Former Columbus City School teacher sentenced for distributing monkey torture videos

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH)  – A Licking County man who pleaded guilty to distributing “monkey crush” videos received his sentence Thursday.

According to the United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of Ohio, a judge sentenced Ronald Bedra, of Etna, to over four years – or 54 months – in prison for conspiring to create and distribute videos of violence and sexual abuse of monkeys.

In April, 42-year-old Bedra pleaded guilty to conspiring to create and distribute the “animal crush” videos. Animal crushing is defined under federal criminal law as “actual conduct in which one or more living non-human mammals, birds, reptiles or amphibians is purposely crushed, burned, drowned, suffocated, impaled or otherwise subjected to serious bodily injury.”

Bedra, according to court documents, conspired with others to create the videos, which depicted acts of sadistic violence against baby and adult monkeys, who were dismembered and sexually abused.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that the group used encrypted chat apps to direct money to individuals in Indonesia willing to commit the requested acts of torture on camera. Bedra also mailed a thumb drive containing 64 videos of monkey torture to a co-conspirator in Wisconsin.

Bedra was a career technology teacher at Linden McKinley STEM Academy who resigned on March 22, according to a Columbus City Schools’ spokesperson. He was the second Ohio man within two months to be charged with animal crushing.

Nicholas Dryden, of Cincinnati, was charged in June with the creation of the videos, as well as with production and receipt of a visual depiction of the sexual abuse of children, because a minor was paid to abuse the monkeys.