A British zoologist has been jailed in Australia, after pleading guilty to raping and torturing dozens of dogs in abuse that spanned decades.
Adam Britton, who grew up in West Yorkshire before moving to Australia, pleaded guilty to 56 charges relating to bestiality and animal cruelty.
The 53-year-old also admitted to four counts of accessing child abuse material.
‘Your depravity falls outside any ordinary human conception,’ chief justice Michael Grant told him, after asking the public to leave the court because of how ‘graphic’ the details of his atrocities are, according to the Australian Associated Press.
Northern Territory Supreme Court heard the crocodile expert admitted to luring people on Gumtree to give him custody of their pets, while they were travelling or moving for work.
He had filmed himself torturing the animals until almost all died. It all took place in his ‘torture room’ – a shipping container fitted with recording equipment.
He then uploaded the videos in secret online chatrooms under pseudonyms.
Exchanges with ‘like-minded’ people detail how he began molesting horses at the age of 13.
‘I was sadistic as a child to animals, but I had repressed it. In the last few years I let it out again, and now I can’t stop. I don’t want to. :),’ he wrote in one message shown to the court.
Britton tortured at least 42 dogs, killing 39 of them, according to court documents seen by the BBC.
The files only detail his crimes over the 18 months before his arrest, but fill more than 90 pages.
Britton also admitted to sexually abusing his own Swiss Shepherd pets, Ursa and Bolt, for almost a decade.
‘My own dogs are family and I have limits,’ he justified himself in a Telegram chat entered into evidence.
‘I only badly mistreat other dogs… I have no emotional bond to them, they are toys pure and simple. And [there are] plenty more where they came from.’
Asked how to dispose of the dogs’ remains, Britton – who shared his sprawling property on the outskirts of Darwin with eight crocodiles – said ‘some I feed to other animals’.
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