South Florida animal vet sentenced to 22 years for child porn and bestiality charges
Just months ago, Prentiss Madden was living a seemingly successful life in South Florida that revolved around his popularity as a caring and charismatic veterinarian.
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Just months ago, Prentiss Madden was living a seemingly successful life in South Florida that revolved around his popularity as a caring and charismatic veterinarian.
On Friday, Madden sat in Miami federal court as a pariah — guilty of possessing thousands of child porn images of male infants and toddlers engaged in sex with adults and of making several videos of himself having sex with dogs and sharing them through social media on the internet.
Madden, the former medical director of Caring Hands Animal Hospital in Aventura, apologized to his family and victims, saying that he had suffered sexual abuse as a youth and witnessed his mother get severely beaten by his stepfather.
“This is never who I planned to be or thought I would be,” Madden, 40, told U.S. District Judge Jose Martinez. “It does not represent who I am as a person.”
Martinez showed no sympathy and sent Madden to prison for almost 22 years, the stiffest punishment allowed under federal sentencing guidelines. In July, the Alabama native pleaded guilty to his indictment without a plea agreement, based mainly on receiving, possessing and distributing child-porn images on the internet, along with making bestiality videos.
In considering the sentence, the judge adopted federal prosecutor Christopher Hudock’s recommendation for the highest possible sentence based on evidence that Madden had also sexually abused a boy under the age of 16 at least two times while he was amassing a trove of child porn images. The boy’s mother, citing a passage from the Bible, said in court that she forgave Madden while accusing him of committing an “evil and horrific” crime against her son.
Madden’s defense attorney, Michael Mirer, without making excuses, tried to show that his client suffered extensive trauma as a youth and it contributed to his criminal behavior as an adult. “He turned to child pornography because he was clinically depressed,” Mirer told the judge.
But Mirer argued that the evidence of his client having sex with a boy under 16 was not clear and that the allegation should not boost Madden’s sentence. The attorney asked the judge to give Madden a seven-year sentence so he wouldn’t be spending the rest of his adult life in prison, to no avail.
After his arrest in mid-March, the Aventura vet hospital’s website listed him as its medical director. His profile was taken down after news of his arrest broke. At the time, the hospital said in a statement that it fired Madden two weeks earlier after it learned he was under investigation for “these heinous and unthinkable crimes.”
In addition to finding voluminous child porn images on his iPhone, federal agents discovered “videos created by Madden depicting himself engaged in ‘animal crushing’ as well as social media chats discussing [them],” Hudock said during a previous court hearing. In one example, he said, Madden took a video selfie of himself having sex with a female dog. In another example, he said, Madden produced a video in which he put a “dildo” into another female dog “while he masturbated.”
Hudock argued that Madden’s having sex with dogs and sharing the images over the internet amounted to animal torture under federal law.
Madden was charged under a federal law that outlaws animal abuse, one that was initially created in 2010 in response to a genre of cruelty in which people video record the harming of animals for the sexual gratification of viewers — known as “animal crushing.”
His case is the first time in South Florida that someone has been charged under that federal law, which was amended under the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2019. It makes the production of animal torture videos punishable by up to seven years in prison.
According to a criminal complaint and affidavit filed with Madden’s arrest, the investigation began when authorities received a cybertip from Dropbox, the file-sharing web service, that a user had received more than 1,600 files of suspected child pornography. Agents traced the files to Madden’s home in the Miami area. Agents from U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) raided his home on Feb. 24, seizing phones and a computer.
According to the complaint, agents found private social-media chats with other users in which Madden was suspected of discussing “the sexual abuse of animals and children.” In one chat, someone believed to be Madden also bragged about a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy from Orlando — which formed the basis of some evidence that boosted his sentence to almost 22 years.
The complaint also alleged that Madden had on his phones multiple photos and videos of images “depicting bestiality,” files that were digitally coded as having been taken at his home. In his chat, Madden shared the graphic images and admits in detail to having sex with and abusing dogs, according to the criminal complaint. “I was keeping a dog that needed a home,” he allegedly wrote in one chat.
Another explicit video was traced as having been taken at the Helping Hands animal hospital in May 2018. “This leads me to believe that Madden may be abusing animals entrusted to his care,” HSI Agent Leah Ortiz wrote in the complaint.
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Thank God no Red-Footed Boobies have been raped… I think.
