Crackdown on SHAC hits activist for child porn, brings Boston busts
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 2002:
BOSTON; CAMBRIDGESHIRE, U.K.–A year after Stop Huntingdon
Animal Cruelty activists thought they were on the verge of victory,
the campaign appears to be collapsing under the weight of the
ruthless and often violent tactics that have characterized it.
British campaigner Robert Moaby, 33, in mid-August 2002
pleaded guilty to two counts of threatening to kill executives of
Huntingdon and other firms, and 17 counts of making pornographic
pictures of children.
According to BBC News, “Moaby sent e-mails containing
violent threats to financial backers of the Cambridgeshire-based
animal research organization, Southwark Crown Court was told. The
messages were full of obscene language and threats of sexual assault,
the court was told. When police examined his computer, they also
found that he had more than 2,800 pornographic imagines of children,”
reportedly as young as age five.
Moaby was sentenced to serve 54 months in jail for uttering
threats, plus a concurrent 33 months for possession of porn.
In the U.S., Lisa Lotts, 23, and Ryan Kleinert, 17, of
Allston, Massachusetts, were on August 17 arrested for allegedly
stalking Robert Harper Jr., identified as a mid-level employee of
Marsh, an international insurance firm which reputedly does business
with Huntingdon but does not comment on client relationships.
“Authorities say Kleinert and Lotts were among the activists
who threatened to burn down Harper’s apartment building, where he
lives with his wife and two-year-old son, dumped gallons of red
paint on his front steps on Father’s Day, and chanted outside his
home at all hours while carrying posters of dead animals,” Jessica
Haslam of the Boston Herald reported. “The group put ‘Wanted for
Murder’ posters throughout the city bearing Harper’s photo,
re-routed his mail, put his personal information on the Internet,
repeatedly mentioned his son by name, and passed out fliers in his
neighborhood calling him a monster who ‘supports torture,’
authorities said,” Haslam continued, adding, “Prosecutors say
Harper’s work has nothing to do with Huntingdon. They believe he was
targeted because his home is ‘geographically convenient'” for SHAC
activists.
The first U.S. conviction of a prominent activist in a
Huntingdon-related case came on August 28 in Conway, Arkansas,
where a jury found Brian W. Pease, 24, of Liverpool, New York,
guilty of misdemeanor criminal trespassing, resisting arrest, and
illegal flight. The charges were reduced from felony commercial
burglary and third degree felony battery enhanced by engaging in a
violent criminal group activity.
Pease “was among a handful of protesters who allegedly broke
the back door” of the Stephens Group investment firm office during a
January 2002 demonstration, “entered, and began kicking employees
and breaking things, according to police,” said staff writer
Samantha Huseas of the Log Cabin Democrat. Stephens Inc.
economically rescued Huntingdon in late 2001, when it appeared to be
on the verge of bankruptcy.
Pease, identified as a second-year law student and son of a
senior federal attorney, was sentenced to serve 45 days in jail and
pay a fine of $1,100, plus $250 restitution.
Pease was also charged with trespassing on February 21,
2002, after he was reportedly found, wearing camouflage, on the
property of the laboratory animal supply firm Marshall Farms USA
Inc., in North Rose, New York. Pease was released after that
arrest on $250 bail. On December 5, 2001, the Animal Liberation
Front claimed to have taken 25 beagles from the same site, but no
one has been charged in connection with that action.
Bad cops
An earlier police response to anti-Huntingdon and
anti-Stephens Group activism may backfire in Las Vegas, where Jerry
Vlasak, M.D., and his wife Pamalyn Vlasak, of Santa Monica,
California, in May 2002 sued Stephens, the Metropolitan Police
Department, two police officers, and the owners of the Monte Carlo
hotel, where a March 2001 protest was held, for alleged conspiracy
to violate their civil rights. Dr. Vlasak says the two police
officers assaulted him, illegally searched him and his wife, and
jailed him on charges that were later dismissed.
