Our recent post about the RSPCA ended with a request for information about a court case called “RSPCA versus Child C”. Through the kind offices of one of our regular readers we can now reveal the sad and shabby facts ...
It's pretty simple, really. 15 year old girl notices that family cat has hurt its tail. Says to Dad “Shall we take it to the vet?” Dad says “let's give it a day or two, it might get better by itself”.
Neighbour sees cat, calls RSPCA. RSPCA prosecute father for animal cruelty, AND PROSECUTE THE GIRL AS WELL.
Father accepts he was mistaken in not taking the cat to the vet immediately, pleads guilty, pays fine. Magistrates chuck out case against child.
Then the idiocy compounds itself. The RSPCA appeals, would you believe? Fortunately the Court of Appeal also exercises common-sense and kicks the case out.
Yet another instance of two well-known traits of the RSPCA: one is their determination to use their wealth (income of £110m a year, remember?) to enforce their own peculiar view of the world, and persecute especially the most vulnerable people: children, the disabled and the elderly, those to whom their pets are probably most important. The other is their deeply-held conviction that no one should keep pets at all (except them).
There's a full account of the case here, in a complete transcription of a File on Four radio interview with lawyer Jonathan Rich.
Another visitor drew our attention to this story: after the severe flooding in the Severn Valley in 2000, an RSPCA spokeswally reported that "Some of my colleagues in Shrewsbury have been out rescuing sheep and cattle. Some cattle were spotted actually swimming in the river or part of the flooded field that's flooded recently, and a lot of those actually died."
Actually a farmer local to the incident said that the owners of the cows had told the RSPCA to leave them and they would find the highest ground in the field and stay there until the floods subsided. However the all-knowing RSPCA insisted on performing a 'rescue'. In so doing they panicked the cows and drove them into the river where they drowned.
Still, the RSPCA must have the last word: regional director for the south-west Jonathan Silk said that most farmers had acted responsibly and moved their animals from areas near rivers, and places likely to flood. But "We dealt with a number of incidents in which farmers took a gamble on the weather and did not move their animals."
What he actually meant was that some farmers didn't accept that only the RSPCA knows best and everyone ought to kowtow to them and do what they say (after all, farmers only spend their entire lives caring for their land and their stock, whereas RSPCA “inspectors” get a whole 12 weeks' training before they receive their police-style uniform and official-looking white van).
What regional director Silk ought to have said was “If you don't do what we say, you naughty farmers, we'll come and kill your cows anyway. Because we know best”.
Similar murderous idiocy was seen in Cheshire, where the Daily Mail reported that the RSPCA took in and raised an orphaned fawn after its mother was killed by a car. They reared it, released it, then decided that it was “too tame” to survive in the wild so they killed it, which annoyed the British Deer Society no end.
But let's get back to that heinous criminal Child C. She may have got off in the end, though Lord only knows what such persecution must have been like for a 15 year old girl. Other children aren't so lucky, and here the RSPCA's activities take an altogether more sinister turn ...
The RSPCA is recognising that there is another, more trendy, area they could involve themselves in; one where even without their help, standards of care, sense and justice are already at rock-bottom and innocent people are persecuted every day: child protection.
Well, who can blame them? It's a growth industry, after all, and who'd be daft enough to start campaigning against it on the grounds that children shouldn't BE protected? To turn around social workers' oft-used expression, it's a win-win situation for every petty-minded, self-seeking, power-hungry, bullying little jobsworth ...
Unless you have a strong stomach you might not want to read the whole of this highly emotive news story, so we'll précis: a tape recording begins with the sound of a little girl, clearly bewildered and distressed. At one point she begins to cry. At other times she is sobbing uncontrollably. 'Have you seen the judge yet?' she can be heard asking pitifully in between the tears before pleading: 'I want to go home with Mummy and Daddy.'
The recording - and dozens of others just like it - was made during a supervised meeting between the youngster and her parents after their daughter was taken away from them by social workers. They are known as 'contact visits' in the soulless vernacular of the care system, and took place in a room with a table and chairs and a few toys. One hour. Once a month. Of course, the social services who snatched the child know better: they told the Family Court that she didn't want to live with her parents, so she should be adopted.
The girl's father spent months taking down every word of the recordings by hand, only to be told by a judge that they had to be professionally transcribed. By the time they were, it was too late: moves to put her up for adoption were already under way. After 74 separate court hearings over two harrowing years, the family finally lost their fight to have her returned to them when the Court of Appeal in London ruled that their daughter must be given up for adoption. She was five when she was taken away.
The family's MP, Charles Hendry, said 'This case has concerned me more than any other in my 13 years as a member of Parliament.' And he went on to describe the mother and father as 'devoted parents'. Furthermore, one of the experts brought in to examine the child's removal, a psychiatric social worker, concluded the local authority had 'mismanaged the case'. Needless to say, his advice was ignored. More than 200 local people, including neighbours, friends and members of the couple's church, planned to take part in a march through their village shortly after the family's ordeal began in April 2007. Posters were printed, which read 'Social Services Have Kidnapped Our Daughter. Please Help The Fight To Get Her Back Where She Belongs.' Above the words was a picture of the child. The march was just about to begin when the police, acting on the advice of social services, stopped it. They threatened the parents with jail if they broke the law by identifying their daughter on the placards.
How did all this begin? Well, with the RSPCA and an anonymous tip-off – or so they claimed. Father ran a dog-breeding business from their home, and one April morning in 2007 RSPCA, backed up by 18 police officers, arrived at their house following a tip-off that dogs were being mistreated, and that there might be guns in the house. No guns were ever found. No criminal charges were brought, nor does father have a criminal record. He was later, however, convicted of docking the tails of his puppies.
