Читать книгу Saving Anne the Elephant - The True Story of the Last British Circus Elephant - Claire Ellicott - Страница 9

Animal Defenders International (ADI) is the campaign group that began the quest to free Anne. Having previously exposed animal suppliers Mary Chipperfield Promotions Ltd – a name which has since become synonymous with animal cruelty – they had been trying for more than fifteen years to rescue the elephant. Jan Creamer and her husband Tim Phillips are the colourful couple who run the small but ambitious group that travels the world saving animals and campaigning for their rights. They captured the shocking footage of Anne being beaten, which began her journey to freedom, and, when not investigating Europe’s last remaining circuses (they claim to have gone undercover in more than twenty), they are flying around the world liberating animals. Their last big project was to free Peru’s circus animals.

Jan, a steely but likeable petite woman with a sharp blonde bob, is the boss, while her husband Tim, a serious, grey-haired man, is campaigns director. They are an interesting double-act and were both involved in animal rights campaigning when they met. Despite their work saving various exotic creatures around the world, what brought them together was something far more domestic. Jan was looking for a trap to catch a feral cat and get it spayed and Tim just happened to have one handy. The rest is history and they formed ADI in 1990. Speaking to me from their impressive office on the 26th floor of Millbank Tower, overlooking the Thames and with a front page of the Daily Mail from their Mary Chipperfield exposé taking pride of place, they explained their role in Anne’s rescue.

Anne first came to their attention in 1995 when they surveyed her winter quarters at the Robertses’ circus in Polebrook, Northamptonshire. They tried unsuccessfully for a number of years to sneak someone into the circus – their most successful method of exposing cruelty in circuses – but had no luck. Finally, in January 2011, one of their investigators managed to sneak up to her barn in the dead of night and find a hole to push a camera through from outside, they say. The angle wasn’t perfect as she had her back to the camera and neither was the height, but after fifteen years, it was the closest they had come to a breakthrough. They knew that every moment mattered as the majestic animal was fast approaching the end of her days. She had become less and less useful to the circus as the years passed and her arthritis prevented her from performing any tricks or even posing for photos in the ring. For the first time, she was not going on tour with the circus. So with the secret camera installed, they began filming.

The footage they captured shocked even them. There were countless recordings of Nitu hitting and abusing Anne. In total, over just a three-week period, she was hit, punched and walloped with a broom forty-eight times. During some of the assaults, she was stabbed in the face with a pitchfork and smashed around the head with metal and wooden staves. At various stages during these attacks, her arthritic-ridden legs gave way and she nearly fell to her knees. At one point, she tried to flee the blows but the chains – one on her front leg and another on the opposite back leg – kept her shackled in place. The hidden camera also captured the abuse of other animals, including a camel, miniature ponies and horses at the barn.

ADI knew that they had to move quickly to prevent further abuse but also knew that they must ensure they had the footage they needed to go public and to get conviction. ‘We knew we only had one shot and it had to work,’ Tim says. They told me that one hit is not enough to secure a conviction: you have to establish a pattern of behaviour, and added that they had learned this the hard way in previous failed prosecutions. So to save Anne, they needed to make sure they had enough of the right kind of evidence.

Interestingly, their very first operation together was to investigate Anne’s life at the circus, at a time when it had three elephants. ‘We took our first footage and photos in about 1995 or 1996,’ says Jan. At the time, she was in the winter quarters, living with two other elephants, Beverly and Janie.

ADI’s method is to send undercover investigators posing as workers to the circus, where they attempt to capture footage of abuse taking place. This method is, clearly, one entirely reliant on luck: on the circus hiring at the time, on the investigator being chosen, and on them actually gaining access to places where abuse is taking place and being in the right place when it happens. Jan explains: ‘We started trying to get people in every season. They would apply for a job at different circuses. But it’s a matter of luck if you go to a circus and there is a vacancy and you’ve got someone who’s liked and who’s taken on. Then you’re away.’ But ADI were unable to get anyone into Bobby Roberts Super Circus and so nothing much happened for about five years.

