Warning: This article includes graphic details of animal torture and references to child abuse.
Crocodile expert Adam Britton has been sentenced to more than 10 years in prison, with a non-parole period of six years, after pleading guilty to more than 60 offences, mostly related to the sexual torture and killing of pet dogs, with the remainder related to processing child sex abuse material.
Chief Justice Michael Grant outlined the horrific details in the NT Supreme Court on Thursday of the rape, torture and murder of at least 39 dogs at the convicted man McMinns Lagoon property between November 2020 and April 2022.
Britton, 53, had pled guilty last year to 60 charges, which were made up primarily of bestiality and animal cruelty charges, but also included four counts related to possession of child abuse material.
Justice Grant sentenced the disgraced former Charles Darwin University crocodile researcher to 10 years and five months with the non-parole period of six years behind bars, and with his sentence backdated to his arrest in April 2022.
The details of his horrific torture and sexual abuse filled 31 pages of agreed facts, which also had another 40 pages detailing images and videos Britton shared and conversations he had on end-to-end encrypted messaging app Telegram, where he bragged that the torture could go on for up to four days to maximise the pain to the dogs.
Britton referred to dogs as “sex toys”, and filmed the extreme torture and killing of the dogs he had mostly sourced from Gumtree, in other instances he had convinced distressed owners who were moving interstate that their pets were going to a good home.
“Although I’m loathe to do so, given the gross depravity and perversity of your actions, it is necessary for the purpose of sentencing you to provide some generally representative detail and description of the offending conduct,” the ABC reported Justice Grant said.
“Your conduct on each of those occasions involved a degree of depravity and reprehensibility which falls entirely outside any ordinary human conception and comprehension.
“You took photographs of the dogs prior to torturing and killing them, and subsequently sent those photographs to the former owners as part of communicating false narratives that the dogs were thriving in their new environment.”
During sentencing, Britton’s lawyer read a letter written by him in prison, in which he claimed to take “full responsibility for the demeaning crimes” to the dogs.
He said he would seek long-term treatment for a “rare paraphilic disorder” which he claimed he had “been fighting” for much of his life and asked that his family be given “the space they need to heal”, as they were not aware or involved in his sickness.
Justice Grant said he was not convinced Britton showed any genuine remorse for the crimes despite the letter and said he had “no doubt” he would have continued if he had not been arrested.
Britton used a Telegram account called “Monster” from 2020 to 2022 to engage in conversations with “like-minded people”, including zoophiles and zoosadists, using another account to distribute his “material” from January 2022 . The second account was named after Cerebus from Greek mythology, a multi-headed dog also known as the ‘Hound of Hades’.
The details of his violence were unnerving and what Justice Grant described as having the potential to cause “nervous shock or some other adverse psychological reactions”.
This included raping the dogs repeatedly and using weapons to dismember them.
This gentleman was the creme dela creme of Charles Darwin University! It is amazing no other media organisation has mentioned his employer.
And speaking of hiring quality staff at cdu, its quite obvious from anyone walking around the campus that:
CDU is now a replica of a Sub Continent University in both look and feel and in quality.
Sub Continent Senior Managers
Sub Continent Lecturers
Sub Continent Tutors
Sub Continent Students
Questions from a paying customer who made the mistake of not going to a real University down south:
-Does nobody else but overseas applicants apply for the Lecturer roles at this Uni?
-How is the Diversity Targets working? How many non Subcontinent staff have the Subcontinent originated managers hired? What? is it none?
-What quality controls are in place when vetting staff? I cant understand my brand new North Asian Lecturer!
-How many International Students have failed a unit at CDU in the last 4 years? Is that number “None”?
-How many audits has the University had? The cheating in online exams by the students is eye wateringly evident!
-Has the Plagiarism check tool “Turnit in” been actually turned on? Those assignments and online exam questions are so CHAT GPT!!!