A COUPLE whose four children were taken into care after they were accused of neglect "replaced" them with a menagerie of animals but struggled to cope and ended up keeping them in filthy and putrid conditions, a court was told.
Tracy and Alan Lear, aged 39 and 64, suffered a "dreadful experience" when their children were taken away from them some years ago, Exeter Crown Court was told, and took on dozens of animals to compensate for their emotional loss.
When RSPCA inspectors visited the couple’s home, they found 16 cats, two rabbits, 21 guinea pigs, 22 chickens, two black swans and a pheasant, many of which were kept in filthy conditions, and a kitten was found with a deformed leg.
The court was also told the couple had a string of convictions for animal cruelty. The Lears were banned from keeping any animals by Honiton magistrates last October after pleading guilty to breaching an earlier order made under the Protection of Animals Act.
At the Crown Court yesterday, they appealed against the ban.
The court was told that in 2002, Cullompton magistrates banned them from keeping any animals. This was relaxed on appeal to allow them to keep 10 cats, 15 sheep, four cockerels and 20 geese.
RSPCA officers visited the Lears’ smallholding at Ashbury, near Okehampton, West Devon, in July 2007. Inside the house, inspectors found the open-plan kitchen "piled high" with cages. The guinea pigs inside were overcrowded and had no provision of food or water.
Jeremy Cave, for the prosecution, said: "The inspectors described the smell as putrid, characteristic of old animal faeces, urine and unclean bedding. Conditions were filthy."
Mr Cave also described how the inspectors found a number of cats running around in an old double-decker bus in the Lears’ land, including a kitten with a deformed leg.
In the stable, he said, the inspectors found a number of ducks, chickens and cockerels, again in dirty conditions and without adequate supplies of water.
The officers issued Mrs Lear with an animal improvement notice. Mr Cave said when the RSPCA made subsequent visits, they found conditions for animals inside the house had improved somewhat but outside were "largely the same".
Jonathan Edwards, mitigating, asked for the total ban on keeping animals to be relaxed. The couple had been married for 22 years and had four children together. Mr Lear worked for many years as a bus driver in London before the family moved to Wiltshire. It was here their children were taken by a court after allegations of neglect.
He described this as a "dreadful experience" for them and their move to Devon was as a result of losing their children and the "bitterness" they felt about the circumstances in which they were taken.
He said: "What seems to have happened is that animals replaced children in the eyes of Mr and Mrs Lear."
Judge Peter Wassall said he could "understand fully" why Honiton magistrates had made a total ban on keeping animals, but relaxed the terms to allow them to keep sheep and geese.
