VIDEO: Former Shriners Patient’s Plea: ‘Please, End Cruel Animal Circuses’

For Immediate Release:
August 25, 2025

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

A former Shriners Children’s spokeschild is teaming up with PETA and hitting Tampa TVs to call on locally-based Shriners International to end the use of animals in Shrine circuses. In the new video, Juliette Woerman—who became a Shriners patient at the age of 15 after developing severe scoliosis—shares, “Shrine clubs still use wild animals in their circuses, who are forced to perform under the constant threat of violence…Shriners are supposed to be compassionate, but this is cruel.”

Woerman points out that, contrary to a common misconception, “Circus funds raised go to the Shrine, not directly to the hospitals”—profits are generally used for operating expenses such as maintaining the clubs’ premises and funding their activities. Ticket sales also support the continued abuse of wild animals, who are routinely threatened by circus trainers with whips, electric prods, and bullhooks—weapons that resemble fireplace pokers with a sharp hook on one end.

“Children naturally love animals, and if they knew how elephants suffer for Shrine circuses, they would never want to attend,” says PETA President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on Shriners International to ban its clubs from exploiting animals and join Ringling Bros. and nearly every other circus by switching to animal-free circuses.”

In nature, elephants enjoy playing with their families, foraging for fresh vegetation, and bathing in rivers. But in Shrine circuses, elephants like Betty, the most depressed elephant in the world—who is elderly; suffering from several debilitating, painful, and life-threatening ailments; and has been used in circuses for more than five decades—spend the majority of their lives in shackles and are forced to perform in hundreds of shows per year.

PETA is rallying its members and supporters to call on Shriners International to stop supporting animal abuse and ban animal circuses in its member clubs.

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