07 August 2004

Aaron Lake et al. on Crush Videos

Generally, crush videos feature a woman, either bare footed or wearing high-heeled shoes, slowly crushing a small animal to death. Animals, including mice, hamsters, kittens, cats, dogs, monkeys, birds, and guinea pigs, are taped to the floor or a glass table and killed. In some videos, the woman’s voice can be heard talking to the animals in a dominatrix manner. Usually, the faces of the women engaged in the torturous act are not shown. The painful cries of the animals can also be heard. The videos often appeal to people with a very specific sexual fetish, who find the depictions sexually arousing or otherwise exciting. These videos, most of which originate in the United States, are commonly available through the Internet (over two-thousand titles) and are distributed almost exclusively for sale in interstate or foreign commerce for up to three hundred dollars each.

(“1999 Legislative Review,” Animal Law 6 [2000]: 151-78, at 162 [footnotes omitted])

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