Man, wife behind ‘crush’ videos get life sentence

Screengrab from the ‘crush’ video

MANILA, Philippines ― A man and his wife involved in the production of online “fetish” videos where scantily clad girls step on and torture animals were sentenced by a La Union court to life imprisonment Monday.

According to the website of animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals-Asia Pacific (Peta), San Fernando Regional Trial Court Branch 30 found Dorma and Vicente Ridon guilty on charges of “child abuse, animal welfare crimes, human trafficking, and wildlife-protection crimes.”

The court also directed the couple to pay P9 million fine each.

Jason Baker, Peta-Asia Vice President, lauded the sentencing of the couple and said that it serves as “a warning to anyone involved in the vile crush video industry: there are grave consequences for harming animals.”

According to Peta, the couple was involved in producing videos which showed scantily clad girls “skinning a dog alive and burning another with a clothes iron, cutting off rabbits’ ears and setting the rabbits on fire while they flailed and screamed, hitting a monkey in the eye with the sharp end of a stiletto heel, and crushing puppies until they vomited their own internal organs.”

One of the girls in the “crush” videos was only 12-years-old during the filming.

Peta also added that these “crush” videos are being bought by sexual fetishists from Australia, France, Korea, Malaysia, the United Kingdom, and the United States over the Internet.

The couple was arrested in 2011 after Peta and the National Bureau of Investigation conducted a probe on the involvement of the two in the production of the said “fetish” videos.

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