This is about another UK scam/fraud/con in the UK. My God, there are so many of them I’ve almost lost track. The citizens of the UK are surrounded by fraudsters and thieves. And, sadly, the police seem to be impotent, so we are alone.
This one concerns what The Times refers to as “fly-by-night animal sanctuaries”. In the UK they are unregulated. They can be set up on Facebook in a matter of minutes. And if you’re good at networking you can gather eager pet owners and pet owners to be around you.
And then you can start conning the public. And the animals can be harmed. It’s a difficult job running an animal sanctuary. It required a lot of money. It requires fundraising. Not everybody is able to do it to the required standard. This is evident from the stories.
Of course, the majority of animal centres are run by experienced animal lovers providing excellent care to the animals in their charge but there is little monitoring of these organisations in the UK and therefore the authorities don’t know where the good and bad ones are.
And neither do the public who make contact with them on Facebook. One well-run animal sanctuary apparently called Hope Rescue, a dog charity in Wales, say that they are taking in rescue animals from failed animal sanctuaries.
And these animals, judging by their appearance and behaviour, have been badly looked after. It puts extra pressure on the good animal sanctuaries.
Vanessa Waddon of Hope Rescue said:
“It’s not fair on the public. People have surrendered their pets to them in good faith thinking that their dogs are going to be rehomed properly. It’s also going to put adopters off. If they have a really bad experience with one of those rescues then they are not going to look to adopt again.”
Vanessa is one of a number of people calling for compulsory licensing for animal sanctuaries which is in place in Scotland.
She also said:
“The problem is that you are relying on the Animal Welfare Act 2006. You’re relying on having enough evidence to get warrants and the bar is quite high.”
What she is saying is that all you can do is take reactive measures after the problem has surfaced. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 allows the police and the RSPCA to prosecute instances of animal abuse. However, the public want protection and the animals need protecting too. That can only happen in this instance if there is some form of regulation.
The chances of that happening are pretty well nil because the current UK government is all at sea, firefighting a huge list of almost intractable and insoluble problems in what appears to be a broken Britain.
There are many instances of fly-by-night animal sanctuaries causing problems such as one providing a cat for rehoming that was in poor health without notifying the adopter. This is typical example.
In some of the shelters they have sought funds from FB user donations for veterinary care and delayed treatment until the money has been provided. This indicates a shortage of funds and poor cashflow which in turn will result in poor welfare including a lack of proper veterinary care when required.
Another example would be a woman who ran a horse sanctuary called Whispering Willows in Swansea. There were 137 horses at her sanctuary but many of them were in a bad way because of the terrible conditions under which they were kept and two had to be euthanised.
The woman, Sandra Stolp, presented herself to the public on social media as competent and reliable which is something that is easy to do. It is very easy to paint a veneer of excellence but behind the scenes it can be chaotic. She had built up a strong social media platform as a horse rescuer.
After the RSPCA had investigated and removed the horses, she admitted that she had been struggling to cope financially.
Another case concerns a man who was prosecuted after the RSPCA found seriously ill or dead animals at his sanctuary in Essex. He said that he was struggling with poor mental health. Animal hoarders often have poor mental health.
It is hard to know what the public can do to protect themselves against these so-called sanctuaries which actually are not. The ideal method is to visit the place but that is probably impractical a lot of the time. But a person might be able to find a sanctuary within driving distance.
Other than that, one needs to ask questions, to probe a little bit. You can search online outside of Facebook, using Google, for any information you can glean about the sanctuary concerned. Use various types of search terms to pick up different results. That is what I would do at least to try and confirm that the individual is bone fide. Often you can find snippets of information about the person concerned which sheds light on their competence.
Below are some more articles on scams.