One of the two police officers named by the Vlasaks, Jack
Brandon, 41, was on August 15 convicted of two counts of armed
robbery and one court of burglary, for holding up the cardroom at
Rae’s Restaurant & Lounge on February 22, 2002 and trying to make
his getaway in an unmarked police car.
The other police officer named by the Vlasaks, detective
Ronald Fox, “was demoted in 1996 after police determined that he
falsified documents in an attempt to get a promotion,” wrote J.M.
Kalil of the Las Vegas Review-Journal–which is owned by the Stephens
Media Group.
Effects of 9/11
In late summer 2001 direct action advocates in both Britain
and the U.S. already claimed the Huntingdon campaign as a success for
the use of violent tactics.
Car bombings, arsons, assaults on key personnel, and
violent invasions of the homes of management staff had reportedly
cost Huntingdon insurance coverage, bank credit, some employees who
left the company, and many clients.
The anticipated closure of Huntingdon would not have
demonstrably saved animals’ lives, since most of the testing that
the firm does is to meet regulatory requirements, and much of the
work was shifted to labs in Ghana, Pakistan, Poland, and South
Africa, where more animals may be used with less regulatory
supervision.
SHAC held, however, that closing Huntingdon would be an
important symbolic gain, and would inspire activists to escalate
direct action against other targets.
That was before the al Qaida terrorist attacks on the U.S. of
September 11, 2001 markedly reduced public tolerance of violence
waged in the name of causes, and helped law enforcement on both
sides of the Atlantic to crack down on all forms of alleged terrorism.
Huntingdon today looks more economically stable than at any
time since the SHAC campaign began, while a scheduled July 15
international day of protest against the firm produced nothing more
dramatic than a camp-out and rally of unremarkable size in Britain,
and the detonation of smoke bombs that brought the brief evacuation
of 700 people from two Seattle high-rise buildings. The tenants of
both buildings include Marsh Inc.
Grand jury investigations of alleged animal rights-related
terrorism underway in several U.S. cities have not produced any
recent major arrests, but the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in late
July raided the home of frequent Animal Liberation Front spokesperson
David Barbarash, 38, in Courtenay, British Columbia, reportedly
seizing about 100 videotapes. Sheriff Everett Flannery of Kennebec
County, Maine, told Yvonne Zacharias of the Vancouver Sun that the
search “was related to break-ins at three Maine rod-and-gun clubs in
1999.
Convicted of vandalizing fast food restaurants in Toronto and
a 1992 break-in at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Barbarash
escaped prosecution after a 1998 arrest for allegedly mailing
razor-blade-rigged parcels to hunters, furriers, and others because
the RCMP refused to disclose the identity of an informant.
Animal-related direct action is believed to be declining
worldwide, at least partly because of the risk of backlash.
In New Zealand, for example, activists in 2001 allegedly
threatened Ag-Research geneticist Phil L’Hullier and poured acid on
his car. The incidents persuaded New Zealand chief ombudsman Sir
Brian Elwood to rule in August 2002 that AgResearch, a government
agency, need not identify members of institutional animal ethics
committees.
New unsolved cases
Among unsolved recent direct actions, the ALF during World
Week for Laboratory Animals in late April 2002 claimed to have placed
bottles of shampoo contaminated with ammonia and hydrogen peroxide on
the shelves of 13 New Zealand supermarkets, as an attempted strike
at companies that do animal testing; claimed to have burned a truck
at Sims Poultry, of Bloomington, Indiana, on May 3; and claimed
to have released 1,200 mink from the Misty Moonlight Mink Ranch near
Waverly, Iowa, on August 17.
Activists are suspected of contaminating milk storage tanks
with antibiotics and illegally injecting antibiotics into dairy
cattle in at least 14 separate incidents in upstate New York during
late 2001 and mid-April 2002. Activists are also suspected of
releasing 170 red deer fawns from a farm near Elgin, Morayshire,
Scotland, on April 23. All of these actions, however, are
unclaimed.
Nor has anyone claimed credit for turning off the ventilation
at four Tyson chicken barns in Kentucky–three on August 8 in
Crittenden County, and one on August 27 in McLean County. The loss
of air circulation killed a total of 78,000 chicks.
