A man escaped prison on 7 November, despite inflicting the most horrific cruelty on three dogs in his care. 35-year-old Peter Bewsher, from Egremont, Cumbria, received a 12-week suspended sentence after forcing his dogs to fight wild mammals.
Bewsher’s property was searched by the RSPCA and the police on 14 February 2024. What they found was horrific. The Patterdale terriers were suffering from terrible injuries: one dog had lost his lower jaw completely, while the other two dogs had wounds to their jaws and faces. Bewsher hadn’t taken the dogs to a vet for treatment, telling the police that he “didn’t believe in vets”. It is more likely that he avoided the vet for fear of being reported for baiting wild animals.
At a previous hearing, Bewsher pleaded guilty to three charges of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal (in this instance the protected animals are the dogs in his care).
Baiting
Defence barrister Clive Rees told the court that Bewsher’s dogs had been used to flush out foxes – that is, sending a dog underground to force a fox to flee above ground – for ‘vermin’ control. Rees said:
“There are exemptions under the Hunting Act to flush a fox from a hole.”
He stated that some foxes do not want to leave the hole, and that this leads to a fight underground, such as with Bewsher’s dogs.
He went on to say:
“There are a large number of references from gamekeepers who say that Mr Bewsher was very helpful to them. What we have got is not somebody who is going out carrying out illegal acts. He is carrying out legal acts and failing to seek treatment afterwards.
He was highly regarded for the help he gave for vermin problems. Foxes can be a nuisance to the agricultural community.”
But Bewsher’s defence is, in Protect the Wild’s opinion, not very plausible. Iif a man was lawfully flushing out foxes under the Hunting Act, he would send the dog down a hole to hold the fox at bay, and then he would dig out the fox and shoot her.
Protect the Wild believes it is more likely that Bewsher was baiting wild animals – most likely badgers. Badger baiting is an illegal blood sport where men send terriers down a sett to find a badger, either to draw her out or hold her at bay, while the men dig her out. They will then unleash their dogs on the poor animal. Badgers always die during this fight, while dogs are victims, too. Badgers have very powerful digging claws, and terriers often suffer from life-threatening injuries, which are usually stitched up by the baiters themselves because visiting a vet would be too risky for them: what they’re doing is illegal. If Bewsher was baiting, we can only guess how many wild mammals have fallen victim to his sick acts.
As well as his 12-week suspended sentence, Bewsher was banned from keeping dogs for two years, and told to pay £5,226 of costs to the RSPCA, plus a £154 victim surcharge. A two-year ban on keeping dogs is laughable: after all, this is a man who was guardian to a dog who had half of his jaw missing and received no veterinary care.
Operation Badger
Protect the Wild reports all too regularly about the baiting of badgers, and, sometimes, of foxes too. The law is clearly failing wildlife. All too often, we see badger baiters being handed paltry punishments that will do little to deter them.
In October, the UK Badger Crime Priority Delivery Group, a coalition of organisations operating under the police’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, relaunched Operation Badger. According to the group:
“Operation Badger aims to increase awareness of the many types of criminal activity that threaten badgers and to educate and encourage reporting of suspected crimes against badgers.”
The initiative gives the public information on how to report badger crimes, while the Badger Watch app (downloadable from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store) is a crime-reporting app designed as a:
“tool for members of the public and Badger Groups to easily recognise, record and report instances of badger crime when on the move out in the field.”
Operation Badger is a positive move. As was the implementation of the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 which increased the maximum penalty for an offence from six months to five years’ custody. But while we do see some baiters being jailed, too many still walk away free.
Despite what some defence barristers like to claim in court, there is never a justification for this type of horrendous crime. Neither is someone’s job a mitigation – especially when it has nothing to do with wildlife whatsoever. Too many cruel and ignorant men like Bewsher are escaping the serious punishment they deserve for animal offences – the courts must stop listening to their pathetic excuses…
