Charges Dropped against Toronto Humane

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/bre...100764714.html

High-ranking Toronto Humane Society officials facing shocking allegations of animal cruelty saw their charges dropped Monday after the Crown laid out a multitude of constitutional problems with search warrants. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The charges were laid in November in a highly publicized Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals raid that saw then-president Tim Trow and four other senior managers trotted out in handcuffs before television cameras.
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The OSPCA called the humane society a "house of horrors" in which it alleged sick and dying animals were neglected, food was covered in feces and a mummified cat was found in the ceiling.
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But because of serious flaws with the legality and execution of the search warrants, there is no reasonable prospect of conviction, the Crown said in a court document scathing in its indictment of OSPCA actions.

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Yea, not so good the quilty ones will not be prosecuted. But it dont means they are cleared of charges. The charges are still there although "dropped", hanging over them as long as they live. And everybody knows it.

Their honour, their reputation, is gone and away forever.

Unless they work really hard to try to make things good anew...

Resentment, penancy, working on being better - the old way of getting Gods forgiveness.

Not much chance of them having an opportunity to rebuild their reputation since they were not allowed run for election this year - welcome to another year of them suing each other

I really think the OSCPA needs their shelters and abuse powers separated so there are no more conflict of interest cases like this one, they just can't legitimately fight shelters on an abuse level when they have ongoing court cases against each other over fundraising issues

The staff at Toronto Humane don't claim that things have changed for the better, they are still overcrowded but now have even more people to check with on every tiny decision they make causing even more issues - its just sad

As I understood the case, the biggest issue was that the criteria the OSCPA used to judge animals not fit to fix and thus to euthanize was much broader than the criteria the THS used.

Definitely there was inadequate training, unsanitary conditions and inhumane euthanization procedures at the facility. That much the THS has already admitted. It seems, though, that OSCPA was also way of its league in bringing a possible witchhunt of this magnitude without the legal expertise to back it up.


Always looking at the glass half full, I do hope retraining its staff, hiring a full staff of veterinarians and bringing in consultants to help them determine how to improve conditions are areas that have already started to produce results.

Originally Posted by icklemiss21

Not much chance of them having an opportunity to rebuild their reputation since they were not allowed run for election this year

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good they arent allowed to run elections. Although, as said, their chances of being elected should be very slim after being taken with "hands in the jam jar" so to speak.

I have though sometimes how I would do if I wanted rehabilitate myself after a severely doing bad things.

Blood must be repaid with blood, preferably twice over. Thus, donating blood regurarly, paying in anonymously the fee to some suitable charity organization. In this case - a reputable cat shelter or a rescue group.

Working as volunteer somewhere, where there are very difficult to get any volunteers. Thus doing something which would not be done other way. Here:
They can rescue and foster homeless cats in their own homes....
Several years. And of course no shows of it, until perhaps after this penance is done after several years.

If they are fed up with cats and animals, they can of course work with humans in need,
in a poor monk-alike fashion.

Something such.

Some of them had very little to do with animals and are needed at the shelter with lower donations, such as say their membership director who was charged but never made a direct decision about the animals.

These are not all people who 'abused' animals - yes some of the conditions were poor but I have seen the inside of some of the local SPCAs and they are worse. In fact just a few days ago I seen pictures of a local animal control who don't have cages so keep cats in carriers with no litter boxes and 'clean and feed when they have the time between call outs'

I am not sure, Stefan, if you know the background on this case, as elayman said, much of it was due to a differing philosophy on no-kill shelters between the two organisations. There were some cases that stand out but not enough to close a major shelter down and euthanise the number of animals they did. This was more about fundraising issues and a hatred of each other (they have several lawsuits against each other going back over the years)

Toronto Humane has the cash that when people find a sick cat they will travel to bring it there because other shelters will say no because they can't afford it. Toronto has been very liberal with their catchment area, I personally know people that have drove 3 hours to take a cat to them because of their vets. This is not a shelter known for animal abuse, many people love that they will do anything to save a cat and that is why they did get such high donations.

However, when the OSPCA raided it, they took it over, including taking any donations coming in, which is how they lost a lot of their donors. I know I personally will not give money if 1 cent of it will go to the OSCPA. They get full government funding for their animal cruelty investigations and I do not agree with the way their local shelters are run, there are major abuses of power within their organisation and they need to just be an animal cruelty organisation so they do not use those police powers given to them by the government for personal gain at the shelter level.

Thankfully, the government are now saying that themselves, that all shelters need more oversight, not just the ones the SPCAs choose to target and including the SPCA shelters and they are looking at the powers the SPCA do have and whether they should have those powers if they can't control them.