Meanwhile, they had been busy with another undercover operation: infiltrating Mary Chipperfield Promotions Ltd. At the time, Mary Chipperfield’s company supplied animals to organisations across the world including Disney, for whom they provided animals for the film 101 Dalmatians. Over three months between October 1997 and January 1998, ADI’s undercover investigators recorded Chipperfield, a member of the 300-year-old circus dynasty, beating an eighteen-month-old chimpanzee called Trudy with a riding crop. Her then sixty-four-year-old husband Roger Cawley was filmed whipping a sick elephant round a circus ring. Worst of all, farm worker Steve Gills was captured on tape beating elephants with an iron bar, a shovel, a broom and a pitchfork.

In 1999, Chipperfield and Cawley were charged with animal cruelty and appeared at Aldershot Magistrates’ Court in Hampshire. They were fined £8,500 for cruelty to animals and ordered to pay costs of £12,240. Chipperfield, then sixty-one, claimed that chimpanzees were ‘tough’ and would not have been harmed by the violence. She claimed Trudy had tried to bite her and so she had beaten her with a riding crop. But animal experts said the chimp was kept in an ‘utterly inappropriate fashion’ and had lived in a climate of ‘fear and despair’. Gills, who it emerged had killed a woman previously, was jailed for four months for cruelty towards the four elephants. At the time, Jan said that she was disappointed that the couple had not been banned from keeping animals and had only received a small fine. She said: ‘This kind of punishment doesn’t fit the crime. This was a paltry fine.’ Trudy was rehomed at the Monkey World sanctuary in Wareham, Dorset.

Jan said, ‘Bobby was on our radar from the beginning of the nineties just like everybody else and really when you’re doing undercover work you generally get in where you can get in. We actually tried multiple times to get someone inside Bobby Roberts’ after 1996 without success but it’s the luck of the draw.’

‘That’s probably when we started stepping it up and following and so on,’ says Tim, ‘but we still couldn’t get a break. Then Jan said: “We have to film inside the winter quarters,” and we brought in our undercover team. We told them they had to get a camera in. We got the amazing footage inside Mary Chipperfield’s winter quarters in 1997–8, we got the tent camera in the Great British Circus. It’s consistent, this violence to elephants – it’s not just a few bad apples. It’s everywhere we go.’ So ADI had a plan – now it was just a matter of getting in.

They started keeping a close eye on Anne and her companions and began sending undercover investigators round the country following the three elephants while they were on the road with the circus. ‘We monitored them really thoroughly,’ Tim says. ‘So we did timed journeys, we timed her into the container and out again. Given that this elephant was really, really sick, it was disgusting how she was being treated because she was stuck in the transporter for hours and hours and they didn’t bother to let her out. That was their normal practice.’ He adds: ‘I remember we once trailed them from Glasgow down to Polebrook. They had taken all three of the elephants to an event over Christmas and they all pulled into a services really close to Polebrook, checked in to a hotel overnight and just left all the elephants – all three of them – in the transporters all night. They’re like coffins on wheels, those things.’

The evidence they claimed to have of Anne’s long journeys in a cramped trailer was sadly not enough to secure an animal cruelty conviction, because circus animals were excluded from legislation to protect livestock and zoo animals. ‘But there’s a reason there’s an eight-hour journey limit for livestock in Europe,’ explains Tim. ‘It’s because travelling in transporters is not nice for animals and especially for elephants who are chained because they’re pretty much immobilised as otherwise they’ll tip the trucks over. So they were just left overnight and then they got up in the morning and moved on again. It’s an epic journey from Scotland anyhow and you should break it up, walk the animals, put them back in again, not just think of your own comfort. But once she was really, really ill it was just business as usual, just the same old tour. She should have been taken off, she should never have gone on the tour. Those are the things that sum up Bobby Roberts’ husbandry.’

