RSPCA SQUAD IN KENNELS KILLING ORGY

(Cutting from South Wales Argos by M. Mason bfwd from WALK2)

     An "orgy of killing" at Newport's RSPCA animal shelter took place after the Gwent secretary Mrs Bernice Jones and her entire committee were sacked it was claimed today.

     And it is alleged that weeping RSPCA kennel girls took the slaughtered dogs from waste bins to check they were dead in a "KGB style" operation.

    Mrs Jones had been accused by a senior RSPCA council member of overcrowding the kennels. Sacked with her were the fifteen strong Gwent committee which only months ago were lavishly praised by the RSPCA for their work.

    Mrs Jones had been unpaid honorary secretary in Gwent for twenty eight years and many committee members had worked with her for more than twenty years.

     Within hours of Mrs Jones' dismissal seventy dogs were taken from the Ringland animal shelter and destroyed it is alleged by Mr John Hobhouse former committee president.

   He has written to RSPCA headquarters at Horsham, Sussex, saying :"the number of dogs has now been reduced to 60- forty below the number specified. The killing is still going on and you have completely shattered the moral of the staff"

     He said that one member of the staff was so upset that she took an overdose of tablets.

     "You were extremely lucky not to have a suicide on your hands," he told the RSPCA.

     Mr. Hobhouse who lives in Bath added: "of the dogs destroyed many were put into bins before rigor mortis set in and were pulled out again by the weeping kennel girls to make sure they were dead."

     The former president said the sacking of Mrs Jones and her committee, including himself, was like a KGB operation.

     After the regional organiser had told Mrs Jones she was sacked. the "hit team" arrived at the Ringland kennels and told the staff that under no circumstances were they to tell anybody what had happened.

     Mr Hobhouse said there was no justification for the RSPCA decision he says that the correct solution would have ben to ask Mrs Jones and her veterinary surgeon to appear before the society's ruling body, or for that body to have built more kennels.

     Mrs Jones says she had treid to keep the numbers of animals at the shelter down."I have always stuck by a policy of non destruction. We were slightly in the wrong nothing more"

     Speaking from her home at Lilac Cottage, Llanhenock, Nr Caerleon, Mrs Jones said her sacking had come as a bitter blow.

     Looking after sick animals and caring for those kicked out on to the streets by uncaring owners had been her whole life. It was a devotion which she readily admitted broke up her marriage.

     Now Mrs Jones wants an enquiry into the "orgy of killing" which followed her sacking.

     A spokeswoman for the RSPCA said today that Mrs Jones and the Gwent Committee had been suspended because they had taken no heed of warnings about overcrowding at the Newport Shelter.

    The centre is now being run by staff from the RSPCA HQ in Sussex.

     The spokeswoman said she could not comment on the allegation of "an orgy of killing"

Music: Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido and Aenaes

Gwent Animal Rescue

"When I am laid am laid in earth may my wrongs create

No trouble in thy breast, no trouble, no trouble in thy breast,

Remember me, remember me but ah forget my fate!"

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