A man who was accused of having sex with a sheep has walked free after the animal was unable to testify.

The man, from Haaksbergen, near Utrecht, the Netherlands, was reported to police after a farmer caught him having sex with a sheep.

But the case was thrown out of court as the sheep couldn’t take to the stand to testify it didn’t want to have sex and had suffered emotional stress.

Under Dutch law, bestiality is not a crime unless it can be proved the animal didn’t want to have sex.

‘Short of putting the sheep in the dock, at the moment these perverts cannot be prosecuted,’ said animal rights campaigner Jos van Huisen.

Minister of Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin has said he plans to change the law to make bestiality a criminal offence.