assembly to pass it. It gained a bunch of support in the Senate, receiving absolutely no opposition….and then it died a quiet death.
It went with a whimper, not a bang.
The problem is, the subject matter apparently makes Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald turn pink around the ears. I mean, it’s just so, you know, icky.
Proponents of the bill couldn’t get the item on the calendar, and Fitzgerald balked at putting it up for a voice vote before closing out the session.
Rumor has it Fitzgerald didn’t like the idea of media headlines declaring “Legislative session ends with sex-with-animals bill.” His office wouldn’t call me back to confirm or deny that.
But anyway, I’ve got news for you, Senator: There were plenty of headlines about precisely that. Only they were about the bill’s failure, rather than about the bill’s passage.
“It’s very frustrating to fall just short of the goal line,” Jacque said. “But there’s just this stigma: Nobody wants to have their name associated with this issue.”
But Jacque took the bull by the horns, so to speak, after learning about the Rachwal case and the severe deficiencies in the state law. It isn’t just about Rachwal, Jacque pointed out.
“It’s not just for one individual,” he said. “It’s very disturbing behavior, but it’s not as isolated as people might think.”
At a committee hearing, people testified about internet sites advertising animals for sex. Experts testified about animal abuse escalating into human abuse. Police and prosecutors testified about suspected animal molesters dodging convictions entirely because of loopholes in existing laws.
“There were stories about people sleeping in their barns with shotguns” to protect their animals before Rachwal was finally arrested, Jacque said.
Testimony took two hours and involved 30 or 40 people. And after it passed at committee, people on both sides of the aisle through the Assembly debate, and later the Senate, spoke favorably of the bill, Jacque said.
“It’s very frustrating,” he said. “I just think this is common sense legislation.”
Jacque declined to blame Fitzgerald, though he said, “Clearly the Senate majority leader was not comfortable.”
Well, that’s important, too, I guess.
Now, if anything is to be done next session, Jacque has to start from scratch. Draft a bill, hold committee hearings, the whole nine yards.
“It’s tough to get 90 percent of the way and miss the last step and have to start over,” Jacque said.
He plans to. But meanwhile, you have to wonder whether mere embarrassment is a sufficient cause for Wisconsin to be one of the last remaining safe havens for serial animal molesters.