Sadistic zoologist Adam Britton jailed over ‘grotesque cruelty’ including rape, torture and murder of puppies

WARNING: This story contains graphic details of animal cruelty and references child abuse.

A pre-eminent crocodile specialist will spend the next decade behind bars after being sentenced over one of the most sickening bestiality and animal cruelty cases in Australian history.

Northern Territory Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael Grant today sentenced Adam Robert Corden Britton to 10 years and five months in prison after he pleaded guilty to more than 60 offences of sickening bestiality, animal cruelty and possessing child exploitation material.

Prior to his arrest two years ago, UK-born Britton was a respected senior research associate at Charles Darwin University and ran crocodile research consultancy Big Gecko with his former wife.

The couple lived in McMinns Lagoon, about 30km south of Darwin, with their two Swiss-Sheppard dogs, Ursa and Bolt, and a number of pet saltwater crocodiles.

Court documents reveal that from about 2014, Britton began engaging in sexual activities with Ursa and Bolt.

And between November 2020 and April 2022, Britton sourced 42 dogs of varying breeds and ages which he later “tortured and sexually exploited for his own sadistic sexual pleasure”.

“His deliberate and planned conduct resulted in the intentional killing of at least 39 of those animals,” the crown facts state.

In March 2022 his double life began to unravel after an online user spotted a bright orange Darwin council dog leash in the background of a video he had shared.

The video showed Britton sexually exploiting, torturing and killing one adult female dog and at least eight puppies.

The anonymous tip-off to authorities sparked Operation Haine — an investigation by the NT Police and Australian Federal Police’s Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team — which identified Britton as the perpetrator.

In April 2022 a search warrant was executed at his home on Darwin’s outskirts.

Police seized 44 items including computers, mobile phones, cameras, external hard drives, tools, weapons, dog paraphernalia and sex toys.

Detectives discovered severed dog limbs in a freezer, a decomposing puppy in a pond, and a severed dog head on a neighbouring property.

Police also found 15 child abuse material files on Britton’s laptop, which he had sourced online, including a toddler being forced to engage in bestiality.

Britton was arrested and has been in custody ever since.

In September, he pleaded guilty to 60 offences including bestiality, possessing child abuse material and other animal cruelty charges.

During that court mention, senior Crown prosecutor Marty Aust told the court Britton had used websites such as Gumtree to source new dogs, promising their former owners he would give them a “good home” and then reassuring them that their dogs were “settling in well”.

“Unbeknownst to the previous owners the dogs had already been sexually exploited, tortured and killed by the offender,” Mr Aust said.

At the time Chief Justice Grant warned the gallery the facts of the offending detailed “acts that could only be described as grotesque cruelty which are both confronting and distressing”.

“Which in my assessment have the potential to cause nervous shock or some other adverse psychological reaction to a person exposed to those details,” he said.

The offences described in the 83-page Crown Facts, obtained by The Nightly, are too traumatising to publish.

Most of the abuse took place at Britton’s home where he filmed himself raping, torturing and killing dogs in a shipping container on his property.

The 53-year-old would edit the videos and black out identifying features that could be traced back to him, before sharing the videos via two Telegram accounts.

Using these applications the offender discussed his ‘kill count’, referred to dogs as ‘f--- toys’ and described the shipping container on his property as his ‘torture room’.

“The offender utilised the accounts exclusively to engage with likeminded users about bestiality and animal cruelty,” the crown facts state.

“Through the material he posted on Telegram, the offender promoted and incited violence against animals as well as the images depicting bestiality, acts of torture and the infliction of extreme violence and cruelty against animals, particularly dogs.”

Investigators recovered hundreds of online messages in which Britton advised others on how to source animals to exploit.

“Most people want to know you’re a good person and the dog is going to a good home, it’ll have space to play, you’ll take it for walks, it might live in the house etc. Telling them you want a new family member after your old dog died from cancer last year hardly ever fails,” he advised one person.

In another message Britton mused on “why I love to hurt dogs”.

“I wasn’t sure at first, but now I live for it. I can’t stop myself hurting dogs,” he said.

“I always had it in me, I was sadistic as a child to animals, but I had repressed it. In the last few years I let it out again, and now I can’t stop. I don’t want to.”

The depraved crocodile expert said he remembered “being sadistic to small animals” when he aged seven or eight, with his interest turning sexual at age 12.

“I started fence jumping when I was 13 or 14 and molesting horses,” he said.

“I repressed it but it really started to come back out again in my fantasies in my 20s and 30s.”

Before Justice Grant delivered his sentence on Thursday, Britton’s barrister — who does not want to be named — read an apology from her client in which he expressed shame and remorse.

“I take full responsibility for the demeaning crimes that I perpetrated on dogs,” he said.

“I deeply regret the pain and trauma that I caused to innocent animals and consequently to my family, friends and members of the community that I affected.

“I now acknowledge that I’ve been fighting a rare paraphilic disorder for much of my life and that shame and fear prevented me from seeking the proper help I needed.

“No amount of words can convey how sorry and ashamed I am, nor undo what I did.”

He vowed to seek long term treatment and “find a path towards redemption”.

“Please give my family the space they deserve to heal. They were not aware or involved in any way,” he said.

The disgraced zoologist, whose sentence was backdated to April 22, will be eligible to apply for parole in six years.

Emma Hurst MLC for the Animal Justice Party in NSW slammed Britton’s sentence as “pathetically weak” and has called for national reform to modernise and strengthen laws regarding the sexual abuse of animals around Australia.

“Our country’s animal sexual abuse laws are entirely out of touch with community values and expectations,” she said.

“These were horrific acts of animal cruelty. There is a well-researched link between violence towards animals and violence towards people.

“This man is a danger to other animals and the community. I am relieved to hear his sentence includes time behind bars — that’s where a man like this belongs — but it is not long enough.”

NSW is the only State where there are mandatory lifetime animal bans for anyone convicted of bestiality and is one of the few states where the possession, distribution and production of bestiality material is outlawed.

To report animal cruelty, contact the RSPCA.