Animal rights activism have stepped up the intensity of their tactics, as demonstrated in the recent campaign of intimidation and harassment directed at local slaughterhouses around Green Mountain College, which wanted to use a pair of old oxen for food as part of their “sustainability” program.

As another example of the anti-human direction the movement is headed, David Jesse of the Detroit Free Press details the case of an activist who terrorized a Wayne State University professor with email threats and trespass.

An animal rights activist who targeted a Wayne State University professor with blog posts calling for him to be tortured pleaded guilty Tuesday to two criminal charges.

Camille Marino is to be sentenced Dec. 5 in Wayne County Circuit Court for unlawful posting of a message with aggravating circumstances and trespass, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said.

Marino, 47, was arrested in May on WSU’s campus after she chained herself to the undergraduate library doors. She had been banned from campus following a series of graphic blog posts about Donal O’Leary, a WSU medical school professor who conducts research on shelter dogs, that included descriptions of how he should die and the publishing of his home address and phone number.

O’Leary was granted a personal protection order from Wayne County courts ordering Marino to remove his home address and phone number from her posts.

Marino’s first post about O’Leary — titled “Donal O’Leary: Federally-Funded Sadist Tortures Shelter Dogs to Death at Wayne State” — was published Oct. 22, 2011. It included his home address and phone number, along with his WSU e-mail address, phone number and address.

The same day, she sent O’Leary an e-mail at his WSU address that included a link to her blog, court records show.

“I hope you die a slow painful death comparable to those you forced your victims to endure,” the e-mail said, adding: “Please don’t interpret this as a threat. It’s merely my most fond wishes for you.”

O’Leary’s personal protection order was granted Oct. 31, 2011, and bars Marino from posting O’Leary’s home information. It was served to her in Florida on Nov. 3, 2011.

Hours after being served, Marino republished O’Leary’s home information, records show. “You are a war criminal,” that post said. “Laws that protect you at the expense of the innocent are unjust and are, therefore, null and void.”

At a preliminary court hearing in June, O’Leary testified Marino’s words frightened him and his family. Calling the e-mail a “demented missive,” O’Leary read parts of it in court.

The e-mail included threats to strap O’Leary down and cut off his limbs with rusty saws, rip his teeth out one-by-one with pliers and feed his limbless body to starving dogs.

Marino argued the posts and e-mail were federally protected free speech and not stalking. She also said she never intended to act on the violence she described in the e-mail.

“We’re pleased that Ms. Marino is being held accountable for her irresponsible behavior,” WSU spokesman Matt Lockwood said Tuesday. “Wayne State continues to support Dr. O’Leary and remains dedicated to the protection of its faculty.”