It’s happening all the time. Elisa brings up these stories regularly and recently she referred to a notorious case.
In this example, which has gone viral in a big way on news websites, the angelic face of a young women looks defiantly into a police camera as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth but yet she lived in a home where there were 64 dead cats in freezers, the garage and in shallow graves and 43 living cats outside of the freezers waiting to be put in by the look of it.
I have to say that the woman is young to be a cat hoarder. Almost universally cat hoarding women are older than 50 based on running this website for 12 years. This was a cat shelter or meant to be but it looks more like cat hoarding gone wrong.
A Minnesota woman, 25-year-old Caycee Bregel, has admitted to 13 counts of animal cruelty. She received what appears to be a light sentence: 200 hours of community service, 2 years of probation and 90 days of electronic home monitoring. She is also ordered to receive a psychological examination. She avoided prison in other words. And how efficiently are community service orders monitored and supervised.
In the UK I have seen offenders doing community service and it looks like a pleasant hike with a coffee break and a biscuit thrown in just so they are not too stressed out, poor things. I don’t see it as a punishment.
Comment: Might it not have been wise to have the psychological medical report carried out before sentencing? Perhaps it was done before sentencing but it appears not because why is the examination being done during the sentence? If she was considered of sound mind her sentence could have been stiffer provided there was a proper investigation as to how the cats died?
Perhaps autopsies were performed on some of the cats but I doubt it. The court needs that information. If the cats died of starvation for instance their neglect would surely warrant a prison sentence. And were the cats physically abused?
Unfortunately we don’t have enough detail to make a good assessment and say with certainty that the sentence was too light. However, historically cat abusers do receive light sentences on conviction and lesser sentences to the equivalent crime against companions dogs.
Things needs to change.
P.S. I’d write more if more information was available to me but sadly it is not.
P.P.S. Law enforcement were alerted to the crime because of a complaint regarding a pig running around the property.