Warning: this article contains graphic descriptions of the tortures inflicted on "Kensington" the cat.

Unspeakable horror of the cat torturers

by Rosie Dimanno, Toronto Star, April 15, 2002

The final phase of closing arguments in the Randal Dooley trial will begin in court this morning, more than two months after the case opened. These have been arduous weeks for the jurors as they were made privy to all the horrific details of this poor child's brief life, how he suffered, how he knew barely a shred of pity or mercy at the hands of his protectors — and alleged brutalizers — since coming to Canada from Jamaica as a 6-year-old.

A decent world recoils at miseries inflicted upon any helpless child. And this case has been particularly repugnant in its content. The evidence, so much of it undisputed or challenged, has elicited moans from spectators and tears from even court-hardened reporters. Randal's tiny Batman underwear — now there was a wrenching exhibit, evoking the tender vulnerabilities of a little boy.

There is rage aplenty about what befell Randal. And this jury will decide the fate of the child's parents — his biological father (though he's disputed this) Tony and his stepmother Marcia.

But anyone who's ever wandered through a courthouse, dropped in on a trial — as students do frequently on field trips — will know that there is no shortage of misery, no dearth of cruelty, in our midst, although most of those stories are never told or only briefly reported as digest items. This very newspaper could be filled on any given day, front to back, with the depraved conduct of human beings.

It's so often asked, especially when the victims have no hope of defending themselves: How can a person do such a thing? Whence comes the wickedness, the psychotic urges, the lack of conscience?

In another courtroom down the street, during another trial that has unfolded concurrently with the Dooley matter, many of the same questions were posed. And some were even answered — if you accept the inexact constructs of those who purport expertise in bizarre behaviour.

Jesse Power and Anthony Wennekers both pleaded guilty to mischief and cruelty to animals after making a snuff video of the torture and killing of a cat. No more than that, just an ordinary alley cat. Which of course, obviously, puts the crime in a completely different realm than the alleged murder of a child or any human being. Even the most avid pet lovers, if they have an iota of sense, would not equate animals, whether feral or ridiculously pampered, with humans.

At maximum, Power and Wennekers face 2½ years in jail. Mr. Justice Edward Ormston will hand down his decision Thursday. The sentence is eagerly awaited, most especially by the hundreds of animal lovers who were drawn to the courtroom during presentation of evidence including, one day, the playing of the "snuff" film in question .

From the video:

An unidentified voice: "I want to cut open its belly while it's still alive and watch everything moving around."

Power: "Why don't we just slit its throat and let it bleed?"

(Power saws at the cat's throat with a straight edge razor.)

Matt (another individual, a street person, involved in the exercise; he's still at large): "Whoa, look at his intestines!"

(Power lifts the cat's legs and begins to skin it from its belly. The cat is still alive.) Matt stabs at the animal, which is still alive, with a large buck knife: "Let's tack it to the wall."

This is done, with the cat crying throughout. Wennekers removes the knife and impales it more firmly.

Powers: "Beautiful, man."

(The cat, still not dead, mewls and lifts its paw toward Powell. Matt uses pliers to remove an ear. Power continues sawing at the cat's throat. Wennekers uses a dental tool to remove the animal's eye. The cat shrieks in pain.)

Power: "Doesn't bleed much, does it."

Matt: "You got to get it through the heart."

Wennekers: "Let's find its heart."

(Wennekers stabs the cat in the heart. The cat falls from the wall, both Matt and Wennekers continue to stab it.)

Power: "Let's get this f-----."

Wennekers and Matt kick the cat.

Matt: "Let's slice it right down the middle."

(Power wipes the knife blade on the cat's head. Then he slits open the chest cavity, holds the opened chest against his nose and inhales deeply.)

The End.

Power is a 22-year-old student at the Ontario College of Art. At one point, he'd worked at the Royal Ontario Museum, removing flesh off dead animals whose skeletons would later be used in museum displays. He then got a job at an abattoir, where he herded pigs into a carbon monoxide chamber where animals were subdued before slaughter. His first cinematic effort was to film himself cutting off the head of a chicken, a project that he showed to classmates. His sketchbook, studied afterward by a psychiatrist who interviewed him, was full of detailed drawings "of a provocative but not overtly violent nature," which were largely devoted to drawings of bowels and internal organs, what Power described as his "crude comics" — which he was hoping to have posted on a like-minded Web site that, among other things, linked up to other Internet sites offering members access to the "top 100 rape videos." All this information is contained in the assessment report of Dr. Philip Klassen, a psychiatrist with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Ten months ago, Power and his two cohorts made the cat video inside a Bathurst St. rooming house.

The purpose? An artistic and intellectual exercise, Power told Klassen, and actually a perverse kind of homage to animals who die for human consumption: "He states that his intention was not only to kill the cat but to eat the cat," Klassen writes in his report. The message Power was trying to convey, "If you eat meat, you'll need to kill it yourself."

"He stated that as a result of having worked in the abattoir, when he ate pork he thought of pigs. He stated that thinking in this fashion is a `form of giving thanks.'"

Indeed, Power kept the executed cat's head, as a totem. He felt he could "boil it down, keep the skull, might be neat."

Asked by Klassen how others should view his activities, Power responded they should view them, and him, as "somebody who wanted to do something and did it, to eat meat which I'd killed myself." The cat video, he hoped, would "evolve" into an artistic project.

The inconsistencies therein, and Power's fascination with the killing and torturing of animals, seem not to have raised a great big red flag with Klassen. There was, the doctor concluded, little to no evidence of significant problems in Power's (admittedly unconventional) family, nor evidence of aggressive tendencies. All the usual psychological tests came up normal, normal, normal. "There was no active suicidal nor violent ideation. Grossly, I estimate that his intelligence falls in the high average to superior portion of the spectrum of intellectual function."

A bright kid, who functioned best in a non-conformist atmosphere that rewarded artistic expression. Immature, though, and sensation-seeking, prone to look-at-me behaviour, struggling "somewhat" with feelings of anger, and an "oceanic sense of self-importance" about his artistic mission. Manifested some "borderline and narcissistic personality traits ... rejection-sensitive, impulsive and affectively unstable." Power also connected with other disenfranchised individuals, "leading to an increasingly underground lifestyle and burgeoning substance abuse."

Klassen continues, with vigorous qualifications: "Mr. Power may suffer from some narcissistic personality traits insofar as there is a suggestion that he may have somewhat of a grandiose sense of self-importance, and may believe that he (is) special or unique insofar as others should accommodate aberrant expressions of his social and political stance.

Okay, doc, but why did he do it? Answer: He did it out of some combination of adolescent self-importance, an ultimately egocentric morality, association with particular peers and, perhaps to an extent, the need to challenge conventions of morality that is seen as an imperative in some artistic circles, the doc says.

Power is chastened, Klassen concludes, though "not entirely relinquishing his underlying belief system." He's been contrite. He's embarrassed by the public exposure. He does not, Klassen maintains, suffer from "sadistic personality traits, or from sexual sadism." Klassen could spot no hint of pleasure in the torture and killing of the cat.

Thus, Power gets a psychological thumbs up, which has been filed with the court.

"I believe that Mr. Power is at low risk of future violent behaviour. I believe that he is likely to continue to present as somewhat challenging, defiant and limit-testing. However, my clinical impression of Mr. Power is that the attention, and indeed notoriety, that have befallen him as a result of killing a cat have been experienced as highly unwelcome and adverse, in a fashion that should assist him in constraining his behaviour in the future.... It is my opinion that Mr. Power may reasonably be expected to be a productive, contributing and pro social member of the community in the future."

Anyway, a cat is a cat is a cat, no?