The correctional court in Beauvais, France, convicted tiger tamer Mario Masson of animal abuse. His ten felines were confiscated and the circus performer was sentenced to a 5,000-euro fine. He will not be able to breed animals or present them to the public for two years and will have to pay 120 thousand euros to the Tonga Terre association, which has been taking care of tigers in a special refuge in the Loire department since the end of 2020. The man will then have to pay another 127,000 euros to the associations in defense of animals that have joined the civil party, including One Voice and Stéphane Lamart. The sentence is historic: “It is the first time that a circus tamer has been convicted of ill-treatment,” explained the president of One Voice Muriel Arnal.
“Masson’s tigers had never known anything other than the truck they lived in, prisoners between the bars of a space of two square meters, without water,” continued Arnal. “We can only be satisfied with this decision, which finally recognizes the conditions of ill-treatment suffered by these animals,” added Patrice Grillon, representative of the Stéphane Lamart association.
At the end of the trial, which began at the end of September, the animal trainer was also found guilty of multiple infringements of the labor code, fraud and evasion. He charges which, together with that of animal abuse, led to the confiscation not only of the ten tigers, but also to a sum of 61 thousand euros from Monsieur Masson’s bank accounts.
In the meantime, the felines taken from the now convicted man have already been living in the wild animal shelter of the Tonga Terre association since 2020, after being kidnapped from the circus following an investigation conducted by One Voice, which later formed a civil party in the process to the famous tamer.
