PA MediaA woman has pleaded guilty to being involved in a global monkey torturing ring.
Adriana Orme’s role was exposed after a BBC investigation into the network, which began life on YouTube, before moving to private groups on the messaging app Telegram.
Worcester Crown Court heard that the 56-year-old played a major role in an online group that paid for baby monkeys to be taken from their mothers, then tortured, and killed, for pleasure.
Orme, from Upton Upon Severn, Worcestershire, was charged with publishing an obscene article and intentionally encouraging or assisting an offence, namely causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.
Warning: This article contains disturbing content
BBC journalists went undercover in one of the main Telegram torture groups, where hundreds of people gathered to come up with extreme torture ideas and commission people in Indonesia and other Asian countries to carry them out.
The goal was to create bespoke films in which baby long-tailed macaque monkeys were abused, tortured and sometimes then killed on film.
In relation to the charge of publishing an obscene article, Orme was accused of sending one image and 26 videos featuring monkey torture into chat groups, between 14 March 2022 and 16 June 2022.
The charge of encouraging an offence involved a £10 payment by Orme to a PayPal account – the price of seeing a baby macaque being tortured.
Orme is the second woman from the area to admit her part in the gang, alongside 37-year-old Holly Le Gresley, from Kidderminster, who admitted uploading 22 images and 132 videos of monkeys being tortured to online chat groups in May.
Despite both living in Worcestershire, the women are not believed to have known each other, and used pseudonyms online.
Their part in the network was uncovered by a year-long BBC Eye investigation, which exposed the private online groups.
Police officers and staff spent more than a year recovering “thousands of files” from 20 devices owned by the women.
The court heard how Orme was a “key member” of the groups, welcoming newcomers and organising the bids.
Police said members, based around the world, would discuss different ways in which the monkeys could be abused and killed, voting and paying for their favoured methods of torture.
Men in Indonesia were taking the monkeys from their families in the wild and carrying out the abuse.
PA MediaCh Insp Kevin Lacks-Kelly, head of the UK National Wildlife Crime Unit, said it was the worst case that he had dealt with during his 22 years as an officer.
“We’ve seen the worst that humanity can bring,” he said.
“The animals in this case have been unnecessarily tortured, there’s no excuse for it.
“I can’t offer any rationale or reason as to why somebody would want to go to the levels that they went to, to persecute, kill, harm and maim these innocent animals.”
Action for Primates, a UK-based advocacy project, assisted police in the investigation.
Its co-founder, Sarah Kite, said it was the most horrifying content she had ever encountered.
“For people such as Orme to think up methods of torturing helpless and vulnerable baby monkeys is beyond comprehension,” she said.
“To then pay for someone to inflict such extreme violence is so disturbing that I believe they must permanently be barred from having contact with children or animals.”
