Update: On August 20, Carole Van Wie, the operator of Bunny Magic Wildlife & Rabbit Rescue, Inc., was charged with 13 counts of cruelty to animals. The charges follow an August 8 raid on the facility—prompted by a PETA complaint—in which law-enforcement officers seized 222 rabbits. Officials reportedly had to don masks to rescue the flea-infested and sick rabbits from up to 4 inches of feces and urine. Investigators apparently found one rabbit dead in a cage and others denied food or water. According to news sources, seven of the rabbits rescued that day could not be saved.

Originally posted August 8:

Welcome news! Today, many, many rabbits are being removed by Calvert County, Maryland, officials from what could be called a sham "sanctuary," Bunny Magic Wildlife & Rabbit Rescue, Inc., in Lusby. The seizure was prompted by evidence gathered by PETA of systemic—and sometimes fatal—neglect of animals at the "rescue," following a whistleblower's tip-off.

Many neglected rabbits’ nails were overgrown. Some caught on wire cage bottoms while others curled dangerously toward the animals’ sensitive feet.

Disgusting Filth, Disease, and Death

PETA submitted evidence and a detailed complaint to Calvert County Animal Control and State's Attorney Laura Martin's Office, which has opened a criminal investigation into Bunny Magic, run by President Carole Van Wie. We thank law enforcement for acting promptly and PETA Investigations & Rescue Fund donors for providing us with the resources needed to follow up on the whistleblower's tip.

PETA found that Bunny Magic consisted of little more than Van Wie's garage, which reeked of ammonia, and a dark shed that was overrun with rodents. It had no paid help to care for its more than 200 rabbits and other animals. Van Wie deprived rabbits of needed veterinary care and left contagious animals in contact with others, risking the spread of disease. Photographs show that Bunny Magic was little more than a hoarding facility, amassing far more animals than it could properly care for.

Dead rabbits crammed into a freezer

Scores of rabbits kept in cramped, stacked cages

Rabbits (who are fastidiously clean animals) were unable to avoid stepping in their own feces, which was allowed to accumulate for days

One neglected rabbit, Rockette, suffered with a severely twisted neck, struggling to stand up on her own; she was denied nursing and veterinary care and left to languish and defecate on herself until she finally died. Another rabbit, named George, who had a months-long respiratory infection that filled his throat with pus, was rescued from Bunny Magic before PETA met with officials but could not be saved. A veterinarian recommended that George be put out of his misery.

What You Can Do

The rabbits are being rescued only because a courageous whistleblower reported how horrified he or she was by Bunny Magic, reminding us that we should never be silent when animals are in trouble.

Please be sure, before adopting any animals, that you're ready to make a lifetime commitment to caring for them. Beware of hoarders pretending to operate so-called "no-kill" rescues or sanctuaries who promise to care for unwanted animals but instead will only subject them to prolonged suffering and a prolonged, miserable death. If you take an animal to a shelter, make sure it's operated responsibly.

Victories like this one are made possible in part through the generosity of PETA Investigations & Rescue Fund supporters. To learn more about this vital fund and how you can support the rescue of more animals, click here! 

Earlier this week, following PETA's undercover investigation of a Myrtle Beach–area hoarding facility that had been warehousing hundreds of cats and an arthritic dog named Hope in storage units, roughly 240 cats and the dog were seized from Elizabeth Owen by order of a Horry County judge. Roughly half the cats who were seized were so ill that they had to be put out of their misery.

The cats had been "stored," some for most or all of their lives, in filthy, cramped cages, unable to get away from their own waste or even stretch or walk, let alone enjoy life. Dozens of cats were suffering from chronic, painful conditions such as anal maggots, herpes, tumors, seizures, multiple abdominal abscesses, severe gum disease, and more. Some people are criticizing county officials for euthanizing the sickest cats, but the real outrage is that these cats had been allowed to suffer and languish for so long with no quality of life whatsoever. If the cats were too far gone to save, it is because of the long-term neglect that Owen subjected them to—neglect that merits state-level cruelty-to-animals charges and a prohibition on obtaining any more animals. Hoarders are notorious for starting back up where they left off if such judicial measures aren't taken.

