Permanent stay could be applied to Ararat’s Christine Weisheit animal cruelty case

A Ballarat court has heard arguments about whether a serious animal cruelty case involving a horse "graveyard" and dozens of emaciated creatures should be permanently stopped because of the “fragmentation and complexity” of the case.

After more than 20 months and 30 hearings, the prosecution of a Victorian woman accused of serious animal cruelty could be permanently stopped because of the “fragmentation and complexity” of the case.

Christine Weisheit pleaded not guilty to 65 animal cruelty charges in September 2021, and the matter remains active nearly two years later.

Ms Weisheit appeared in Ballarat Magistrates’ Court in May and again this week as her lawyer Luke Howson and RSPCA prosecutor Amelia Beech presented arguments about whether a permanent stay should be applied to the case and whether Ms Weisheit acted reasonably in the treatment of her animals.

In 2021, Melbourne Magistrates’ Court was told RSPCA investigators found up to 30 dead horses and many others in poor health at Ms Weisheit’s Warrak property in January 2016.

Inspectors put out food and water for the horses and the state agriculture minister approved the animals’ seizure.

Scores of horses were assessed by vets, with one dying and another being euthanized.

Photos of starving and dead horses were tendered to the court.

But Ms Weisheit asserted she did feed the horses and that claims about lice infestations were “rubbish”.

In general, Ms Weisheit cited the state’s drought and trespassers on her property as causes of the horses’ malnourishment, and she disagreed with the evidence of doctors.

“I certainly wasn’t negligent,” she said, adding later that the prosecutor was making up “a lot of bullshit”.

She said one horse “just so happened to turn up as RSPCA turned up, which intrigues me and raises a lot of questions”.

In response to the suggestion one horse did not have proper access to water, Ms Weisheit said it might have drunk it all or “the RSPCA could’ve knocked [the water] over, because they do that”.

At a hearing in May, Mr Howson suggested to Magistrate Rod Crisp that a permanent stay should be applied to the matter.

“The manner in which it has proceeded, partly because of the duration, partly because it hasn’t been done in one block … has meant that it has become one of those cases where the complexity of the details, particularly with respect to the expert evidence and how it relates to the charges, is such that a fair-minded observer would have a concern that there was a real risk that any magistrate couldn’t properly consider the evidence and decide the matter according to the evidence,” Mr Howson said.

“For that reason, I’d say it is a case where a stay is really the only option, and because of the number of charges, the number of expert witnesses involved, it’s not going to really proceed in any better manner were the matter to be retried.

“...Any retrial would be necessarily oppressive to Ms Weisheit.”

Mr Howson disputed whether his client had been unreasonable in her treatment of the animals.

He said it was possible the horses reached such a state of health because they had been “chased out” of Ms Weisheit’s property, or left of their own volition, and then starved in a state park into which they were said to have escaped.

Ms Beech said the granting of a stay would encourage other accused people to drag out their cases.

She said some of the fragmentation of Ms Weisheit’s case was caused by Ms Weisheit’s own tardiness, with hearings not having started on time “on any sitting day” and sometimes beginning up to an hour later than scheduled.

She said the case demonstrated "what occurs when a human being fails so drastically to meet her duty as a horse owner”.

“The accused does not take responsibility for the conditions of her horses,” Ms Beech said, pointing to Ms Weisheit’s “consistent casting of blame on others and on other things like conditions, rather than taking responsibility herself”.

She said the community had an interest in criminal charges being prosecuted.

At another hearing on June 13, more arguments were put forth about the case's viability.

Mr Howson said his client might not have been aware how frequently she should have got her horses dental treatment and did everything reasonable to treat the animals, for instance, in regard to their hooves, over the charged period.

He said some animals “don’t always recover” from a state of poor health and brought into question the evidence of “non-experts”.

“The experts were not of one mind,” Mr Howson said.

“In particular, your honour, it is the defence position that where an expert was better qualified and particularly where they were better qualified in respect of that particular evidence, their evidence should be preferred.”

He said the RSPCA “cannot conclude that Ms Weisheit was not feeding those horses adequately” given the evidence presented and the fact that eight animals were frequent forest escapees.

However, Ms Beech replied there was no evidence Ms Weisheit was defending herself against an animal, as is claimed, in her use of a pour-on Ivermectin treatment designed for cattle.

She said vets had not given Ms Weisheit’s horses special diets or that dental requirements for proper horse care had ever changed.

Ms Beech said hoof care could not be ruled out as a “systemic issue” and that very few of 82 horses at Ms Weisheit's property were well-fed and healthy.

Some, the court was told, were eating their own faecal matter - what Mr Crisp called “a particular horse aversion”.

Ms Beech said it did not appear Ms Weisheit was controlling her horses’ weight loss in a manner which could be acceptable during a drought.

The matter will continue at a later date.