Rat Torture: One Of History's Most Barbaric Torture Methods

One of the most sadistic torture techniques involved having a cage filled with large rats with one open side strapped against the victim's abdomen.

The cage is then slowly heaten. Desperate to escape the heat, the rat begins to burrow through the only soft surface it can find: the victim's flesh. With sharp claws and teeth, the rat quickly gnaws its way into the victim's bowels, causing excruciating pain and terror, resulting in a horrifying death.

The "Rats Dungeon", or "Dungeon of the Rats", was a feature of the Tower of London alleged by Roman Catholic writers from the Elizabethan era. "A cell below high-water mark and totally dark" would draw in rats from the River Thames as the tide flowed in. Prisoners would have their "alarm excited", and in some instances have "flesh ... torn from the arms and legs"

During the Dutch Revolt, Diederik Sonoy, an ally of William the Silent, is documented to have used a method where a pottery bowl filled with rats was placed open side down on the naked body of a prisoner. When hot charcoal was piled on the bowl, the rats would "gnaw into the very bowels of the victim" in an attempt to escape the heat.

Rat torture appears in the famous case study of a patient of Sigmund Freud. The Rat Man obsessed that his father and lady friend would be subjected to this torture.

Rat torture was used by several South American military dictatorships: in Brazil during the military dictatorship of 1964–1985, in Uruguay during the civic-military dictatorship of 1973–1985,[6] in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990),  in Argentina during the so-called National Reorganization Process (1976–1983).

The report of CONADEP in Argentina detailed the use of a torture method known as "the recto-scope" (reserved primarily for Jewish prisoners) which consisted of inserting living rats into a victim's rectum or vagina through a tube. Amnesty International documented the case of a woman tortured by the Chilean CNI (National Information Center, successor to the DINA) in 1981, who described being kept in a room full of live rats during interrogation.

Serial killer Richard Kuklinski alleged in a series of interviews that one of his preferred methods of murder was to tie up a victim and leave them in a cave overnight so they could be eaten alive by rats. He would also leave a Super 8 camera in the cave to film the events. Like many of Kuklinski's other claims, this has been disputed due to a lack of evidence.

On October 16, 2010 in Lakewood, New Jersey, David Wax was alleged to have threatened kidnap victim Yisrael Bryskman with rat torture unless he agreed to give his wife a get (Jewish divorce document). He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for assisting in a kidnapping

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