A British zoologist has been sentenced in Australia after pleading guilty to raping and torturing numerous dogs over several decades.
Adam Britton, originally from West Yorkshire but now residing in Australia, admitted to 56 charges related to bestiality and animal cruelty. Additionally, the 53-year-old confessed to four counts of accessing child abuse material.
Chief Justice Michael Grant described Britton’s actions as beyond ordinary human understanding and had the public removed from the courtroom due to the graphic nature of the details, as reported by the Australian Associated Press.
The Northern Territory Supreme Court heard that Britton, an expert on crocodiles, used Gumtree to lure people into leaving their pets in his care while they were away. He filmed himself torturing the animals until most of them died.
The abuse occurred in what he called his “torture room,” a shipping container equipped with recording devices. He secretly uploaded the videos to online chatrooms using pseudonyms.
Britton’s communications with like-minded individuals revealed that he began molesting horses at the age of 13. In one message presented in court, he wrote, “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.”
Court documents, reviewed by the BBC, show that Britton tortured at least 42 dogs, killing 39 of them. The files, covering the 18 months before his arrest, span over 90 pages.
Britton also admitted to sexually abusing his own Swiss Shepherds, Ursa and Bolt, for nearly a decade. He defended his actions in a Telegram chat, stating, “My own dogs are family and I have limits. 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.”
When asked how to dispose of the dogs’ remains, Britton, who lived on a large property near Darwin with eight crocodiles, said, “Some I feed to other animals.”
