(DAILY MAIL) – A Florida veterinarian has been arrested for allegedly sexually abusing dogs that were in his care and possessing a trove of child pornography photos and videos.
Prentiss Madden, 40, was arrested by federal agents on Tuesday and is now facing child pornography and bestiality charges.
Madden had been the medical director of the Caring Hands Animal Hospital in Miami until he was fired two weeks ago when his colleagues learned he was being investigated.
Investigators were tipped off last year after the file-sharing web service Dropbox notified them that a user had received more than 1,600 files of suspected child pornography, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Wednesday.
The files were accessed multiple times by an IP address eventually traced to Madden’s home and the animal hospital where he worked, authorities say.
When agents carried out a raid on Madden’s home on February 24, he allegedly admitted to owning the Dropbox account.
Authorities say they found multiple files of social media chats in which Madden discussed ‘the sexual abuse of animals and children’ and shared numerous videos and images with unidentified individuals.
The complaint alleges that Madden also had multiple photos and videos of images ‘depicting bestiality’.
Madden also allegedly shared images in some chats and admitted in detail to having sex with and abusing dogs.
In one of those chats, Madden is accused of sending images of a man sexually abusing a dog.
When the other person involved in the chat asked if the man in the images was Madden, he allegedly responded: ‘Yea… I was keeping a dog that needed a home’.
Some of the animal abuse images were digitally coded as having been taken at his home, according to the complaint.
Another explicit video was traced as having been taken at the animal hospital back in May 2018.
‘This leads me to believe that Madden may be abusing animals entrusted to his care,’ FBI agent Leah Ortiz wrote in the complaint.
His profile on the Caring Hands Animal Hospital website was removed in the wake of his arrest.
Madden, who is a native of north Alabama, described himself in the now-deleted profile as the ‘proud pet parent’ of a Shih Tzu named Lucky and two Burmese pythons named, Mocha and Sherbert.
He attended the Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine.
The hospital issued a statement on Wednesday calling Madden’s alleged crimes ‘heinous and unthinkable’.
‘Our legal team, and every single member of the Caring Hands family will be doing everything in our power to aid law enforcement and facilitate their investigation and prosecution,’ the hospital’s statement said.
Madden is facing charges of possession of child pornography, receipt of child pornography and animal abuse.
The charges fall under a federal law outlawing animal abuse, which was initially created in response to a genre of cruelty in which people record the harming of animals for the sexual gratification of viewers.
The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2019, makes the production of torture videos punishable by up to seven years in prison.
Madden is being at Miami’s Federal Detention Center pending a hearing on Friday.
