SEXUAL PREDATORS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2000:

Former Hornocker Wildlife Institute biologist Patrick F. Ryan, 49, was bound over for trial on 41 criminal counts on March 10 in Reserve, New Mexico, after failing to convice Sierra County Magistrate Thomas Pestak t o exclude as evidence three videos Ryan allegedly made of himself in repeated sexual assaults against former co-worker Jennifer Cashman. As a graduate student assigned to do bear research with Ryan in the Gila Wilderness during 1996-1997, Cashman refused his sexual advances, according to the charges, and was then kept in a zombie-like state on clandestinely given overdoses of the animal tranquilizer Ketamine. Cashman was eventually hospitalized for two weeks, reportedly almost died three times, and suffered severe neurological damage. Cashman received an undisclosed sum in July 1999 in settlement of a civil suit against Ryan and the Hornocker Wildlife Institute.

In a similar case, former animal control officer Christopher Stannard, 36, of Maricopa County, Arizona, drew life on probation as a registered sex offender on December 14, 1999. Stannard in 1995 allegedly raped two acquaintances after drugging them with Ketamine stolen from Maricopa County Animal Control and a neutering clinic then operated in Phoenix by Animal Foundation International.

Leon C. Hirsch, 72, of Westport, Connecticut, founder of U.S. Surgical Corporation, in February 2000 reportedly settled a lawsuit brought by ex-housekeeper Eva Kale, who in October 1994 charged that Hirsch raped and sexually harassed her. Hirsch crossfiled against Kale in 1995. A parallel case brought by another former Hirsch housekeeper, Gizella Biro, was dismissed in 1996. Clashing often with Friends of Animals and other animal rights groups in the 1980s and early 1990s, after they protested U.S. Surgical sales demonstrations of surgical stapling that used live dogs, Hirsch in 1991 funded the formation of the pro-vivisection organization Americans for Medical Progress. Earlier, staff of a private security firm hired by U.S. Surgical were implicated but not charged with encouraging and assisting fringe activist Fran Trutt in placing a bomb in the U.S. Surgical parking lot during November 1988. Hirsch denied involvement.