Hunt member spared prison after sexually assaulting child
Judge puts livelihood of sex offender before safety of women and girls.
On 25 September, Devon County Hunt Saboteurs reported that a hunt member has been convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager, as well as sending sexual messages to a person who was pretending to be a child. The sabs wrote:
"Andrew Webber, who owns Bartridge Farm in Umberleigh, regularly hosts and supports the Torrington Farmers Hunt and the Cheldon Buckhounds. We have sabbed at his farm several times.
Webber has been convicted of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old child and sending sexual messages to a decoy pretending to be a 13-year-old girl."
53-year-old Webber walked away from prison, despite pleading guilty to two charges of sexual assault on the 16-year-old, as well as one charge of being an adult who attempted sexual communication with a child. Local news site DevonLive gave more information about the trial, saying that the man hugged and kissed a girl in his car, despite her telling him not to, and grabbed her thigh before the girl managed to get away. According to the news site:
"Webber asked the girl for sexual photos but she called him a paedophile."
Police began investigating in October. They then found out that another police force was already investigating Webber for his conversation with the person posing as a 13-year-old. In that incident, he chatted online about masturbation, and even sent a photo of his aroused penis under clothing.
Getting away with it
Webber walked away from the court, free to go home, having only been given a 10-month suspended sentence, along with 70 hours of unpaid work. He must also attend 40 days of rehabilitation activity days with probation. The judge gave such a lenient sentence after Webber's defence barrister argued that the man's business would be adversely affected; that he would have to sell his animals and therefore shut down his farm. Essentially, the judge put the livelihood of a sex offender before the safety of women and girls. The barrister, Nick Lewin, argued:
"This will very likely to be the only time he appears before criminal court. He'll continue living an entirely law-abiding life, having done so for 53 years."
Quite how Lewin knows that Webber has been law-abiding prior to these cases is a mystery.
Devon County Sabs made the point:
"Sexual violence, just like animal abuse, is hugely underreported to the police and consequently goes unpunished the vast majority of the time. Just because someone has not previously been convicted of a similar crime doesn’t mean that this person only at the age of 53 started to become a paedophile. Just as it would be ridiculous to conclude that a person convicted of illegal hunting only ever broke the Hunting Act once in their life!"
Webber must sign the Sex Offender Register for the next 10 years. He was also issued with a Sexual Harm Prevention Order. This order can be imposed by the court in order to protect the public by restricting a person's behaviour.
Hunters and rape culture
The sabs stated:
"Are we surprised that those who enjoy bloodsports are also abusive towards women and children? Sadly not in the slightest. We see these cases pop up in the news regularly."
There are a few awful incidents that have made news headlines over the years. Back in 2012, Tiverton Staghounds former hunter master John Norrish was convicted of rape and sentenced to prison for four years. The man, who was 68 at the time, raped a 33-year-old woman when he gave her a lift home from a hunt ball. The woman said after the trial:
”This has been the most difficult 10 months of my life. Not only have I been violated in the most horrendous way, I have suffered emotional trauma as a result of this."
In 2017, 51-year-old Bryn Chittenden, terrierman of the East Essex Foxhounds and the Essex Farmers and Union Foxhounds, was jailed after having sex with a vulnerable 14 year old. He was given a sentence of six years and three months for sexual activity with a child, and then another six months for making indecent images and movies of children.
In 2019, Grove and Rufford hunt member Paul Piddington was imprisoned for 11 years and six months after he was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault; one count of rape; one count of indecent assault and one count of exposure. He terrorised four women over a 12-year period.
On top of this, domestic abuse seems rife in rural areas. Also in 2019, the findings of an 18-month inquiry by the National Rural Crime Network were published. The report made national news headlines when the network's chairwoman Julia Mulligan described domestic abuse as "the hidden underbelly of rural communities".
The report said:
“We have revealed a traditional society where women (and it is mostly women) are subjugated, abused and controlled, not just by an individual abuser, but de facto by very the communities in which they live, too often left unsupported and unprotected. This is not at all unique to rural areas, but it is very significant, and change is slow.”
Sadistic
Long-term activists feel rape culture is embedded in the world of hunting. Take, for example, one photo published by the Hunt Saboteurs Association, which shows hunt men standing around a banner they have made. The sign says, "If the fox didn't enjoy it he wouldn't join in."