FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday December 9th, 2010

CONTACT: Dan Farough
Office: (202) 225-5802

PRESIDENT TO SIGN PETERS’ LEGISLATION TO STOP ANIMAL TORTURE

Legislation bans “Crush Videos” – pornographic videos involving animal torture – after Supreme Court decision overturned previous ban

President Obama plans to sign Peters’ bill into law this afternoon

(Washington, DC) – Legislation originally authored by Representative Gary Peters to outlaw videos depicting animal torture unanimously passed the Senate on November 19, and is expected to be signed into law this afternoon at 1:30 pm.  Representative Peters has been invited to the White House to join President Obama and key congressional sponsors of the legislation for the bill signing ceremony in the Oval Office.  The bill, the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act of 2010, will restore the federal prohibition on videos depicting animal torture, including so-called “crush videos,” following a Supreme Court decision that overturned the original law outlawing the videos.  The House passed the bill earlier this year.

“Animal torture videos are barbaric and have no place in a civilized society,” said Peters.  “By promising to lock up the people who produce and distribute these videos we can work to put a halt to this horrendous practice.”

Crush videos are a type of sexual fetish production that  show small animals—guinea pigs, rabbits, even kittens or puppies—being intentionally burned, drowned, suffocated and impaled, or show them being crushed to death by women wearing stiletto heels. This legislation would ban the creation, sale or distribution of videos depicting animal torture including crush videos.

The creation and sale of crush videos was banned by a federal law in 1999.  However, the Supreme Court struck down the law in the case United States v. Stevens on April 20, 2010, saying the law was too broad and could infringe on First Amendment free speech rights.  Peters’ legislation is carefully drafted to avoid the issues in the original law that the court found unconstitutional in order to once again prohibit people from profiting off of animal torture. 

Estimates suggest that approximately 3,000 crush videos were in circulation, some selling for as much as $400, at the time the original law was established in 1999. The original law was considered to be generally effective at stopping crush videos. More than a decade later, with far more Internet users than there were during the 1990s, it is feared that the videos have become much more widespread than before. 

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