Not your average schoolboy crush

If you tap me on the shoulder and ask me how sick the world is, Iwill reply, "Deeply sick."

If you ask, "Are there entire subcultures of staggeringly weirdand twisted individuals bent on perversions beyond the normalimagining?" I will reply, "Yes, there are."

And yet, the fresh evidence always comes as a shock. You fancyyourself savvy, even jaded. Then you stumble upon some new quiveringhorror that just drops your jaw.

We're working our way into this slowly, you may notice. So thatthose of you who aren't in the mood, at the moment, for somethinghead-spinningly gross, can set this aside, perhaps until afterbreakfast.

Put it this way: Have you ever killed a mouse? Then you know howgrim the process is. You notice holes chewed in the cereal boxes inthe pantry. You trek to the hardware store, buy a couple of traps:rectangles of cheap wood with spring-loaded clamps. You set them,gingerly, and forget about them.

Until . . . kersnap! The unlucky mouse gets a brass bar embeddedin its head. You dispose, again gingerly, of the contraption and itsvictim, trying to avoid the gaze of its black eyes, feeling somewhatguilty.

That's the normal reaction, at least. The thought that theremight be somebody who takes pleasure in it astounded me, so much sothat when I heard that they are pushing legislation in California toban "crush videos" - films of women crushing small animals, sold tofetishists who get a thrill from the sight - I thought that nobodycould be that sick. At first I suspected the story had to be somesort of hoax.

"So did I," said Michael Bradbury, the district attorney ofVentura County. "I had a hard time believing it until myinvestigators brought me the videos."

He viewed a few of the films, with titles such as "Stomper'sCrushfest," "Missy - Crush Specialist," "California Crush" and "TwoSisters Fiesta Crush." It wasn't a hoax.

"In 33 years of law enforcement, this is one of the sickest thingsI've seen," he said. "And I've seen a lot of sick stuff."

Bradbury said the videos are sold through the Internet.

"They've been around a while, both national and international," hesaid.

What does it really matter, I asked him, if a mouse is killed in atrap, or killed by a stiletto heel? Is it really harmful that sometiny band of fetishists gets pleasure from it?

"They start with mice, then move up," he said. "Unfortunately,they want larger and larger animals to get the sexual kick. We havephotos of them crushing a monkey.

"We've received information that there is interest in crushing ahuman child. In fact, they do (in the films) crush dolls thatresemble a human child."

Yes, that would be worrisome.

Bradbury said the district attorney's office sent a femaleinvestigator undercover to a film shooting, posing as a model.

"She was going to do the crushing," he said. "The filmmakersasked her if she was willing to do puppies and kittens, things ofthat nature."

Just before the cameras rolled, the cops burst in.

Bradbury held a news conference Monday, announcing a drive to seekCongressional action to make depictions of animals being tortured,maimed or killed a federal crime.

"Right now, all we have is local anti-cruelty laws," he said.

I asked him what the reaction to his news conference has been.

"It's the biggest news conference I've ever seen," he said. "Farexceeding the press conferences we had for mass murderers. That'sthe reaction we always get when we prosecute animal cruelty - we hearfrom all over the world. You never get that response when a humanbeing is injured."

Which just goes to show that there is more than enough sickness togo around.