A cow in a petting zoo remains depressed after being repeatedly raped by a Turkish illegal migrant who was recently deported to Turkey from the Netherlands, according to Dutch media reports.
The incident will likely provide further fodder for the rising Islamophobia in the country, analysts say.
The cow, named Laura, remains highly stressed around humans as a result of her ordeal at the petting zoo in the Dutch town of Enschede, near the German border. She had been displaying unusual behavior for the past six months, a zoo employee told Dutch broadcaster RTV Oost. Their suspicions deepened when they found cardboard sheets placed over the barbed fencing and plastic bags inside the barn where she slept. The employee, Bas Nijhuis, said the zoo administration decided to install a security camera near the barn. Footage showed images of a man luring Laura into the barn with some hay, and then emerging from it “with his pants around his ankles.”
Police intercepted the offender as he was breaking into the zoo one night and the alarm system went off. The man, identified as Mehmet A., had a criminal record and had lost his residence permit. The 59-year-old had lived in the Netherlands for 35 years and sought unsuccessfully to contest the court ruling, spending the last two years in the country as an illegal resident. He was deported to Turkey after being held at a detention center in the Rotterdam airport for several weeks.
