PETA Demands Immediate Closure of UMass Monkey Lab After Former Worker Sentenced for Child Sexual Abuse Material

For Immediate Release:
May 20, 2025

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA’s Chief Scientist for Laboratory Investigations Campaigns, Dr. Katherine Roe, following news that a former worker of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s (UMass) marmoset laboratory, run by experimenter Agnès Lacreuse, was sentenced to a five-year prison term for crimes involving child sexual abuse material:

PETA is sickened but not surprised to learn that a former worker of the marmoset-torture laboratory at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst has been sentenced to five years in prison for the distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material. This conviction is yet another reminder of the well-established link between animal abuse and human violence, and animal experimenters often have been exposed for escalating their cruelty from animals to humans. PETA has long called on UMass to shut down this hellhole of a laboratory, which is guilty not only of horrific abuse of marmosets but also of repeatedly violating animal welfare laws—all while producing no meaningful contributions to human health. UMass must act now to end this cycle of cruelty.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.