SCITUATE — When state and federal officers went to a house in Scituate to serve a search warrant in a series of child pornography raids Wednesday morning, they were confronted by “hundreds of reptiles and rodents” and various exotic animals, according to Police Chief David M. Randall.
As a result, David E. Provonsil, town building official, declared the house at 1023 Danielson Pike — home of Shawn Fay, his wife, Beth Ann Kut Fay, and their two children — uninhabitable. Provonsil said the family will not be allowed to reenter the house until it is cleaned up.
The police charged Shawn Fay with possession of child pornography.
Provonsil described an “accumulation of debris” and “pungent odors.” He said when he entered one room, which housed reptiles and other animals, “I couldn’t even breathe in there.” He said the couple were raising “thousands” of rats and mice commercially.
Randall said, “Our main concern was the health and welfare of the family and their being relocated somewhere else.” He said the town offered to relocate the family if they were unable to find quarters on their own, but he did not know the status of that offer by Wednesday evening.
Dr. E. J. Finocchio, head of the state Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, who was called in, said the animals were apparently being raised for Fay’s business, Regal Reptiles, 580 Harris Ave., Providence.
“The thing that first caught my eye was a four-foot alligator, two eight-foot snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, exotic lizards, hundreds of rats and mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, and thousand and thousands of crickets in boxes.”
Outside there were a pot-bellied pig, two dogs, a cat, two goats, chickens and ducks, he said.
He said the mice, crickets and worms were apparently being used as a food source for the other animals.
Finocchio said Fay’s business card describes him as an “educational entertainment specialist.”
“I think they go around with some of these animals to different facilities and teach people, and show them these exotic animals,” he said.
Finocchio said that despite the conditions he observed, and the crowded containers in which the animals were being housed — the snakes, he said, lived in a container that was one-third of the recommended national standards — Rhode Island regulations dealing with such matters are so weak that he could detect no violations in relation to the animals.
“The time has come for Rhode Island to get into the 21st century,” the veterinarian said.