Animal Asylum

Fifty miles northwest of Albany, Julia Bennett-Blue called her Gloversville home Blue Haven Farm. But the scene discovered by authorities responding to a report of dogs’ devouring a live llama on January 11 would hardly qualify as a haven of any hue. Over 100 animals have since been removed from the property; according to the Gloversville Leader-Herald, some 30 cats and a dog named Fred remain.

Charges of animal cruelty are being pressed against Bennett-Blue, as local authorities from police agencies, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the health and building departments seek to sort out the issues involved. But to Kathy Stevens, director of the Catskill Animal Sanctuary, it’s a sadly familiar story. “This woman has been arrested seven times in Fulton County alone,” says Stevens. “Before that, in the 1970s, she was on the cover of Newsday when they raided her New York apartment…. There should be some way to treat animal hoarding and prevent re-accumulation—but hoarding is an addiction. These are people who say they love animals, but when you look at the misery they foster, you have to wonder about their understanding of love.”

Animal hoarding as a distinct phenomenon has been recognized by professionals for some time, but is just beginning to be understood. According to experts at the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium of Tufts University’s veterinary school, it used to be called “collecting”, but that term was dropped because too often it has positive connotations. There’s nothing positive about hoarding, defined by the harc as a case in which someone accumulates a large number of animals, fails to provide minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, and veterinary care, fails to act on the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation, and even death) or the environment (severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions), and fails to act on or recognize the negative impact of the collection on their own health and well-being.

Harc studies indicate that hoarders are often older women, fearful of much contact with humans and perhaps experiencing the early stages of dementia or a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. But Pat Volusik of the New York State Humane Association says that not all cases she’s seen fit the stereotype. “It’s different varieties of people, not just little old ladies,” she says. “The common thread is that they just have no conception of the condition of the animals. They don’t see the pain and suffering.”

Volusik points to the case of Justin McCarthy, an Ellenville-area man prosecuted for animal cruelty in the 1990s. “McCarthyhad money, he got lots of donations, he got lots of good publicity—he was tagged as ‘St. Francis of the Catskills’ by national media,” she says. “He had friends in high places. When the rescuers went in, they found animals cannibalizing each other.”