I use mostly the Lounge and General Discussion. I do venture to some of the others, but not so much lately. There has been an abundance of posts on GD and it pretty much take up all my viewing time to get through the 3-4 or some days, 4-5 pages of new posts.
I too hate anything that shows animal mistreatment. However, I can't say I have seen any animal torture or mistreatment in either of the forums I read.
Yes, there will be stories of abused and abandoned animals but those are ones that end up having a happy ending. DU'ers are not in the habit of posting nasty, gruesome articles of any subject just to post disgusting stuff.
So not sure where you are seeing these "graphic, gruesome animal torture stories". I may have missed them. 
Please report them when you do come across them. No one should have to even accidently see mistreatment of animals.
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Why we have this rule: Most people do not enjoy stumbling across extremely graphic content while browsing the web.
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