A man has been jailed for 20 months for posting “horrific” videos of baby monkeys being tortured for entertainment.
Peter Stanley posted three videos showing the torture of baby long-tailed macaque monkeys on a private Facebook site, since shut down, linked to the intentional harm of animals for entertainment.
The 43-year-old posted videos along with comments, including: “A fave of mine this one.”
But the videos were spotted by an animal welfare group and the Facebook user ID was given to police who traced Stanley and raided his home.
Detectives seized a mobile phone revealing 75 videos of monkeys being tortured.
Stanley was also found to have been searching terms on the internet such as: “How to tell if a baby monkey is distressed” and “Horse Porn”.
After his arrest on March 26 this year, he told police he had become aware of these videos and wanted to know just how bad they were so joined a Facebook group, the rules of which were that members had to post three videos to show they would not report the group to authorities.
He did not himself make the videos or harm animals directly.
Stanley, of Dovecote Avenue, Dovecote, Liverpool, admitted three counts of publishing obscene material, before he was jailed at Liverpool Crown Court on Wednesday.
His arrest came after the broadcast of a BBC TV documentary, The Monkey Haters, which uncovered the existence of streaming videos containing the torture of baby monkeys.
Videos, primarily filmed in South East Asia and posted online, showed the “disciplining” and tormenting of captive infant monkeys and the deliberate infliction of pain and fear, causing physical harm as well as emotional distress.
Thomas Quirk, senior crown prosecutor of Mersey-Cheshire Crown Prosecution Service, said: “The videos that Peter Stanley posted on to his page on the Facebook site are truly horrific.
“The torture imposed on these animals included sexual torture and it has been a distressing case for both the police and the prosecution team to deal with.
“Why anyone could possibly want to be involved in this sort of thing is impossible to understand. Peter Stanley was publishing videos of animals being brutally injured apparently for pleasure.”
Outside court, Sergeant Dan Goss, from Merseyside Police’s Rural, Wildlife and Heritage Team, said: “The original investigation uncovered the widespread sharing of content which showed the deliberate and gratuitous suffering of baby monkeys for ‘entertainment’, some of which was for monetary gain.
“As part of a similar investigation carried out by West Mercia Police and the National Wildlife Crime Unit we were able to identify Stanley as being responsible for the publishing of similar content.”
Chief Inspector Kevin Lacks-Kelly, head of the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit, said: “The discovery of online global torture networks has required local, national, and international resources, including officers and detectives from the UK and special agents from Homeland Security in America, to crack the case.
“These crimes are committed behind a veil of secrecy by so-called ‘communities’ and I hope the sentencing shows there is no place to hide for animal abusers.”
Sarah Kite, co-founder of Action for Primates, said: “We are very grateful to Merseyside Police for taking this action against the posting of monkey torture videos on Facebook.
“Those individuals involved in distributing graphic and obscene content depicting the violent and sadistic torture and killing of baby monkeys need to know that their behaviour is not only vile, but is also a crime.
“We also hope that this prosecution will be a wake-up call to Meta and other social media companies that continue to allow this highly disturbing and graphic content to be posted on their platforms.”