But the raid was to have far more catastrophic consequences. Both Richard and Susan were arrested for failing to cooperate with officers. By the time they were released from custody later that day, Jenny was the subject of an emergency protection order. So an operation which had begun for entirely different reasons had ended with the heartbreak of their daughter being taken away.
The reasons for the action against the child are bitterly contested by the family. The first was the state of the house. Police said it was covered in rabbit entrails - used as food for the dogs they raised - and animal excrement. The couple claim the mess was caused during the raid. They say the doors were left open, allowing the dogs in. Normally, they insisted, their home was 'clean and tidy'. Only a few weeks earlier a policewoman had visited them - after a puppy had been stolen - and backed up what they said. She also said that the child was 'happy'.
The authorities also claimed there were no clothes for the child in her wardrobe, but the family say they looked in the wrong wardrobe: the right wardrobe was full of her belongings. Her mother offered receipts from Monsoon proving that she spent hundreds of pounds on the child.
The second reason, according to social services, that the girl was not returned to her parents, was that she had apparently made it clear she didn't want to return to the house. But why would she? She was later diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following the raid. The RSPCA had decided they were criminals, so a couple of dozen uniformed officers suddenly burst through the doors and poured into the house in the early morning, and she watched her mother and father being led away in handcuffs. What was the poor mite supposed to think?
One social services 'expert' suggested, after spending just one hour with the child, that she had been sexually abused by her father. The evidence? She had described choking on a lollipop which, so the expert said, could 'signify the child being forced to have oral sex with her father'.
A second expert decided that both parents were suffering from 'paranoid personality disorders' (what are we supposed to conclude from that? That such disorders are infectious, perhaps?). The evidence? There was an occasion when the police were called because father was taking photographs of the social services centre where a 'contact meeting' was taking place. Why? Because the grounds of the building were littered with syringes and mounds of rubbish - not a fit place, he claimed, for them to meet their bewildered child. Yep, that's paranoid, all right.
So proud is the RSPCA of its entry into the child-kidnap business that a formal protocol laying out procedures between the RSPCA and the London Safeguarding Children Board has been drawn up and put out for consultation. The Board gives strategic support to the 32 boroughs in the capital delivering child protection work. Lawyers are reporting that the RSPCA, claiming that there must be a direct link between animal abuse and child abuse (for which most experts say there is no definitive evidence), are alleging child abuse in homes they visit and thus triggering social service involvement on no evidence whatsoever apart from the alleged infringements of animal welfare laws.
Farmer got some sickly cows in the shed? He must be abusing his kids. Simples.
Mind you, GOS is treading on thin ice even talking about the RSPCA, let alone daring to criticise. The German Shepherd Rescue network (“GSR”) has, during the course of a superb and highly-successful internet-based campaign, drawn international attention to the RSPCA’s hypocritical annual slaughter of many thousands of healthy dogs (we believe the RSPCA kills between 40,000 and 50,000 animals a year). The GSR campaign focuses on ten German Shepherd dogs who were slaughtered together in Pontadarwe by RSPCA “inspectors” (twelve weeks, remember. Wow, respect!) using a captive bolt pistol. The national outcry and response from the national media has been huge. The RSPCA seems to have lost patience.
The charity’s highly-paid lawyers have written to Jayne Shenstone of the GSR in threatening tones. They claim that the RSPCA owns the trade mark of the acronym RSPCA “in both upper and lower case”. Part of a communication from top RSPCA commercial lawyer Amanda Gibbs states: "In the circumstances, please provide me, by no later than 5pm today with details of how and when you acquired the RSPCA's approval and permission to use the RSPCA's registered trade marks on your website and/or any publications associated with your company. If we do not hear from you, we will have no option but to assume that you do not have any such permission. When reconsidering the content of your website and publications, please note that the protection afforded by the trade mark registration process and the Trade Marks Act 1994 effectively covers the use of the RSPCA acronym in upper and lower case."
Facebook has also been the subject of RSPCA (no, sorry, rspca. No, that's no good either. They Who Shall Not be Named) action to try to muzzle the complaints and are removing critical content that uses the acronym “*****” having received a notice that the content “infringes their copyright(s).” Anne Kasica of the SHG (The Self Help Group for Farmers, Pet Owners and Others Experiencing Difficulties with the ******) said: "We know that the ***** threatens journalists, defence lawyers and veterinary surgeons. However, if the state of our law is now, as the *****’s highly-paid lawyers claim, that one needs permission from the ***** to use the acronym ‘*****’ then no criticism of this political and highly-secretive ‘charity’ will ever see the light of day.”
Here is a link to the German Shepherd Rescue website, and this is the Self Help Group.
The GOS says: I think it's a brilliant idea. If the ***** can claim legal ownership of the letters “R” and “S” and “P” and “C” and “A” (cor, living dangerously or what?), then presumably no one will mind if I claim copyright over the words “grumpy”, “old”, and “sod”. And while I'm at it, “bastard”, “bollocks” and “epithalamium”.
OK? No one can use those words without asking me first. And I'm going to want cash, obviously. Should be worth about £110 million a year, I think.
P.S. I used to kill rabbits. Where I lived then, they had myxomatosis, a really horrid disease. They couldn't run away, but just sat in front of you, suffering. You picked them up by the back legs, chopped them hard on the back of the neck, waited to be sure they were dead, and chucked 'em in the hedge. Round here the farmers just run them over with their Range Rovers.
Anyway, I realise it was wrong of me, and I'm very, very sorry. Perhaps if the ***** find out, I'll have to be adopted.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
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