As the founder of an animal rights organization you would think that nothing would surprise me, but last year a disgusting cruelty was brought to my attention called “Crush Videos.” Crush videos are one of the sickest atrocities to happen to animals and its all for human pleasure. The description of these videos is sure to shock anyone with a drop of humanity or even half of a heart. A woman is heard talking like a dominatrix to a tiny kitten, puppy, hamster, rat, guinea pig, bird or even a monkey and rather than whipping, chaining, burning, and hurting a man, she burns the animals with cigarettes, near drowns them, lights them on fire, drives nails through their tiny bodies and then places them on the floor.

While the twisted minds that are watching are about to hit their sexual peak, the woman crushes the animal with her stiletto high heel and in some cases her bare feet. This fetish should not only be deeply disturbing to animal rights activist, but to you as well. Your next door neighbor could be enjoying these twisted videos or even making them and then giving you and your children a friendly, “Hello”.

As I researched more about this issue I found there are many other forms of fetish videos that I perceive as a possible beginning to this kind of torture. My research unearthed videos that are not your normal foot fetish with the stomping of food and other harmless objects, but instead what I found was women in child like clothing and child like shoes crushing doll babies and toy stuffed animals. Could this be the start of a mental process that leads to animal crush videos? What happens when boredom sets in and live animal crushing is no longer a thrill? What will be the next life these individuals feel the need to end by crushing. My fear is that they will turn their sick sexual thrill of torturing and killing animals to children. Could they crush a human baby? With stories of babies cooked in microwaves and infants left to die in dumpsters or on the side of the road, this form of torture doesn't seem so far fetched. So, in theory this could very well lead to even more mutilating and killing of children for sexual pleasure?

Sadly, our supreme court does not see this as that big of an issue. They feel that the sales of hunting and bullfighting videos will be affected and banned as well. If that means our kids and pets are safe then shouldn't we not care about banning so called educational animal torture videos? Our government caters far too much to the revenue hunters bring in and it’s not fair that innocent children and voiceless animals must suffer for the bulging pockets of the government, the NRA and The Safari Club International. In 1999 Bill Clinton signed and passed legislation banning the making and distributing of these videos and with that law they nearly disappeared. Last year, with the dog fighting video controversy and trial of US verses Stevens the ban was lifted and these videos rapidly became an internet selling commodity for the sexual freaks in our communities. In 1999 it was estimated that there were about 1000 videos, shortly after the ban lift in October 2009, there was an estimated 2000 and growing and to make matters worse these videos are not hard to get a hold of. In fact, as I searched the web with multiple search engines and safe search on, I found four websites selling them; one even had a free preview. I also found disturbing images of dead kittens unrecognizable with crushed heads and a still shot of a woman in stilettos crushing the body of kitten while stabbing it through the eye with her high heel. Children with access to the internet could very easily find these same images and videos. Good luck to the parents that have to explain why “Fluffy” is bloody and his organs are oozing out of every end.

On April 20, 2010 the Supreme Court failed its citizens and animals by throwing out the ban on these kinds of videos once again due to the same possibility that hunting, bullfighting and other deemed educational animal cruelty videos would also be banned. The Supreme Court called the statue “overbroad”. Though they did go on to state the importance of protecting animals from cruelty and said, “The prohibition of animal cruelty itself has a long history in American law, starting with the early settlement of the Colonies.” The court is expected to uphold a narrower statue banning the distribution of crush and animal cruelty videos. The Humane Society of the United States and The Humane Legislative Fund are urging congress to speedily give law enforcement what they need to crack down on the distributors of crush videos by passing H.R. 5092 which is designed to end, as stated in a release from The Humane Society of the United States, “…intentional crushing, burning, drowning and impaling of puppies, kittens and other animals for the depraved purpose of peddling videos of such extreme acts of animal cruelty for the sexual titillation of viewers.” But will it be too late? Right this second as you read these words, animal abusers all over the country are making and selling videos that are depicting what our government claims to be important to them, the crime of cruelty against animals.

Some of the worries involved in the original legislation are that exposure videos from animal rights groups could also be banned. But is there not a significant difference between a humane officer or animal rights activist exposing cruelty to stop it and a woman talking dirty to a kitten and stomping its head in or hammering nails into its body? Is there not a significant difference between the teachings of, though I very much disagree with it, a rite of passage such as hunting and the crushing of a dog’s throat after having been lit on fire? Yes there is! Our laws need to change and the categorizing of videos showing cruelty needs to change as well.

As I sit here typing I can’t help but wonder what despicable crime our Supreme Court will allow next in the name of free speech. The Supreme Court and the groups that fought against the ban such as the NRA and The Safari Club International should feel nothing but shame for letting this be lifted. When this sickest of crimes turns from animals to children or when children are disturbed from images and videos of crushed animals they call pets, the Supreme Court, and groups like the NRA, and The Safari Club International only have themselves to blame. The tears and blood of children are on their hands.

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