Harassment

Thanks to actions and inactions of the state of Maine Animal Welfare Program and the Jordan Farm Livestock Rescue, I am now the target of harassment. These are just a small portion of the comments seen across the internet. There are threats. There is prejudice. There is name-calling. And the gossip or misinformation continues, some of it egregious.

Words can be incredibly harmful. People can be inspired by a herd mentality to do all sorts of nasty business they wouldn't think of doing alone. This is why we have to worry about our children harassing each other, because they have adults like these as examples. None of these people know me or my cats. The people who took care of my cats didn't know them and still don't.

Gossip that was started years ago has brought us here, and this is why gossip is so harmful. Gossip is like a passive harassment. You aren't directly hurting someone by talking about them behind their backs, but your intention is not one of good will either. Gossip can snowball and influence the way people—veterinarians and animal control officers for example—treat others.

You are not in a position to pass judgment just because you have some photos and documents you think tell you the whole story. People who saw my cats after they were taken saw cats who had been mistreated by the state handlers. They saw cats who were terrified, cats who thought they were in the hands of predators, cats who were struggling to escape and couldn't get free, cats who were looking for home and me. I would not wish what my cats and I have experienced on anyone.

Evidence of cruelty is not in the photo of a dirty cluttered house or the photo of a cat with herpes symptoms or the record of a cat who was scratching himself raw. We have evidence of some of the same issues, some even worse, with photos of my cats at the shelters. Based on medical records, we can imagine the photos that were never taken and that would be shockingly worse than anything from my house. These individual things are not the whole story and never are. That is why we have courts. And it was found that the state had no real basis for their actions. But here on this page, these words are evidence of active, intentional cruelty; active, intentional abuse. They can't be taken out of context. They can't be explained away. They are exactly as the writer wrote them and their intent is clear to the average person. In some cases, this is called libel. In other cases, it's called criminal threatening.

Documentation Posted February 12, 2021, Updated April 26, 2021 by Elmvale Farm