Unfortunately, after Owen's attorney told the judge that Hope and about 30 of the cats were Owen's "personal pets," the judge agreed to have them returned to Owen's custody, following a medical exam by the county's contract veterinarian. Hope, who is old and suffering from painful arthritis, is mostly kept in one of the storage units in a small pen and on a cold, hard cement floor or tethered outside in front of the warehouse. Owen has been ordered to provide the animals with veterinary care at her own expense, but it remains to be seen if she will do so. Owen couldn't manage to keep the facility stocked with litter or food, let alone take ailing and even dying animals for veterinary care or euthanasia. Her current registration to solicit charitable funds has been suspended by the Office of the Secretary of State, which means she cannot lawfully solicit donations or items to sell in her thrift store. If the medical condition of the 107 cats whom the county was forced to euthanize are any indication, the 30 animals who went back to that hellhole are doomed.

Not surprisingly, the 101 feline survivors who remain in the county's temporary shelter facility are also sick. The county is providing veterinary care for them, and PETA is hopeful that once they recover, they will find happiness with responsible families who will give them all the love, attention, and catnip they need and deserve.

Written by Daphna Nachminovitch

Update: After receiving evidence from PETA's six-month undercover investigation at Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary, Judge Bradley Mayers ordered the removal of all animals from the facility. More information regarding these new developments will be made available in the coming days.

Some 300 cats are suffering in filthy wire cages stacked inside dark, unventilated, ammonia-filled storage units at the grotesquely misnamed Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary (SVAS) in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. PETA has submitted a formal complaint to the local prosecutor and is calling for the cats to be seized immediately. 

PETA' s undercover investigator recorded systematic, severe, and often fatal neglect of cats at SVAS, where some cats have lived in these miserable conditions for years. Our findings include evidence that SVAS owner and operator Elizabeth Owen knowingly deprives severely sick, injured, and suffering cats of veterinary attention for conditions including advanced upper respiratory infections, conjunctivitis, seizures, diabetes, gaping and infected wounds, torn ligaments, internal and external parasites, and painful dental conditions—and the list goes on and on. She even refused offers of free emergency care for dying cats. Owen was charged with violating the local animal care and treatment ordinance in September, but the case has been continued four times since, leaving the cats to suffer day in and day out.

Olaf–who is missing most of one eye and has an unsutured, irritated wound–has never been taken to the veterinarian. He's one of the many sad cases at SVAS.

Please take a moment to e-mail Horry County prosecutor Greg Hembree and politely ask him to pursue the seizure of all cats from SVAS and to file cruelty-to-animals charges against Elizabeth Owen.

Written by Michelle Sherrow

Many of us have had a peek into the bizarre world of hoarding courtesy of reality television. Accumulating piles and piles of household junk is bad enough, but when hoarders collect living animals, the results are extreme neglect, suffering, and death.

According to the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), "It is likely that up to a quarter million animals—250,000 per year—are victims of hoarders. What's more, records kept by ALDF indicate that in the last four years, the number of reported hoarding cases has more than doubled. In terms of the number of animals affected and the degree and duration of their suffering, hoarding is the number one animal cruelty crisis facing companion animals in communities throughout the country."

Alarmingly, as a result of public pressure to avoid euthanasia at all costs, the hoarding mentality has infiltrated animal shelters. MSNBC.com reports that groups calling themselves "rescues" and "shelters" currently account for one-fourth of the estimated 6,000 new hoarding cases annually reported in the U.S. This is just one more way that trying to become "no-kill" before becoming "no-birth" hurts animals.

Cat suffering horribly at Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary.

No-kill shelters sentence animals to a life in prison.

