Someone Needs To Invent A Rape Kit For Horses

To begin with, I don't know how the police could figure out that a horse had been raped.

Did the mare make a phone call or show up at the nearest veterinary clinic? Try to buy a morning after pill at the local pharmacy but was only three years old and not eligible?

Back in 2010, Esbin Cal-Orozco was arrested for having "sexual contact" with a horse at Arlington Park racetrack. He was seen leaving the stable where the assaulted horse was housed, riding off on a bicycle.

Stable hands aren't the highest paid, so you wouldn't expect him to flee in a Mercedes, let alone a battered pick-up truck.

Under questioning, the man was described as evasive by police. Maybe he was just afraid that his residency status was going to be questioned and he didn't much care to be deported. Mucking stables isn't a fun job, but it's a job, and when you come from a country without jobs, you're likely to do what you can to keep the one you have.

In cases of human rape, evidence is collected using a rape kit that has all the items needed to obtain physical material that can be used for DNA testing. Tie the DNA from the rape kit to the alleged perpetrator and it's pretty much a closed case.

The difficulty that the Arlington Park investigators ran into is the lack of a rape kit for horses.

They couldn't collect that precious DNA evidence to tie Mr. Cal-Orozco to the crime. All they had to go on was a half-hour interview and gut instinct, which doesn't get a policeman far in a court of law.

Mr. Cal-Orozco was arrested and then convicted. He served a few months but came out as a sex offender. It's a label designed to follow sexual deviants for all of their days, like an endless sentence.

The Illinois appelate court quashed the conviction, finding that there was no solid evidence against Mr. Cal-Orozco and he should not have been arrested.

The option for a re-trial is still out there but most will see it as a waste of taxpayer money.

There is no DNA evidence, after all, and the mare isn't likely to identify her attacker in court so it seems like a pointless exercise that would only bring further humiliation on Mr. Cal-Orzco.

Is he still working as a stable hand? And do his colleagues sneak up behind him and whinny?