Pony, the orangutan used as a sex slave

Pony is a female orangutan who in 2003 was rescued from a brothel in the village of Kereng Pangi, in Central Kalimantan (the Indonesian part of Borneo). The orangutan was used as a sex slave for clients who wanted to try something different.

Pony’s story

Pony is one of many orangutans captured during the clearing of forest for oil palms, grown to produce palm oil. Palm oil is used in many cosmetics and baked goods and is therefore in high demand.

Around the world, brothels where animals are sexually exploited are not as rare as one might expect, and Pony was unlucky enough to end up in one after her capture.

The orangutan used as a sex slave

The brothel owner chained her to a wall and shaved off all her hair. Then she washed her, perfumed her, put make-up on her and made her wear rings and necklaces. She considered her a lucky charm, but the orangutan’s main job was to make money by being prostituted. And she made a lot of it: many men were willing to pay to have sex with an ape. They wanted to try something different.

To make Pony look more human, they shaved all her hair every other day. This caused severe skin irritation, and she was no longer protected from insects. She was covered in bites she could not stop scratching, causing herself even more wounds. But her owner did not care. Pony was there to make money.

Pony’s rescue

The orangutan’s situation was known in the village, but nobody did anything to help her. For the villagers it was perfectly normal for an orangutan to be prostituted for the amusement of some curious man, and every time the police tried to free Pony, the whole village resisted.

It took about a year, and 35 police officers armed with AK-47s to face villagers armed with pistols and knives, to free her. The rescue was filmed by a TV crew, and in the footage you can hear the brothel owner screaming hysterically not to take away her baby. When a man came near her, Pony began to strike certain poses, presenting herself to him and moving as she had been taught.

Pony’s recovery

After her rescue she was taken to the centre of the BOS Foundation (Borneo Orangutan Survival). There she began the long process of rehabilitation, in which she was introduced to other orangutans and taught to survive on her own. For the first few years she was completely dependent on the staff, unable to find food for herself.

Sadly, however, Pony never managed to return to the wild. After several attempts and some setbacks (in 2010 her condition worsened so much that she needed treatment for more than a year), since 2014 she has lived in the socialisation complex at the Nyaru Menteng centre together with other orangutans. She does not have the skills to survive alone in the forest, but according to the foundation she is doing well.

When she was rescued from the brothel Pony was about 6 years old, but we do not know how long she had been used as a slave. We do know, though, that in the wild orangutans are completely dependent on their mother for the first 2 years and only begin to separate from her from the age of 5. So it is very likely that when she was captured Pony was still a baby who needed her mother’s care, torn from her habitat to satisfy the most perverse desires of men.

A true story?

There is one last thing worth knowing. Pony really was seized on 13 February 2003 by the Indonesian nature conservation authority (BKSDA) and the BOS Foundation, with the help of local police, and she arrived at the centre in terrible condition. However, the foundation itself, asked by the fact-checking site Mimikama, explained that after the rescue it tried to verify the “prostitution” story by speaking with the people involved, including the officials who took part in the seizure, but was never able to confirm it.

Sources

• Mimikama, Mythos Orang-Utan-Bordelle – Die Geschichte von „Pony“ (with information from BOS Deutschland)
• BOS Foundation, Update on Pony, orangutan.or.id