June 11 (UPI) — A Tennessee woman and a North Carolina man have been indicted on federal charges that they were involved with online groups that created and distributed videos online depicting extreme violence and sexual abuse against monkeys.
In the Southern District of Ohio, a grand jury indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday, charges Katrina Favret of Tennessee and Robert Craig of North Carolina, the U.S. Department of Justice said. In October, Ronald Bedra, of Ohio, was sentenced to 54 months in prison for conspiracy of the postings.
Craig is charged with creating and distributing the videos and Favret with conspiracy.
They conspired to produce “animal crush videos,” according to the indictment.
The videos depict sadistic violence against juvenile and adult monkeys, prosecutors said. They included monkeys sodomized with a heated screwdriver and a monkey’s genitals cut with scissors.
They allegedly used encrypted chat applications to direct money to individuals in Indonesia willing to commit the requested acts of torture on camera.
“We will punish participants of sadistic conspiracies like this one no matter their role in the crime,” said U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Parker of the Southern District of Ohio said after Bedra was sentenced. “As this case shows, even if you do not commit the torture first-hand, you will be held accountable for promoting this obscene animal abuse.”
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement and the FBI were involved in the investigation.
In 2019, President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law that makes animal cruelty a federal crime. The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, which was unanimously passed in the House and Senate, revises and expands earlier legislation against making and distributing videos of animal cruelty.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Virginia man’s conviction under a federal law banning videos of animal cruelty, saying they were protected speech. The 8-1 ruling, with Justice Samuel Alito dissenting, said the government lacked the power to ban expressions of animal cruelty when that is done in videotapes and other commercial media. The opinion said wasn’t curbing government’s power to punish acts of animal cruelty, but the portrayals of such acts.
Depictions of animal torture should be reported to authorities.
