Westport animal activists let down by sentences in tenant farm cruelty case
By Jeffrey D. Wagner / Herald News
Posted Jun 28, 2019
Local and state animal activists expressed outrage Thursday when 10 defendants in Westport’s 2016 tenant farm animal abuse case were not sentenced to more than probation before walking out of Fall River Justice Center.
Constance Gee, a Westport resident who regularly attended court proceedings, said she “felt sick” when descriptions of the farm’s conditions were read in court. She said she was even more disheartened by the sentences, which include probation and community service. Outside of the courtroom Thursday, Gee claimed she saw one defendant celebrating with friends.
Jodi Greenleaf, an animal activist from North Attleboro, also was present in court Thursday, noting that other tenants opted to go to trial in proceedings scheduled for later this year rather than plead guilty.
“I can’t understand why anyone would go to trial,” Greenleaf said. “This was a cakewalk today (for defendants).”
Abuse on the former 70-acre tenant farm led to the removal of more than 1,000 animals and the involvement of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, along with other agencies. Surviving animals were transferred to local sanctuaries.
“It’s the biggest case of animal cruelty in the Northeast,” Greenleaf said after guilty pleas were entered. “What do they get? Nothing.”
Gee condemned the justice system for the rulings.
“These are people who will go right back to doing what they have been doing,” she said.
Greenleaf, Gee, as well as activists Kathy Feininger, of Westport and Roxanne Houghton of North Attleboro, expressed disappointment in Attorney General Maura Healey’s office for not pushing for harsher sentences. In March 2017, Healey indicted more than two-dozen defendants, including property owner Richard Medeiros, who passed away the following year.
“How can the court allow these people who admitted to breaking the state law just walk away? How is this justice? Hundreds of animals suffered and died and the court doesn’t seem to care,” Feininger said. “After almost three years into this court battle, I am losing faith in the AG and in the entire justice system. Shame on them all.”
Houghton said: “Attorney General Maura Healey looked us right in the eye and said, ‘I promise you that there will be justice for those animals.’ She broke her word, if it ever meant anything.”
She later added, “It would appear that animal cruelty is a felony in name only ... in Massachusetts.”
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By Jo C. Goode / Herald News
Posted Jun 28, 2019
FALL RIVER — After descriptions of the squalid conditions on a Route 177 tenant farm were read in court, 10 defendants either pleaded guilty or admitted there was enough evidence to be found guilty of animal cruelty charges and were sentenced to probation.
Under Massachusetts law, the charge of animal cruelty carries a maximum sentence of up to seven years in prison. But none of the defendants will serve time in custody unless they violate the terms of their probation or get charged with a new offense.
One courtroom was devoted to the landmark animal abuse case Thursday, when Judge William Sullivan accepted the guilty pleas from one defendant after another.
Sullivan gave three defendants suspended sentences, the longest at two-and-a-half years, and sentenced seven defendants to probation and community service, according to Chloe Gotsis, a spokesman for the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey.
Westport Police Detective Jeff Majewski, the lead investigator on the tenant farm animal cruelty case that roiled the region and spurred lawmakers to action, sat in the courtroom as the pleas were entered.
He reacted to the sentences imposed by Sullivan during a court recess.
“Any time you get a guilty plea, it’s positive,” he said. “However, what happened with these animals was a tragic event that could have and should have been prevented.”
In July 2016, police began investigating animal abuse on the Medeiros tenant farm on American Legion Highway. About 1,400 animals were removed from the property in what the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals labeled the worst case of animal abuse it had encountered in the Northeast.
The investigation launched when the Westport Police Department received a 911 call directing officers to Medeiros’ property. Police found that two starving Rottweilers had escaped their lot and broken into another, where they consumed several goats. As the investigation continued, authorities said hundreds of animals on the farm were kept in “deplorable and dangerous conditions.”
The owner of the farm, Richard Medeiros, who has since died, was one of 27 people charged in connection with the case.
Prosecutor David Clayton of the Environmental Crimes Strike Force at the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office read aloud descriptions of the scene when investigators arrived.
