“Is This Really It?” – Margate Magistrates Harassed by Kent Hounds

For the past year, a false accusation of harassment from the Kent Hounds has hung heavy over two West Kent sabs whilst it progressed through the legal system. The HSA are happy to report that the bogus allegations were completely destroyed at Margate Magistrates Court last week thus demonstrating the utter desperation of hunt supporters in attempting to avoid scrutiny of their unlawful activities.

Back in 2024, an allegation of harassment against two sabs was made by Camilla Neame of the Shepherd Neame brewing dynasty. She is a big supporter of the Kent Hounds with her husband being an ex-master. In a 999 call to Kent Police, she claimed that the sabs were harassing her at her home. No other evidence was provided subsequently except some poor quality pictures of the sabs in question – presumably taken during the relentless sabbing that the hunt has suffered from the local sab groups.

Despite this flimsy evidence, the CPS chose to take a harassment case to court against one of the sabs. Last week at court, the whole sorry tale unravelled and court proceedings spiralled into a farce.

As West Kent Sabs reported on Facebook last week, it only took a visibly angry judge to shout at the CPS “At what point is there harassment!?”, “Is this really it!?” within seven minutes of the case being presented. The sab’s legal counsel then proceeded to dismantle the whole case by highlighting the glaring inaccuracies between the evidence, the statements made in the dock by Camilla and accomplice ‘witness’, Mark Everitt, and the 999 call made at the time the ‘harassment’ was reported. The case was completely dismissed within an hour and 15 minutes – with the accused sab not even requested to take the stand. The cherry on the top of this unfruitful mess was the judge’s statement that ‘monitoring a hunt was perfectly legal’ activity and does not constitute harassment at all.

It should be noted that this is not the only false allegation made about the group by the Kent Hounds during this period which are clearly pre-meditated attempts to smear sabs and hoodwink law enforcement into taking disruptive action. One particularly sickening claim has been that a sab had threatened to ‘rape members of the hunt’.

Rowan Hughes from the Hunt Saboteurs Association commented:

“Whilst this isn’t the first time, by any means, that sabs have had to face false accusations by hunters, it does beg the question why the CPS chose to take such a weak case all the way through legal process at the taxpayers expense? Our comrades in West Kent Hunt Sabs tell us that the legal costs were in the region of £5,000. We can only guess at the underlying reasons why discussions between Kent Police and CPS representatives meant that they chose to pursue this path but it would appear to be a shocking dereliction of duty to incur such costs when clearly the evidence did not stack up and faced such a low probability of securing a conviction in court. It’s about time that those making false accusations should face appropriate sanctions for such behaviour at a time when public funds are at a premium”

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