A British tourist has been arrested in a raid on what US investigators said was a "bestiality farm".

Assistant US attorney Susan Roe said Stephen Clarke, 51, of Peterborough, Cambs, had admitted bestiality offences to police.

Clarke was arrested with Douglas Spink, 39, who was running the farm in Washington state in which visitors could engage in sickening sex acts with animals.

Spink and Clarke were arrested at convicted cocaine smuggler Spink's ramshackle, heavily-wooded compound near the Canadian border.

When agents searched Spink's home, they found a video of Clarke sexually abusing dogs and Clarke was still on the property, wearing the same clothes as in the video, Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said.

He was charged with animal cruelty and appeared in Whatcom County Superior Court on Thursday.

Clarke was given a court-appointed defence lawyer for that appearance.

Dozens of dogs, horses and pet mice were seized, along with what investigators described as thousands of images of bestiality and apparent child pornography.

The mice were destroyed, said Sheriff Elfo.

"This stuff is just truly bizarre," he said. "These were mice that had their tails cut off, they were smothered in Vaseline and they had string tied around them."

It was not immediately clear whether other zoophilic tourists had been to Spink's farm, but Ms Roe said: "I expect there may have been other people visiting the property."

She said Spink had not been charged with bestiality or child porn offences at this point, only with breaking the terms of his supervised release.

Clarke was arrested on state charges for allegedly abusing the dogs.

Spink, who has a history of training and breeding dogs and horses, appeared in US District Court in Seattle yesterday and was remanded in custody until April 30.

He calls his operation Exitpoint Stallions and expounds at length on its website about his philosophy.

"Are we unconventional in our approach to stallion care? Absolutely," he writes.

He later adds: "We don't wall off sexual energy in our stallions as something dangerous or inappropriate, but rather channel that energy towards positive, safe, appropriate paths.

"There's a proper time and place for it, and we work towards those sorts of skills rather than fighting unwinnable fights against deeply-rooted instincts."

Spink, made a fortune in Oregon buying and selling small companies in the 1990s and was known as an adrenaline junkie, listing rockclimbing and base-jumping off cliffs, radio towers and bridges among his hobbies.

But by 2002 his wealth had evaporated. He filed for bankruptcy as creditors sought millions from him and he began running cocaine and marijuana across the border for a local drug kingpin.

Spink was arrested in 2005 after being stopped with a load of nearly 170kg of cocaine worth £22 million. He was given a lenient, three-year sentence because of his extensive co-operation with investigators.

Since then, he has been on a five-year term of supervised release, during which time he must abide by all state, local and government laws.

Under Washington law, it is illegal to assist others in engaging in bestiality - and breaking any state law would be a violation of Spink's release, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Authorities searched his farm on Wednesday after prosecutors received a tip-off from a public defender's office in Tennessee.

The office said Spink had been calling incessantly about a jailed defendant in a bestiality case in Tennessee.

That man, James Tait, had previously admitted filming a man having sex with a horse in Washington state in 2005. The man Tait filmed died of injuries suffered during the incident.

Tait received a minor sentence in the case because Washington had relatively weak bestiality laws at the time.

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