The Story of Howard Baker, DVM

PETA has found its new Bobby Berosini. In June of 1997, PETA accused Dr. Baker of cruelty, using heavily edited tapes and a written statement from one of their own operatives as "evidence" to that fact. They now have a new false and deceptive "victory" to masturbate over while the victims of their deception are left to wonder what they are going to do now.

This operative, Michelle Rokke, was working in Baker's clinic while waiting to go undercover at a nearby medical research facility. Rokke claimed that she saw animals being abused on her second day of work, but continued to work there for 10 months without making a single complaint about the alleged mistreatment. You know what she was doing? She was using a camera hidden in her backpack to take over 200 hours of video footage from June 1996-April 1997. She then gave the tape to PETA, who managed to edit it down to three minutes, and the edited video managed to mail itself to several media outlets (PETA denies disseminating the video to the media). You know what happened next? The Bakers started receiving harassing phone calls. People threatened to kill them. They were confronted with public accusations of animal cruelty. Responding to pressure from activists, local law enforcement filed animal cruelty charges. Baker was convicted of animal cruelty in 1999, and lost his license to practice veterinary medicine, after 20 years without so much as a censure on his record.

Needless to say, Baker appealed the decision. He won on appeal, and his license was reinstated. The New Jersey Superior Court justice who overturned the conviction said that the operative who infiltrated Dr. Baker's practice was to closely affiliated with PETA, and that her testimony was not credible. Here is what the judge wrote:

"I cannot find that Michelle Rokae(sp) is a credible witness such as to be the reed on which the State has built this case. ... Her bias was amply set forth in the record. She candidly admitted that she saw animal abuse where others may not. She has made a career of her devotion not to animal welfare but to animal rights."

Following his victory, Dr. Baker filed suit against PETA and Rokke for malicious prosecution. Rokke put on an emotional display and cried as she swore that she felt that what she was witnessing was animal abuse. Despite witnesses that refuted her claims of cruelty, the jury bought every word of it. They failed to see how these accusations had destroyed Dr. Baker's life due to their maliciousness. The problem is that the law in this case is too subjective. New Jersey law does not see maliciousness if the accuser believes the accusations to be true. You know what that means? All you people in New Jersey can make all the false accusations you want, so long as you can convince a jury that you believe them to be true. Also, this means that an animal rights extremist can bring animal cruelty charges against veterinarians and entertainers simply because they don't agree with the practice.

PETA has a history of doing this (see "Berosini", below). They have a history of hiding behind the First Amendment by having operatives lie to gain employment at target institutions, sneak around with hidden cameras, and use the results of their amateur espionage, with the help of a PowerMac and Apple's Final Cut Pro, to condemn people and projects that they disagree with. Then they hide behind "freedom of expression" to avoid being held accountable for the damage they do.

Read more about this case here.