Rescue & Adoptions

2008 Featured Rescues

Anatomy of a Cruelty Case: Red Barn Farm Rescue

Behind every rescue is a complex weave of events, a cast of willful human characters, and a group of animals who are dependent upon the mercy of others or some lucky turn to set them free. Sometimes, the cards are stacked just right from the start, and suffering animals are brought to safety without a hitch. But some rescues, particularly those arising from cruelty cases, leave animals and their rescuers hanging in a precarious balance before reaching fruition.

Such was the case with Red Barn Farm in Canaan, New York, the site of egregious abuses that Farm Sanctuary investigated this past winter. Turning out to be one of the most convoluted and emotionally-charged cruelty cases in which we have been embroiled in years, Red Barn Farm not only shed additional light on the critical need for stricter anti-cruelty laws, but also became a testament to the victories that can be won through the vigilance and compassion of those willing stand up for farm animal rights.

Beating Hearts and Impenetrable Darkness

Littered with dangerous objects and packed with manure, the barn was a hazard to the animals trapped inside.

Lynn Cross, the founder of a nearby equine rescue, Little Brook Farm, was called to the farm by neighbors seeking help with the dogs and discovered more than 70 farm animals also living there under perilous conditions. After alerting the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), she contacted Farm Sanctuary about placing a malnourished pig.

Farm Sanctuary's chief rescue and investigations officer, Dan D'Eramo, responded with an onsite visit to the farm where he found starved and injured sheep, cattle, and Guinea fowl, as well as a lone pig trapped inside a manure-packed, heavily-littered barn with no doors and sealed windows. Water buckets and troughs were frozen over, obstructed, filled with droppings, or couldn't be reached by small animals. They also had no food, nor did the chickens found in a filthy coop on the property.

The sheep on the left is so emaciated that he looks thin even under a thick wool coat.

D'Eramo immediately urged the local SPCA to investigate. The humane officer who arrived on the scene, however, did not even touch the unshorn sheep (whose thick coats of wool made them appear larger than they really were), and missed what a thorough exam would have plainly revealed: Many of the animals were on the brink of death.

Some of the sheep had open wounds that were left untreated.

Different Minds over One Matter

Almost every cruelty case is dictated by predetermined factors that wrap what is clear to the heart in red tape-the reality of what at stake often obfuscated by egos, local politics and cultural attitudes toward "food animals" and their worth. As if navigating among roadblocks assembled by these forces is not enough, what allows them to come into existence in the first place is even more daunting: Anti-cruelty laws that should govern extraneous factors are so lax and so rarely enforced on behalf of farm animals that too much in these cases is left to the gray, even though cruelty itself is always black and white. Under these circumstances, almost all victories won for farm animals are bittersweet-only some have more just outcomes than others.

Over the past 22 years, many of the cruelty cases we have responded to involved the seizure of animals with the aid of local authorities who provide the warrants we need to legally remove animals from abusive situations. Depending on state laws and individual judges' likelihood of ruling in favor of non-human victims, perpetrators may be brought to trial for their crimes, and, if found guilty, fined, jailed or prevented from acquiring animals in the future. Other instances, in which the perpetrator is threatened by the prospect of charges, lead to relinquishment of animals to humane officers, who then place them into our care.

Failure to provide adequate sustenance to animals is illegal under New York state anti-cruelty law-a law that Red Barn Farm clearly violated. While punishments for animal abuse crimes rarely match the amount of suffering they cause, a seizure warrant (let alone charges) was never pursued-initially leaving us to wonder what was so different about this case from others we've worked on in the past. The answer soon became painfully clear.

"Because there were no dead animals on the property at the time of each investigation, there was a general attitude among authorities that the situation wasn't bad enough to require action," said D'Eramo. "SPCA agents kept saying that they had 'seen worse'-which very well may have been true-but it didn't change the fact that, left to languish a little longer, these animals would have met with a gruesome demise."

Although a crime is still a crime, no matter what form it takes, the fact that Red Barn Farm had not yet become a graveyard for multiple animals may be what separated this case from others we had been involved in the past. This travesty of justice highlighted an even more disturbing flaw in our legal system, which allows for loose interpretations of anti-cruelty laws and subjects farm animals to horrific abuses above and beyond what would be deemed acceptable suffering for other species.

Helping Hands and Renewed Hope

Left high and dry by the law, many of the Red Barn Farm survivors, in the end, were saved by a collective grassroots network. With local neighbors, we took matters into our own hands and refused to relent in our quest for justice. We persevered on the legal front, while those on the ground took food and water to the animals and launched a search for victims who were daily being removed from the property by the "owner," who sold them for slaughter or pawned them off to settle old debts.

Knowing that the sheep, especially the pregnant ones, needed specialized care to survive, our grassroots network approached those in the community who now "owned" some of the animals and successfully pled for the release of 26 sheep (14 of them soon to give birth) and a sweet pig named Sally-all of whom now happily live at Farm Sanctuary. While seven more of the sheep went to an area farm where, we were assured, they will be able to live out their lives, many of the other animals sold by the "owner" were shipped out of state and could not be located. We continue to mourn their loss.

Farm Sanctuary's national shelter director, Susie Coston, said "The days during which the Red Barn Farm case ensued were some of the most devastating and happiest of my tenure at Farm Sanctuary, my spirits rising every time we got close to rescuing the animals and then crashing when we were sent back to square one. When all was said and done, the compassion that rose to the surface and saw these innocent animals home gave all of us working on their behalf renewed hope, and the opposition we faced, well, it only made us stronger."

Neglected, pregnant sheep are about to give birth and need your help! Please consider making tax-deductible donation to Farm Sanctuary's Red Barn Farm Rescue Fund today.