Tim and Jan were truly worried by what happened next. ‘I think it was during the winter of 2000 and 2001 that Beverly and Janie suddenly died and no one knew what had happened to them,’ says Jan. ‘Basically they went into the winter quarters at the end of the year and didn’t come out again the next and there was no investigation. No one knew where the bodies were buried and no one knew what happened to them. There was never any explanation and from that time Anne was alone.’ Then in 2002, the group started receiving reports that Anne was sick. ‘She had become absolutely skeletal, she lost so much weight,’ Jan says. ‘We even sent wildlife advisor Simon Adams there to speak to Bobby to ask if we could do anything. In the end, it didn’t come to anything. He wouldn’t use our vet and he got in touch with his own, who wouldn’t consult with ours but she did eventually start to recover.’ They still don’t know what was wrong with her but suspect her arthritis had something to do with it. Jan adds: ‘There was always an ongoing argument with Bobby about giving her arthritis medicine. He kept saying that she wouldn’t take it but the point is that if you’ve got an animal that’s in pain, I think you can hide it in her food or something.’

Eventually, in 2011, their investigator managed to sneak a camera into the barn. It wasn’t at the right angle and Anne partially obscured the view. Also, they had wanted two cameras to ensure that they had a good view of the situation, but they couldn’t get another one in. But it was the furthest they’d got and they had to give it a go. Tim says: ‘When we got the first still back, we thought she’d just stand in front of the camera and we wouldn’t see anything. We said: “We must try and find another angle.” It was a big barn, you find gaps, but we couldn’t. We had to go with the one shot and let it record from one position.’

When they watched the footage, they were horrified by the pain and suffering that was being meted out to Anne on a daily basis. There was a ‘stunning’ amount of violence, according to Tim, but it wasn’t just her that suffered. Nitu can be seen beating and thumping ponies, kicking a camel and spitting in its face.

Describing her thoughts on seeing the video for the first time, Jan says: ‘For us, obviously, we don’t enjoy looking at animal cruelty. Nobody does. But the real feeling for us is: “Have we got it? Do we have what looks like a conviction here? Is there enough? Is it strong enough?” And for Tim and I really, that’s the key thing that goes through our minds even though we’re looking at it and thinking how horrific it is.’ She adds: ‘My heart went out to Anne. Sometimes you look at these large powerful animals and you think: “Just do something, just fight back, just stand up for yourself.” But the other side of that is: “Well, OK, now it can stop. We’ve got you on film, we’ve got enough and now it can stop.”’

As many of the animal welfare groups involved in Anne’s story have said, it was actually not the violence towards her that was the worst thing, it was her pitiful existence. ‘The first stuff we saw was her chained in the barn,’ Tim explains, ‘and I remember thinking what a bloody dreadful life. I just thought how empty must this dingy, completely immobilised, horrible, horrible, squalid existence be. And to just go in and look at that and not think there’s a problem with that. Then, when the violence began to unfold, I just remember thinking: “Bloody hell, this is a very, very nasty place.” You could immediately see that the violence was really casual because I’ve seen workers before who glance around and they’re slightly wary and they’re doing little sly punches, but this was like: “I don’t care if Bobby walks through the door, I’m swinging at this elephant.”’

‘Her life was wretched, absolutely wretched,’ says Jan. ‘And you can tell by looking at the attacks after a number of hours that it’s nothing to do with anything the animals are doing, it’s just this person enjoying whatever it is, whatever satisfaction they get from being violent. You can tell it’s something coming from them like a release or something and the animal is just a victim. It’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it can’t do anything to protect itself. And you’ve got a person there who wants to do things like that to it and there are so many of them. It’s just so wretched and so disgusting.’

Another harrowing moment for the couple to see was when Bobby walked into the shed. As Anne reached out her trunk to him, he kicked it away. ‘I remember when Bobby came in,’ says Tim, ‘and he’s in a suit and you think he’s been on a day out or something or other and he’s just stood there with his hands in his pockets and there is no empathy for this animal that he’s put in chains, there’s just no bond or anything and you can see it. And you just think: “You put her in that horrific bondage and then you just walk off and have your tea.” That sums up how these animals are broken as well and what an awful life they lead because the one person she seeks succour from, some sort of comfort and solace, is the person who did it to her. It’s Stockholm Syndrome. That to me is one of the most wretched scenes in all the footage.’

