CONVICTED: Was justice served?
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Case #13097 Rating: 1.0 out of 5
Horses seized from convicted abuser
Medina, OH (US)Incident Date: Sunday, Oct 1, 1995
County: Ashland
Charges: Misdemeanor
Disposition: Convicted
Defendant/Suspect: Patricia Brooks
In the fall of 1995, Penny Blake, Medina's chief animal-cruelty investigator, started getting complaints about the Sudsy Kennel. Loud barking. Decrepit conditions. Nauseating smells. Medina's retiring investigator had warned Blake about the place's reputation. It was time for a stop-in.
Blake couldn't overlook the kennel's conditions. The floor was sticky and looked as if it hadn't been swept in a week, and some of the dogs were disheveled and unkempt. But Blake, acting on instinct, decided to give Brooks a chance to clean up the place. Despite knowing about Brooks' prior arrest, the investigator figured the breeder just needed some instruction on animal care. There's a difference, Blake knew, between messy kennels and true neglect. There were no signs that the dogs were sick or in any danger. And education, Blake explains, is a "large part of my work." She carefully walked Brooks through all that she needed to change, from scrubbing the pens to cutting the gnats out of her dogs' coats. Brooks conscientiously took notes. And when the investigator stopped by for a scheduled visit the next week, she was happy to see that Brooks had followed her instructions. Mission accomplished, Blake thought.
But a few weeks later, the phone started ringing again. And so continued the cycle: Blake got a complaint, went to Brooks' kennel, lectured her, and later found compliance. But the moment Blake stopped babysitting, the complaints rained down.
Brooks was always ready with a new excuse. "First she was sick," Blake says. "Then she didn't have a way of getting to the kennel, because her car had broken down. Then her mom was in the hospital." After nine months of the same call-and-response, Blake finally threatened to have the dogs taken away. Brooks pleaded that the "animals were all she had."
But Blake was devoid of sympathy. She'd already shown more patience than most animal-cruelty investigators. "Nine months is a little bit longer than normal," admits Andy Mahlman of the Ohio Federated Humane Societies. "At that point, I was worried about the safety of the dogs," Blake says. She decided to have Brooks charged with animal cruelty. As the case pressed on, Brooks' innocent-caretaker demeanor disappeared. She grew irate, calling Blake a "member of the Gestapo." In later conversations with Scene, Brooks alternately referred to Blake as a "thief" and a "bitch."
In November of 1996, Judge Chase convicted Brooks of three counts of animal cruelty. This time there'd be no counseling sessions, no therapy groups; sympathy for Brooks had all but dried up. The judge banned her from keeping any dogs for the next five years.
But the sentence didn't say anything about Brooks' mother, Jan Donnelly. For as long as neighbors can remember, Brooks and her mom have lived together in solitude. Neighbors could hear Brooks calling her mother "stupid" and "a waste." Jan sat silently, absorbing the blows, the neighbors say. Not long after the 1996 ruling, Brooks surreptitiously signed legal control of her dogs over to her mom. Then, without telling neighbors, Brooks and her mom silently packed up and moved to Ashland County with the dogs.
Judge Chase had ordered the breeder to get rid of her dogs - but he hadn't checked to see whom she might give them to. And Blake didn't have the court's authority to take them herself - thanks to Ohio's weak animal-cruelty regulations, says Susan Adams, of the Humane Society of the United States. "You don't even have to have a permit to establish a puppy mill," Adams says, "and there are no inspections or requirements to breed them. I would hope that the state would take cruelty more seriously."
As part of Brooks' sentencing, she was required to meet regularly with a probation officer. She was usually careful to arrange the meeting so that she visited him in his office. But in early 1997, the probation officer stopped by her new home unannounced. He found 58 dogs living in squalor, with little food or water. Officers from the Ashland County Humane Society quickly confiscated the dogs. Jan, as primary caretaker, was charged - and found guilty - of animal cruelty. Brooks was found in violation of probation. She spent 12 days in the Medina County jail.
Her conviction in Medina banned her from owning dogs. But it said nothing about horses. References« OH State Animal Cruelty Map
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