When animal shelters and rescue groups—such as South Carolina's terribly inaccurately named Sacred Vision Animal Sanctuary—aren't themselves hoarding animals, they sometimes farm out animals to anyone who will take them, including hoarders, in order to reduce the number of animals they euthanize. Here are just two examples:

• In December 2010, the New Jersey SPCA and police raided the home of so-called animal rescuer Dawn Scheld and seized nearly 60 dogs who were hoarded in reportedly "filthy" conditions on her property. According to news reports, "When agents arrived, most of the animals were living in their own waste, a number of them in outside pens with insufficient shelter, little evidence of food, and frozen water. Most were suffering from some kind of illness, and many were in serious condition …." Scheld had acquired many of the dogs from animal shelters that hand over animals to anyone claiming to be a "rescue" in order to reduce their euthanasia statistics. 
• In September 2010, authorities raided an apartment rented by a foster caregiver for several Austin-area animal shelters and seized 78 cats. One-third of the cats were found dead in an unplugged refrigerator. The ironically named organization Austin Pets Alive! stated, "We have been informed by TLAC [Town Lake Animal Control] authorities that 5 of the 75 [sic] seized cats were originally saved by us from TLAC's euthanasia list." The hoarder had also adopted cats directly from TLAC. 

Flooding left these dogs with nowhere to go.

 

No animal should ever have to live in conditions like this.

Please help keep animals out of hoarders' hands by volunteering to help your local animal shelter screen potential placement partners, rescue groups, and adopters. Contact PETA for free placement partner applications and agreements. Please also spay and neuter all your animal companions—it's the only real way to prevent animals from being born only to end up homeless or hoarded.

Written by Lindsay Pollard-Post

I remember the first hoarding case I ever went on. The woman would never open the door, and her blinds were kept drawn. Standing on her porch, you could catch a whiff of animal waste, but just a whiff. Since she was unwilling to work with local humane officers, there was only one thing left to do: get a warrant to remove the animals from inside her house.

That day is etched in my mind. When the door finally opened, the smell was so overpowering that seasoned police officers―including one who had just returned from Vietnam―called for masks. Fleas leapt up to bite us all over as we threaded our way through the piles of saved newspapers. There were dead cats among the live ones and, down in the basement, a maggot-covered floor, a broken hot-water pipe spewing steam, and feral cats living in the dark in the rafters.

Not every hoarder has reached that stage, but that was not the last house of animal-hoarding horrors that I saw or helped to bust.

Willow is one of nine puppies who were born to a dog living alongside numerous other animals in the dilapidated home of an indigent hoarder we talked to a few months ago. Our cruelty caseworkers coordinated with local officials to provide this woman with enough food to last her until a kind volunteer could arrange to take the animals out of there―to a decent, reputable animal shelter.

But then it was discovered that the pups were suffering from symptoms consistent with parvovirus. Crowded, squalid conditions—the conditions one typically finds in hoarders' homes—are incubators for communicable diseases. Parvo is a common yet preventable illness that causes uncontrollable vomiting and diarrhea, loss of appetite, and eventual death in most cases. Willow was the only puppy to make it out of the house alive, along with nearly a dozen cats.

Willow's story does have a happy ending. The volunteer who drove her to the animal shelter was so smitten with Willow that she adopted her. As you can see from this picture, Willow is enjoying a great life in her new home!

 

 

Is that local "sanctuary" that you heard about run by a hoarder? What about that "no-kill" shelter on the outskirts of town? Hopefully not! There are lots of good facilities, for sure. But please be vigilant, because if no one investigates, animals can suffer greatly. Hoarding is a recognized symptom of a particular type of mental illness, which, if left unchecked, leads to animal suffering—and often a slow, miserable death for the animals involved. Hoarders "collect" animals even when they can't care for the ones they already have. They ignore or deny the increasingly substandard (and eventually appalling) living conditions that invariably arise and commonly refuse to seek veterinary care for sick or injured animals. They also often refuse to euthanize animals or take them to open-admission animal shelters—which is why so-called "no-kill sanctuaries" often wind up being a "front" for hoarders.

For animals who are suffering at the hands of hoarders, there is a fate worse than death—a fate that Willow escaped. I know that on my first hoarding case, we were able to rescue dozens of kittens from that horrid home, and I wept to think of how long they had lived like that and for the dozens more who had just crawled under the furniture and perished. To learn more about hoarding and what you can do if you know of a hoarder in your area, please read our factsheet.

Written by Ingrid E. Newkirk