Jan says she also struggled with the scene. ‘When she reaches out to him and she’s lived with him all her life, he’s all she’s ever known and her companions have died, he hits her and rejects her. I just couldn’t understand. I couldn’t see how he could respond to these animals which are so emotional, so intelligent… they have culture, they communicate, they mourn their dead, and he gets nothing. You can see there is nothing there for him.’

ADI were criticised for sitting on the footage by the judge during the Robertses’ trial but Tim responds acidly: ‘We were criticised that we left it so long to get it published but everyone else let it happen for twenty-five years.’ Jan explains that the reason for the delay was the need to make a time-coded index of every piece of footage, which usually takes three times as long as the actual recording. She also says that they had to bring in more staff to deal with the burden – and they knew that they had to get it perfect because previously they had learned the hard way that it takes a lot to get an animal cruelty conviction. ‘We learned during our very first prosecutions that one hit is not enough,’ she says. ‘Even a couple of hits are not enough in order to pursue a conviction. You have to show that it’s a pattern of behaviour and so you have to show multiple hits. It’s surprising how much abuse you have to show towards an animal to get an actual conviction.’ She adds: ‘Our obsession with evidence is born of experience. It’s from the first few times we filmed beatings and nothing could be done about it because we didn’t have enough and the person had an excuse. We learned from that and we knew we had to be absolutely thorough and we had to get it nailed.’

So Tim and Jan started sifting through the footage and compiled enough for a prosecution and a news story. The more they watched, the more they realised they were sitting on a very big exposé and so they drafted in extra help to get through all the material. Working non-stop for weeks, they say they watched every piece of footage three times, noting who went in, who went out, in time-coded sequences, and what was happening in great detail. Then they watched everything again to work out what the excuses would be, they say.

‘What we’re looking for is: are there any circumstances that would make this happen?’ Tim says. ‘Has the elephant surged at the guy ten minutes earlier? They always say the animal tried to attack them.’

‘We try to work out what their excuse will be,’ adds Jan. ‘You’d be surprised at the excuses.’

They would also have to identify those committing the abuse: often difficult on grainy footage and when the workers wear different outfits every day and are recruited on a casual basis. ‘You know when workers are involved,’ says Tim, ‘that the odds are they’re going to disappear the moment you put it out.’

Then, finally, a decision had to be made about whether they went ahead with releasing the footage with a view to a prosecution. ‘We get to a point with these investigations,’ explains Tim, ‘and we have to make a decision, which is: “If we stop now, then that’s it. There’s no other chance. We’ll never get it again.” It’s like putting everything on a number in roulette. There are clearly things which, I think, if this investigation had run longer – if we’d had a bigger window, say – then we probably would have got more. We’d have probably got more definitive evidence on all of the other animals.’

ADI were also criticised during the court case for not bringing the footage to the attention of the police or the RSPCA immediately. But their argument is that, had they done so, there would never have been a public outcry and there would never have been an incentive to move Anne quickly. They say it was also likely that the groom would have fled and that the authorities would have put the saga down to a rogue employee. This would have meant that there was a very real danger that Anne might have been left at the circus – something ADI wanted to prevent at all costs.

The organisation was also accused of having fabricated the footage during the trial – something they vehemently deny. RSPCA inspector Jody Gordon recalls that the video ADI produced was very similar to a video they made of alleged cruelty towards elephants at the Great British Circus. He also noted the parallels – the men in question both wore caps and disappeared as soon as the footage was about to be released. He says that from his examination of the winter quarters, he did not think anyone had climbed under the fence to plant a camera as ADI said they did. ADI deny that they faked the footage and the judge at the Robertses’ trial accepted this.

The judge also told them that they had prolonged Anne’s suffering by sitting on the footage for weeks before releasing it. But ADI remains unapologetic. ‘Can you imagine how long it takes you to write down notes on three weeks of footage?’ says Jan. ‘If you watch ten minutes, it’s a minimum of thirty minutes to go through it because you have to watch it three times, work out what’s going on and then write it down. And we had a whole team of people watching the footage and then writing it down and someone checking what they were writing. Because it was going to court it had to be absolutely correct. The police couldn’t do it. It had to be done by people who knew what was going on.’ Tim adds: ‘You’re putting together a legal case, something that’s going to make the government understand all of those factors. Otherwise, they just get away with it.’

