Posted on 02/24/2006 9:53:04 PM PST by Coleus
One woman said she received an e-mail threatening to cut her 7-year-old son open and stuff him with poison. A man said he was showered with glass as people smashed all the windows of his home and overturned his wife's car. Many others said they were besieged by screaming protesters outside their homes at all hours, deluged by threatening phone calls, and sent pornographic magazines they had not ordered.
The trauma that employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences and other companies say they experienced at the hands of radical animal rights advocates is on display during the federal court trial of a Philadelphia-based group and six of its members on domestic terrorism charges. The trial continues in Trenton this week. Many targets testified that the harassment made them look over their shoulders when walking or driving, change their phone numbers or even move, keep their kids from playing outdoors, and prompted several to buy guns.
Sally Dillenback said her young son would often crouch by the door brandishing a 5-inch kitchen knife when the doorbell rang, promising to protect his mommy. "He told me not to worry," she testified last week. "He said he was going to get the animal people. Once I found him at the garage door with a knife. That was his state of mind. He was a 7-year-old boy." Dillenback broke into tears as she recounted an anonymous e-mail that threatened her son.
"The person asked how I would feel if they cut open my son, Brad, and filled him with poison the way Huntingdon does with the animals," she said, breaking into tears. "That was devastating for me to see something like that." Huntingdon Life Sciences is a laboratory in Franklin Township, Somerset County, that tests drugs and consumer products on animals. A group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty has waged a five-year campaign to shut it down, extending its pressure tactics beyond the lab to companies that insured it, traded its stock, lent it money, provided security for it and conducted other business with it, according to prosecution testimony.
The tactics worked in many instances as firms, including the insurer Marsh USA, dropped Huntingdon as a client after being targeted, the lab's lawyer said. The group notes that its members are not charged with carrying out any of the illegal acts described in court, and denies inciting anyone to break the law. It says its activities were all legal and protected by the First Amendment. Postings on the Web site recounting acts of harassment or vandalism at the homes and offices of targets are no different from news reports by mainstream media organizations, the group asserts.
Like almost all the others targeted by the group, Dillenback, a Marsh executive in Dallas, saw intensely private information about her family posted on the group's Web site. It listed their names, address, home phone number, where their children went to school, and even the name of her son's teacher and the fact that he sings in the choir. Prosecutors say the postings were designed to terrorize the targets, and incite others to commit violence against them. The defendants are charged with animal-enterprise terrorism, conspiracy and interstate stalking.
The trial of Kevin Kjonaas, Lauren Gazzola, Jacob Conroy, Joshua Harper, Andrew Stepanian and Darius Fullmer will likely hinge on whether prosecutors can prove the group did more than simply publish information online. There has been no testimony that the group directed anyone to break the law. Some Huntingdon workers in New Jersey also say they were targeted. Henning Jonassen, the lab's necropsy director, testified he was watching TV at home in Somerville when someone smashed all his ground-floor windows, and turned his wife's car over. Toxicologist Carol Auletta said she saw her face on "Wanted" posters all over downtown Princeton, calling her a mentally ill murderer.
"God made us stewards of our animal"
God gave us dominion over animals and we are not to worship them.
When people start placing animals above people, its time to start reaccessing their priorities, IMO.
When people buy animals they are their property and it is none of my business what they do with them.
Are you opposed to laws regarding animal cruelty? Will you even concede that it's morally wrong?
I say we fill these eco-terrorists with poison. Lead poison that is. One round at a time.
Actually, it still is. :=)
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
It sounds like the illegal immigrant advocates are launching the same tatic against Americans who speak out against illegal immigration. Why did it take this long for these animals to face justice? We had better be on top of the foreigners who stalk, terrorize and attack Americans about illegal immigration.
"Are you opposed to laws regarding animal cruelty?"
No. People should be held responsible for willful and negligent treatment of animals.
"Will you even concede that it's morally wrong?"
Yes, I can concede that. I know a persons' heart by how they treat their animal/s but animals are not moral.
I have two dogs for security and property protection, 15 cats just because I like cats, 1 pig for meat and 30 chickens for eggs and meat. They are all well cared for but there are people who think I am a murderer for killing my chickens. They would consider me immoral and I consider them nuts.
When they go so far as to break out the windows of my home, over turn my truck and invade my and my family's privacy and security/life, I would exercise my moral and legal right.
That's familiar- same tactics as the Newspaper in CT is using against gunowners.
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