AFTER a trial lasting 11 days at Salisbury Magistrates Court, Grafton couple Claire Strong and Paul Wilson were sentenced on animal cruelty charges today.

Strong, 22, was given a three year conditional discharge and disqualified from keeping animals and reptiles for ten years.

Wilson, 44, was given a two year conditional discharge and disqualified from keeping animals and reptiles for ten years.

They each had denied 12 charges of cruelty to animals including dogs, rabbits, mice and reptiles at their home in The Severalls in East Grafton where Strong ran the Wiltshire Animal Rescue and Sanctuary.

But what RSPCA Inspector Will Hendry and PC Ivor Noyce found when they raided the house in July 2009 was more like an animal hell, the magistrates heard, with dead dogs in the kitchen, a dead cat in a bathroom, dead reptiles and mice in the house and a dead rabbit in a hutch in the garden.

It was a friend of Strong’s, Shirley Oakey, from Grafton, who tipped off the police and RSPCA and she told the court that Strong told her that she had turned into “a monster”.

The magistrates were shown sickening video and still photographs of the carcass-littered house where the couple lived but none of the charges they faced related to the dead animals because there was no evidence whether they had suffered or died naturally.

Besides the evidence of their own inspector, the RSPCA called two vets who said that in their opinions the dogs that still survived were underweight, undernourished and lacked veterinary care evidenced by flea infestation.

The charges included failing to ensure a dog had a nutritionally balanced diet; failing to provide veterinary care for a dog; failing to protect an animal from pain, injury or suffering; not ensuring the welfare of an animal by failing to treat flea infestation; failing to protect lizards and a snake from pain, injury and suffering and failing to provide shade for a rabbit in a pen in the garden.

Strong and Wilson employed Nigel Weller and Co from Sussex, lawyers who specialise in fighting RSPCA prosecutions, but their expertise and explanations failed to convince the magistrates who convicted the pair in January and adjourned the sentencing until today.

Magistrates ordered Wilson to pay £1,000 costs but made no order for costs against Strong because, they said, she had no income.