Five found guilty of 'grotesque' cruelty at horse farm
Saturday May 09 2009
Five members of one family were found guilty of "grotesque" cruelty yesterday after one of Britain's largest horse-rescue operations. RSPCA inspectors who raided Spindle Farm in Buckinghamshire, England, last year found a "horror scene" of starving, emaciated and diseased animals, surrounded by the rotting corpses of others.
In total, 115 horses, ponies and donkeys were rescued and 32 others were found dead in varying states of decay.
Yesterday, trader James Gray (45) and his son James Junior, (16) were found guilty of 11 charges under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. His wife Julie (41) and daughters Jodie (26) and Cordelia (20) were each convicted of two charges under the same act.
Disease
During a 51-day trial, Bicester magistrates' court in Oxfordshire heard that the RSPCA inspectors called at the farm in January last year to find what some of them described as the worst case of animal cruelty they had ever seen. Horses were crammed into pens, ankle-deep in their own manure. Some of the 140 animals were so emaciated and disease-ridden that they had to be put down.
Gray will be sentenced along with the other members of his family on June 12. (© Independent News Service)
- Terri Judd
