Anchorage Daily News

KETCHIKAN -- A 26-year-old Klawock man has been charged with two counts of criminal mischief for allegedly having sex with a tied-up dog.

Harold Simpson, a registered sex offender, is being held on a $10,000 bond.

The charges stemmed from an alleged incident last Wednesday in the woods outside the village.

A witness told Klawock Police Officer Chris Paulson that she saw Simpson coax a white dog into the woods by a green rope and later saw the dog come running out without the rope, according to Paulson's affidavit.

The witness then said she saw Simpson coax a black Labrador retriever to come to him, tying the green rope around the dog's neck and leading it into the woods.

Two men told the officer they went looking in the woods for the dog and found a man having sex with it, according to the affidavit.

The dog was tied to the tree by a green rope, and white tape had been placed around its muzzle, Paulson's report says. He says he later recovered a green rope and white tape with black hair on it from the scene.

The Ketchikan District Attorney's office had charged Simpson with two misdemeanor counts of criminal mischief.

At an arraignment hearing Friday, Ketchikan District Attorney James Scott told Craig District Court Magistrate Kay Clark that there isn't a state law to prohibit having sex with a dog.

The state also asked for bail, a rare move for a low-level offense.

"Mr. Simpson, however, poses perhaps the greatest threat to the community of any defendant that we will see in this court, or any other in Southeast, for some time," Scott said.

According to court records, when Simpson was 16, he was convicted of twice raping a young boy. He's also serving probation for assault after lunging at a child last year.

The state's "very real concern," Scott said, is that if a small child had been available and unattended at the time and place where these dogs were taken, "that the small child would have been found taped (and) tied in the woods.

Simpson has been assigned a public defender, who did not immediately return a call Monday to The Associated Press.

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