A British woman has pleaded guilty to involvement in an international monkey torture network. Adriana Orme helped facilitate an underground online video-sharing group that showed baby monkeys taken from their mothers and tortured to death. The 56-year-old admitted to causing unnecessary suffering to an animal and will be sentenced in October, along with her accomplice, 37-year-old Holly Le Gresley.
Prosecutors told a court in the English county of Worcestershire that Orme shared 26 videos featuring the torture and killing of young macaque monkeys between March and June 2022. Le Gresley shared 133 videos and 22 images. The cost of watching the horrific scenes was around $14 and paid via PayPal. The two women did not know each other, attorneys said, and both had used online aliases.
They were caught after a year-long BBC investigation exposed the underground network. The BBC World Service uncovered hundreds of customers in the UK and US who paid Indonesians to capture the animals and film the killings. The network first operated on YouTube before moving to Telegram.
BBC undercover reporters infiltrated the group and tracked down the Indonesian torturers before reporting them to various police forces. Among those implicated was Oregon resident David Christopher Noble, who was indicted in June.
A press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon confirmed that Noble was charged for helping to create and distribute “animal crush videos.” These are defined as when one or more living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles, or amphibians are intentionally crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled, or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury. The June indictment stated that Noble managed the membership of the group and acted to ensure it avoided law enforcement scrutiny. He is currently serving a four-year sentence in a federal prison.
In the UK, legislation passed in 2021 imposes a jail term of up to five years on those convicted of animal cruelty. The Animal Welfare Act divides criminal punishment into three categories, and courts are instructed to pass sentences that reflect the extent of the animal’s suffering. Reports indicate that some of the macaque monkeys were killed in a food blender.
