Sex Video: Animal Torturers Jailed

Originally published by Sky News (U.K.), May 28, 2002

Four people who made perverted sex videos of small animals being tortured and killed have been sent to jail.

The gang tortured mice, a guinea pig and a kitten in a "cruelly terrifying" nature in order to make the obscene video tapes.

Craig Chapman, 27, Christine Besford, 26, Sarah Cooke, 22, and Tharaza Smallwood, 22, all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to publish obscene material.

All four also admitted separate charges relating to the cruelty and torture of small animals.

Animals stamped on

Peter Cooper, prosecuting, told Stoke on Trent Crown Court how Chapman had told someone he met over the internet that he could supply videos depicting scenes of animal torture.

Describing the horrific scenes on the tape Mr Cooper said: "Throughout the film there are scenes of small animals being stamped on with high heeled shoes.

"There is another scene of an overtly sexual nature involving Chapman and a mouse taped to a wooden board."

Kitten attacked

He said the worst scenes on the tape showed the killing of a kitten, which had its hind leg glued to a wooden board.

Chapman paid Besford, Cooke and Smallwood up to £700 each for taking part in the torture.

The defendants had got the mice and guinea pigs from a pet store and the kitten had been bought from an advert in a local newspaper.

'Immense cruelty'

An RSPCA report, read out in court, said the animals had all suffered immense cruelty before they died.

Chapman was jailed for two years and four months while the women each received four-month prison terms.

The RSPCA said this was the first prosecution of its kind in the UK.