I have condensed this article as much as possible but it is still long. It is also disturbing. If you don't want to read a long, disturbing article click off this thread now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/Iot1dIWVS5/hunting-the-monkey-torturers
http://web.archive.org/web/20230620...orture-ring-three-women-arrested-britain-bbc/
Last year Lucy Kapetanich,
now 56, living in Los Angeles, started watching videos of cute animals, including monkeys, on Youtube to relax. The algorithm gradually started suggesting her more and more unpleasant videos, to the point of outright monkey torture. It turned out thousands of people around the world were making and watching videos of monkeys being tortured and killed, suggesting what should be done to the monkeys, buying videos etc. Most of the videos were made in Indonesia but there were fans in many countries. She decided to investigate and try to bring the makers of the videos to justice.
The BBC became aware of the monkey torture community and began investigating, making contact with Kapetanich in the process.
Dave Gooptar,
who lives in Trinidad, became aware of the community in the same way as Lucy Kapetanich and likewise decided to investigate and try to put a stop to the abuse. They both started Youtube channels dedicated to doing so, found each other's work and began to cooperate. They complained to Youtube and the police but nothing changed.
I couldn't find Kapetanich's channel but here is Gooptar's:
https://www.youtube.com/@yardfish1612/videos
Kapetanich found half a dozen other monkeys on the YouTube like Mini. There was Monkey Ji, Baby Ciko, Chiro, Sweetpea, Mona — all baby long-tailed macaques being tortured on film. Some of the monkeys had developed physical tics from the stress. Monkey Ji was known for holding her head in her hands and rocking back and forth. Mini would grip her sides. The monkey haters in the comments loved it. “Abused multiple times a week since a baby. She has lived a TERRIBLE life,” someone wrote, approvingly, under a video of Mini. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a monkey more broken.”
Long-tailed Macaque Monkey
At about the same time an animal rights campaigner, Nina Jackel,
a 42 year old also living in Los Angeles, began to investigate monkey torture after a tip off. She began the process of sueing Youtube for hosting animal abuse videos. The case is continuing but is going badly and slowly. She realised that the openly accessible videos on Youtube were only the tip of the iceberg and more extreme material, including amputation, beheading and drowning, was available on Telegram and the Dark Web. Jackel put out a press release on what she had found and Kapetanich and Gooptar got in touch.
Then Kapetanich caught a break. A big name in the monkey torture community had had second thoughts and wanted to help her, from the inside, to bring it down. The man's name was Mike McCartney,
a 48-year-old former motorcycle gang member in Norfolk, Virginia, with a swastika tattoo and a “man cave” in his home decorated with Nazi symbols and Confederate flags. McCartney was well-built, heavily tattooed, and toothless from years of heroin addiction. He had spent two decades in one of America’s most dangerous outlaw motorcycle gangs, before going to prison and dropping out of that life.
McCartney was known in the monkey torture community as 'Torture King'. He sold and traded videos. At first he communicated with Kapetanich under the name 'Ronald McDonald'. He got her into the inner groups sharing the most extreme material, involving pliers, hammers, screwdrivers, blenders, power drills etc.
Ape’s Cage [the main inner group] contained about 400 people. The cast of characters was a mixture of the strange and — even stranger — the seemingly normal, all known to one another by their screen names. There was the Torture King, who had invited Kapetanich in; there was 'Sadistic', a petrol station attendant and grandmother in rural Alabama; there was 'Bones', a former US Air Force airman from Texas with a big collection of guns; and 'Champei', who caused chaos and infighting in every group he joined. There was 'Trevor', who couldn’t contribute during daytime hours because, 'no phone at work, nuclear stuff'.
And it wasn’t just Americans, there were dedicated members in Europe and Australia. Among the cruellest contributors to the group was 'The Immolator', a 35-year-old woman who loved birds and lived with her parents in the English midlands.
The top figure in the monkey torture community was known as 'Mr. Ape'. The BBC know his name but have decided not to publish it.
It turned out Mr Ape was running his empire from his mother’s house in Florida, in a nice neighbourhood with broad streets lined by picket fences and neatly-kept lawns. He was a university graduate in his mid-twenties, tall — basketball player tall — with a beard, baggy clothes and glasses. In the backyard of his house, a large oak tree shaded a cat graveyard where six cats were buried under six miniature cat headstones.
'Mr. Ape' collaborated with Stacey Storey
to commission a video in which a live baby monkey was blended.
Stacey Storey was a 46-year-old grandmother who worked at a petrol station and lived with her son in a solitary trailer set back from the road in a rural part of Alabama. Her screen name was 'Sadistic', and she was among the most prolific contributors to Ape’s Cage. She shared endless torture videos, as well as fantasies involving forced feeding, power tools and jars of acid.
The blender video was a hit and Storey became a top content distributor in the community. However, a month before the blender video was made Mr. Ape had, similarly to McCartney, had second thoughts and got in touch with Jackel and Gooptar to help them bring the ring down from the inside. The BBC got in touch with Mr. Ape and he let their reporters into his house and showed them his collection.
Together Kapetanich, Gooptar, Jackel and the BBC put together small clues from videos and identified two of the main creators of monkey torture videos as Indonesians (in Indonesia) Asep Yadi Nurul Hikmah
Asep Yadi Nurul Hikmah smoking
and M Ajis Rasajana
With the help of an Indonesian animal protection charity they gathered evidence and passed it to the Indonesian police, who arrested the men.
Eventually, in the USA the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and police began investigating the monkey torture ring. McCartney and Storey have been arrested and Mr. Ape is expected to be arrested soon. Three British women (in the UK), including 'The Immolator', have been arrested.
Rasajana got eight months in prison. Hikmah got three years, having also been found guilty of the sale of a protected species. Youtube and Facebook have taken down some monkey torture groups and videos but this investigation has only made a small dent in monkey torture. Kapetanich and Gooptar are continuing to investigate. Mini, the monkey held by Rasajana in the picture above, is now in a sanctuary doing well and will be released into the wild when ready.
BBC TV documentary (you need a UK IP):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n32l
Radio version:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct5j1p
