Politicians within the Animal Justice Party have successfully pushed for a NSW ban on bestiality material and animal torture videos.
The amendment to the state’s Crimes Act passed state parliament’s lower house in late 2021.
The law was changed to prohibit people from making, sharing or having bestiality material, which means images of humans having sex with animals. It also also applies to animal torture material such as videos of women crushing kittens with stiletto heels, a fetish that exists on dark corners of the internet.
An open source investigation, undertaken by Online Investigations, revealed over 3000 videos for sale available to people in Australia. These videos included examples of crushing and killing kittens, puppies, dogs, baby chicks, snakes, rabbits, pigs, mice, ducklings, fish and insects.
The investigation identified videos were often sold online using Bitcoin and ranged in price from US$3 to $100, with an option to order custom content.
Most crush and bestiality content offered in Australia was found to have been created overseas, but the new laws will stop locals from supporting the industry by purchasing videos.
Despite strong laws against bestiality and animal cruelty, remarkably there is no specific offence in New South Wales to possess or distribute video or images of these horrific acts.
Emma Hurst, MP for the Animal Justice Party stated “By creating this new offence, police will have a greater ability to prosecute people involved in both child and animal abuse, and it could help obtain stronger sentences for these abusers”.
Offenders can be punished with up to 5 years in prison for production and dissemination, and 3 years for possession.
Ms Hurst is now pushing for law reform to occur across Australia, with possessing videos of bestiality technically legal everywhere except Tasmania.
Source: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1820781676-85035/link/134
Source: https://www.emmahurstmp.com/crush_videos
Source: https://www.facebook.com/ajpvic/posts/1573513336191288
Source: https://au.news.yahoo.com/call-to-ban-animal-fetish-videos-191958658.html
Sexual abuse is sexual abuse