Revisiting the notorious Kristen Lindsey criminal case

The last article on the notorious Kristen Lindsey case on this website is dated 10 August 2019. That’s getting on for two years ago but I’m in the mood to just touch base again on this notorious criminal act by a veterinarian who incidentally was never charged with a crime by the dilatory police. My initial purpose was to find out what Lindsey is up to now but that proved unsuccessful. I suspect she is struggling along practising as a veterinarian with a huge amount of baggage weighing her down. But I did bump into an article by Steve Dale in which he referred to Dr. William Folger, an expert witness in the case.

THERE ARE MORE ARTICLES ON HER AT THE BASE OF THE PAGE

Dr. Folger is a veterinarian of 36+ years’ experience. At the time of Steve Dale’s article, he was serving as President of the Society for Veterinary Medical Ethics and therefore had the authority to be a witness and to have an opinion on this case. And the big discussion point was whether Lindsey should have been stripped of her veterinarian’s licence to practice.

Pretty well everyone who read about the case wanted to see her banished forever from the veterinary profession but she was suspended for one year and put on probation for four years with an order that she completed animal welfare training courses. She didn’t lose her license which I’m sure upset a lot of people.

Here is a section of the final order against her published online in PDF format which you can see in full by clicking this link. It nicely covers the entire history of the event, even mentioning that Lindsey at one time claimed that the cat she shot had rabies (she lied and admitted it later).

Dr. Folger said that he wasn’t surprised by the decision not to ban her. He puts it down to the fact that the owner of the cat killed, Tiger, didn’t want her punished. Tiger’s owner, Claire Johnson, said that she didn’t want to be responsible for permanently damaging Lindsey’s career. Dr. Folger said: “I wasn’t surprised by the decision given the spiritual nature, grace and forgiveness expressed by Tiger’s owners”. Note: Lindsey’s career is permanently damaged or should be!

He goes on to say, “I think the judges’ decision was consistent with what Claire Johnson expressed. She didn’t even file (civil) charges against Lindsey.”

The reason why Lindsey didn’t lose her licence was the gentle views of Tiger’s owner who allowed her cat to roam around the area and ultimately get shot at by an unethical and apparently psychopathic veterinarian. So why did Claire Johnson have these views?

I can see only one reason which is that she did not value her cat highly enough. She wasn’t or isn’t a good cat guardian. She is or was a cat owner valuing the life of her cat quite lowly. I think we can blame Claire Johnson almost as much as we can blame Kristin Lindsey for the disappointing outcome.

Here was an opportunity to do justice for all abused cats in the world. This case was very high-profile. It was all over social media. It went massively viral. A statement could have been made against cat abuse and cruelty. It was a paradigm case which ended disappointingly. It ended in line with almost all crimes against domestic and feral cats, namely without justice being done. It was an opportunity to overturn that consistently disappointing outcome that we read about in the news media that the perpetrators of crimes against cats often get away.

It doesn’t always happen, I admit that, but if we had access to statistics about the percentage of criminals abusing and killing cats, we would find that a very, very small percentage end up in the criminal courts with a successful prosecution and a decent punishment.

The Kristin Lindsey case was a missed opportunity to put the record straight and to tell the world that crimes against cats are meaningful because they are crimes against all animals. It is time to improve the rights of animals and their welfare. This, by the way, is something that the British government is currently engaged in having left the European Union which has allowed them to express themselves more fully after being freed of the restrictions of the European Union’s eurocrats and their anally retentive ideas.

Click this for more articles on Lindsey.