Rescue Undercover: Dena Stapleton

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Is this what started Amy Verder’s vendetta of hate against Susan Barrett?

As many of you probably already know, there is a long, ugly history between Amy Verder and Susan Barrett. Amy, as far as I know, never met Susan online until the early fall of 2010, shortly after AV began her rescue, Let Them Live Rescue. Susan was reportedly suspicious of LTL and AV when Sharon Johnson and Bonnie Priddy approached her about their concerns regarding LTL, namely their fundraising via Chip Ins. Amy decided for her own reasons to launch a campaign of malicious and cruel attacks on SB founded by her hatred of Susan. Yet this was (as far as I am aware) BEFORE Amy had any knowledge that Susan was suspicious of her and LTL and was likely already watching her. So what was her motivation that set this whole awful chapter into motion that has been so detrimental to all parties involved? I can’t say for sure but the following facebook private messages from Oct. 2011 are the only thing that I’ve found that may explain Amy Verder’s initial hatred towards Susan Barrett. I do not think it is a coincidence that right after this AV started claiming that Susan was “bad” and that she was involved in terrible things that victimized and exploited animals. There has never been any proof produced by by AV (and later also by Susanna Boyd Fisher aka Cherokee Rayne Wolfsong) that I am aware of to substantiate the outrageous claims made by these individuals against SB. It would appear that these were only malicious lies created by these women for the sole purpose of some sort of revenge on Susan.

To be fair, I must point out that after Amy started doing malicious things to Susan, Susan seemed to get serious about trying to expose LTL as a fraud rescue. I do not approve of Susan Barrett’s typical tactics or her own (in my opinion) underhanded and dishonest ways of dealing with people. However, in this case, SB’s motivations might have been at least partly honorable. Allegedly, Susan was contacting shelters, the Secretary of State in KY, PayPal, other agencies, and I know she had contacted at least one reporter, Dena Stapleton, in her attempts to discover the truth about Amy and LTL. I can not fault Susan for this really, and even if her motivations were also personal, LTL really is a very bad rescue IMO, so it’s not like she was trying to set AV up to look bad. In this case, I will give credit to Susan for trying to expose LTL, for that was a good thing.

It is my belief that Amy took what happened in these private messages personally and blew the situation WAY out of proportion. She stated several times (4 times if I counted correctly) that Susan threatened Lea but then says "I know you did not harass me or threaten me or my children did not mean you as I stated not you at all.." This completely contradicted her earlier statements. She not only flipped out on this thread, she also attacked her friend Crystal Harley for being diplomatic and not agreeing with her that Susan was out of line, and according to Crystal, Amy brought this incident up quite frequently during the remainder of the time they were associated, which was about 8 months. So it would seem that for whatever reason, this incident was a huge deal to Amy. IMO, that is just further substantiation that AV has some serious issues. She's quite narcissistic among other things, so this was, of course, all about HER. How sad that all of the resulting negative things that happened may have been ignited by something so trivial and minor and fueled by her hatred. Seriously, is this the best way to deal with one’s anger or disappointment in others?

Now here is Amy again, six months later in mid-April 2011, on a Facebook page called *Animals Voice of Hope* BLACKLIST, still complaining about this perceived injustice. Drama? No, never Amy..

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Seven Star Sanctuary and Sue Croft - Irresponsible Rescue

The following is what is known about the true nature of the relationship between Seven Star Sanctuary and Sue Croft. Sue Croft was never a part of Seven Star Sanctuary as she claimed multiple times to many people, this was a total fabrication on her part. This was discovered last year during the investigation into the Transport of Death and Suffering that involved the illegal transporters Tim & Sue Croft and Amy Verder of Let Them Live Rescue that was conducted by Crystal Harley and Dena Stapleton. Crystal has written a statement re: these messages (see below) with Mary Thomas and Pam Boyce (the women in charge of Seven Star Sanctuary) and has given me permission to publish them here. I think these messages pretty much speak for themselves but I will say that it is clear to me that Seven Star Sanctuary made some significant mistakes in their association with Sue Croft, in my opinion. Luckily, they claimed that they ended their association with Sue after the truth came out about her and her husband at the time, Tim, as being paid transporters who were operating illegally as they had no business licenses and also apparently were not registered with the USDA (not required but highly preferred in a paid transporter). However, Seven Star Sanctuary has been linked to Amy Verder with Let Them Live Rescue recently so that's a significant black mark against them both as far as I am concerned.

My opinion, based on the information that has been put out about Seven Star Sanctuary in regards to their involvement with others in what is commonly referred to as the CCAC group (a group of people who are involved in rescuing animals from the Columbus County Animal Control facility in Whiteville, NC.), is that Seven Star and the others involved have made some serious errors, resulting in animals being placed in bad situations and that they have been operating irresponsibly. I have not been directly involved in the investigation re: the CCAC group, nor do I have any ties to anyone on either side of this situation so I am certainly not up to date on all of the facts in this matter. There is a federal lawsuit that has been filed against some of the individuals who were investigating and exposing them for what they believed they were guilty of. I also have no plans to get involved in this situation in the future but I will post links below for anyone who might wish to get better informed on this. An excellent resource is the alegalknot site which gives information about the CCAC group, what they are suspected of and information about the pending lawsuit.

http://alegalknot.wordpress.com/

"Here are the messages that were between Mary Thomas, Pam Boyce and I last year when I was investigating the Transport of Death and Suffering (June 2011) that Tim and Sue Croft and Amy Verder of Let Them Live Rescue were involved in where a large number of cats and kittens suffered and died due to gross negligence on the part of Tim Croft. All of these parties played a role in this tragedy and it was my goal to try to clarify every detail that I possibly could and so this was my attempt to obtain from Seven Star Sanctuary the truth about their involvement with Sue Croft.

I give you my permission to share these messages with whomever you like and/or to post them anywhere you choose to. I only ask that you also share my post here as well since it protects you and also makes it clear that my communication with Mary Thomas and Pam Boyce was in the context of my investigation, and that my intention was to seek the truth as it related to that, not anything else. I do not support Seven Star Sanctuary in any way, nor have I in the past, and I want to make sure that this is included in any copy of my messages that I have included here.

I also enlisted the help of a contact who visited the Paris, KY. Seven Star Sanctuary location in an attempt to find out if they appeared to be operating responsibly in terms of how they treated their animals. My contact reported to me that all appeared to be in order as best they could tell from the appearance of the rescue and in how the staff interacted with them.

This is what my contact had to say about their visit to Seven Star Sanctuary and of course they gave me their written permission to publish this.

"Crystal - went to Seven Star Sanctuary - I talked to the owners and the farm is really nice - the animals looked great, cats, dogs, horses, chickens and ducks. I did not mention the Crofts, but did go to my vet and asked all kinds of questions and my vet was very honest. She told me that any time any animal showed signs of sickness or anything they brought it immediately to her and she took care of it - she said that they took very good care of the animals and she did remember them ending up with some kittens that Sue Croft brought them and my vet said the kittens were in terrible shape, but that was the only time that Sue Croft was mentioned."

Thank you,
Crystal Harley"