So the couple formulated a plan to release the footage to the media. And they chose to give it to the Daily Mail, not only one of Britain’s best-selling and most influential newspapers, but, most importantly, one that is read by animal lovers. Having covered the Mary Chipperfield story exclusively, the Mail had a good relationship with ADI. But the judge also criticised ADI for passing the footage to the media first, and not to the police or the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which is responsible for bringing prosecutions, or to the RSPCA. ‘Ultimately, it’s the press coverage that got her out,’ is Tim’s explanation. ‘If we’d presented it to the CPS, it would have taken more than a year for a prosecution and they’d likely have not confiscated the elephant.’ Jan adds: ‘I said to the [police and the CPS] that the media had more chance of getting Anne out quickly than they did. In our experience if we need an animal rescued quickly, the media does it for us every time. It’s sad and I’m sure it’s frustrating for the police and the CPS – they want to keep everything to themselves and do it all very carefully and wait a year. But the animal is still there while they’re doing that unless the media steps in.’ She adds that relying on the police and the CPS was also a risk: ‘Because if you go ahead and the prosecution gets it wrong, the animal may never get out.’

Many would agree with them that using the media was an effective method. Within hours of the story appearing in the newspaper, there was a huge public backlash and calls from all sections of society, from celebrity campaigners to Facebook petitioners, to deliver Anne from her miserable existence. This pressure mounted following the relentless coverage in the Mail and every other newspaper and broadcaster that had picked up the story.

Eventually, the Robertses agreed to give Anne up. A number of sanctuaries, zoos and safari parks offered to rehome her in the lap of luxury now she was a national celebrity. And when the CPS agreed to take over ADI’s public prosecution, they said that it was because of the ‘overwhelming public interest’ that the case had generated. So, while ADI hadn’t followed the procedure the judge would have preferred, they secured a huge coup in saving Anne, rehoming her and giving her a better life, as well as saving Monty the camel, who was also rehomed, and securing animal cruelty convictions. The publicity surrounding the story reignited the campaign for banning wild animals in circuses and there is no doubt that the widespread coverage helped galvanise public opinion and made a ban more likely. It was, without doubt, a thumping victory.

For ADI, the story was never just about Anne – it was about the use of all wild animals in circuses. The judge at the Robertses’ trial accused the organization of having an ‘agenda’. The release of the footage came as Parliamentary debate raged around whether to ban wild animals in circuses. At the time, Jan said of Anne’s rescue: ‘This is a wonderful day and it is also time to say never again and end the use of wild animals in circuses. Today is a day to celebrate, but not relax. It is vital that Defra [the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs] finally implements its promise to ban the use of wild animals in circuses. Let’s learn the lesson and ensure that there can never be suffering like this again in the UK.’ She stressed that there was ‘overwhelming public support’ for a ban but ‘nothing to stop any British circus from bringing in another elephant tomorrow to replace Anne and the tragic cycle starts again’.

Reflecting on the operation, Tim says: ‘It was a very hard undercover. We’re probably the only people who could have pulled it off. No one else does anything like that and we’ve pulled it off on several occasions. It took many, many goes.’ But he says he still isn’t satisfied with how it played out: ‘It’s sometimes very frustrating for us because we know all these things and we’re trying to persuade the prosecutors. For us, the most frustrating thing was that she had moved into the barn in November 2010 and so although our footage was from January to February, she had actually been in that same position since the previous November. And I think for changing things for animals people needed to know that but we got it in as quickly as we could as it was difficult to set up.’

ADI say that the operation cost them £140,000 and they ended the year in deficit, but it was money ‘well spent’, according to Jan: ‘The reason we exist is to save animals and we don’t get it back, but we saved her. It’s the same with Bolivia. Bolivia was £1.2m but we emptied a country of its circus animals and we got twenty-five lions to a good home. Same with Peru and it’s going to be Colombia now. That’s thirty-three lions, a bear, a tiger and about eighty monkeys. That’s what we’re here for and as long as we’re getting them out, we’re happy.’