One defendant, John Aguiar, 75, had been renting from owner Richard Medeiros for 20 years, Clayton said. When Westport police served a warrant on the property July 19, 2016, the prosecutor said police found a Canadian goose, dogs, cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, chickens, pigeons and turkeys.
All were found without adequate food or water, if any at all, and cages and enclosures were filled with feces. Clayton said the wings of a wild goose were clipped to prevent it from flying away.
A dog was tethered to a tree and the only food it had was raw meat covered in flies, Clayton said. One of the two calves had to be euthanized, as did a sheep and a goat, Clayton said. Birds were in coops without food or water.
Before Diane Magalhaes and her husband, Bruno Magalhaes, pleaded guilty, Clayton described conditions on their rented plot as having included a dog chained so tightly to a tree that it was unable to access a nearby dog house. The cattle police found were feeding on grass, and their water was in an old bathtub, according to Clayton.
As part of the Magalhaes’ probation agreement, Sullivan allowed them to keep their family dogs. Also allowed to keep his family dog was Luis Machado, who pleaded guilty to seven charges stemming from the cruelty case and who was sentenced to community service and probation.
The two plots rented by Emmanuel DeSousa housed horses with no food, a dead rabbit and three cows that were fed moldy bread, according to the prosecutor. Three kenneled dogs found by police had no food, according to Clayton.
The defendants who did not plead guilty are expected to go to trial.
Sentences were as follows:
• Eddy DeAguiar – Two-and-a-half years in the House of Correction, suspended for two years; 100 hours community service; and no possession or care of any animals.
• Jeffrey Brilhante – Two years probation, 100 hours of community service and no possession or care of any animals.
• Luis Machado – 18 months in the House of Correction, suspended for two years; 100 hours of community service; and no possession or care of any animals.
• Octavio Botelho – Two years probation, $750 fine, and no possession or care of any animals.
• Joseph Rego – Two years probation, 100 hours of community service, and no possession or care of any animals.
• John Aguiar – One year in the House of Correction, suspended for two years; and no possession or care of any animals.
• Emmanuel DeSousa – Two years probation, 100 hours of community service, and no possession or care of any animals.
• Antonio Medeiros – Continued without a finding for two years, sentenced to 100 hours of community service, and no possession or care of any animals, except for family dog.
• Diane Magalhaes – Continued without a finding for two years, sentenced to 100 hours of community service, and no possession or care of any animals, except for family dogs.
• Bruno Magalhaes – Continued without a finding for two years, sentenced to 100 hours of community service, and no possession or care of any animals, except for family dogs.
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Earlier Friday, Westport Senior Health Agent James Walsh told NBC 10 News that he participated in inspections.
“I did the work. They signed the form,” he said.
Elected Board of Health officials Karl Santos and John Colletti said they are the only two animal inspectors in town who could have done inspections on the site at 465 American Legion Highway.
They admitted that Walsh often does the work, but insist he was just helping out, and that they sign off on it.
“I’ve been out with him on some of these calls and he documents everything that’s in the book,” Colletti said. “One of us usually goes with him.”
Santos also admitted Friday that he inspected the leased farm land on January 11.
NBC 10 obtained four inspection reports, which featured completely illegible signatures, most of which were simply straight lines.
Santos said he doesn’t usually sign form that way, but that he was “probably just getting sloppy that day.”
Still, Board of Health officials insist the inspections turned up no problems. They said they were done in winter, when fewer animals were present, and claim many of the areas they were supposed to review were impossible to access.
However, Westport police have been highly critical of the board.
“It doesn’t take someone with a master’s degree in some sort of animal science to realize that there’s some stuff on the ground that’s been there for years," Detective Jeff Majewski of the Westport Police Department said.
In addition, town selectman also held a closed door meeting on the issue Friday. Chairman Michael Sullivan told NBC 10 that town officials would investigate.
"What we did, what we could have done differently, and what we need to do differently going forward -- we'll sort all that out," he said.
