- Kim Hollingsworth says she is the victim of a Facebook hate campaign
- The former stripper and police recruit is in hiding under an assumed name
- Convicted of animal neglect against four horses at two Sydney properties
- The 48-year-old was ordered to pay $67,609 for vet costs and $46,768 for professional costs in court this week
- Ms Hollingsworth says she will appeal against the convictions
- Reveals she is facing further charges relating to 16 other horses
- Ms Hollingsworth’s time as a stripper and police informant was portrayed in the TV series Underbelly: The Golden Mile
By Stephen Gibbs and Emily Crane for Daily Mail Australia
Published: 06:31 GMT, 22 November 2014 | Updated: 15:28 GMT, 22 November 2014
Former Kings Cross stripper and police trainee Kim Hollingsworth, who was this week found guilty of animal neglect, says she is the victim of a vicious Facebook hate campaign that has forced her to go into hiding under an assumed name.
Ms Hollingsworth has told Daily Mail Australia she has vengeful enemies so jealous of her previous reputation as a horse rescuer they have threatened her life, stolen her car and wrongly accused her of cruelty to animals.
On Wednesday, a magistrate ordered Ms Hollingsworth pay more than $100,000 in costs after convicting her of charges including starving horses on properties at Brownlow Hill and Mulgoa, west of Sydney, late last year.
Former policewoman and Kings Cross stripper Kim Hollingsworth has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 in vet costs after she was convicted of starving her horses
Ms Hollingsworth was dismissed as a NSW Police trainee in 1995 after failing to reveal her past as a prostitute and stripper in Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross
The one-time police trainee, whose earlier short careers as a Kings Cross stripper and prostitute were portrayed in the television series Underbelly: The Golden Mile, maintained she had done nothing wrong and would appeal against the convictions.
She says she is the victim of a Facebook-led hate campaign which at one stage had more than 3000 followers and which has caused her to fear for her life. ‘I’m now hiding under an assumed name somewhere in Sydney,’ she said.
Ms Hollingsworth said she had never been cruel to animals and pictures showing emaciated horses in her care did not prove she had neglected animals.
‘Any horse I save comes in looking like s….,’ she said.
Ghrib, a bay gelding Ms Hollingsworth was found to have neglected, came to her ‘ in the most exaciated condition I’d ever seen’.
Ghrib, the same horse as in the previous picture, is seen here feeding.
The 48-year-old said one of the horses she was convicted of failing to properly feed, a bay gelding called Ghrib, was 29 years old, was missing teeth, and ‘came to me in the most emaciated condition I’d ever seen in my life’.
Ms Hollingsworth was forced to surrender five horses to the RSPCA and ordered to pay $67,609 for vet costs and $46,768 for professional costs at Penrith Local Court.
The charges included failing to provide proper and sufficient food and failure to provide veterinary treatment to four horses in three separate matters. Ms Hollingsworth pleaded not guilty.
‘In one month I had the vet out to six different horses,’ she said. ‘So it’s not like I was trying to avoid vet bills.’
RSPCA inspectors responded to a complaint regarding horses at a Brownlow Hill property, in Sydney’s south-west, in August 2013.
A chestnut brumby mare Ms Hollingsworth was found to have neglected.
No sign of neglect: Horses grazing happily on Ms Hollingsworth’s property.
They found a grey pony mare in an emaciated body condition and Ms Hollingsworth was issued with written directions to have the horse seen to by a veterinarian.
That pony, Sadie, was aged about 35, Ms Hollingsworth said, and she had been looking after her for six to eight weeks. Sadie had an undetected eye condition and no teeth. ‘She would just stand there and not eat,’ she said.
‘Obviously (the short time) in my hands it was not enough for her to gain significant weight.’
‘I did my best with her. As far as I was concerned, I was following the vet’s instructions.’
A month later, she was issued further directions to provide veterinary treatment and proper and sufficient food to Sadie and Ghrib.
Ms Hollingsworth said bushfires – shown by the smoke in the rear of this picture – had prevented her from feeding some horses every day.
A chestnut brumby mare Ms Hollingsworth was found to have neglected.
This 29-year-old bay gelding, Ghrib, came to Ms Hollingsworth in ‘the most emaciated condition I’d ever seen in my life’.
However, Ms Hollingsworth said Ghrib was missing teeth, had been ‘very problematic’ and fluctuated widely in weight. ‘There’s a million reasons why a horse doesn’t gain weight,’ she said.
On October 31, the RSPCA were called again to the property where they claimed Sadie was in need of urgent treatment. Sadie and Ghrib were taken into care after being found to have dental issues. Sadie is the horse Ms Hollingsworth said has no teeth.
On November 5, the RSPCA was called to a Mulgoa property, near Penrith in Sydney’s west, in a separate matter after concerns were raised over the emaciated condition of a brumby mare.
The animal was seized and was found to have lice and worms. Ms Hollingsworth said that horse had been resistant to worming and lice treatment had not worked. At the time, bushfires in the area had sometimes prevented her from visiting the animals every day.
‘I drove through flames to get to those horses,’ she said.
Later in November, RSPCA inspectors were called to the Mulgoa property again to look at a chestnut brumby mare and foal.
The mare was in an emaciated condition, the court heard.
Both horses were seized and a vet determined the mare was suffering from lice and worms. Ms Hollingsworth said: ‘Lice can be very hard to get rid of. Horses can reinfect each other.’
Ms Hollingsworth said it was difficult to maintain weight on brumbies. ‘Brumbies have this way of just plummeting very quickly,’ she said.
This is the second time Ms Hollingsworth has been convicted of offences under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act for similar charges. She has also beaten another set of charges, will appeal against this week’s decision and has one more set of charges to defend in court next month.
This grey pony Sadie has no teeth and is about 35 years old, Ms Hollingsworth says.
Sadie the pony eating. ‘ paid the vet to come and see her and followed his expert advice to just keep feeding her,’ Ms Hollingsworth said. ‘She was actually over fed.’
‘Every case I lose will go to the Supreme Court because I’ve got nothing to lose,’ she said. ‘It’s not the money. It’s all about the horses’ lives. They would all be dead if it were not for me.’
Ms Hollingsworth told Daily Mail Australia she had been the subject of a Facebook hate campaign by enemies she had exposed as promoting themselves as horse rescuers when they were in fact selling the horses they ‘rescued’ to a slaughterhouse.
Two of the women she alleges to be campaigning against her have taken out apprehended violence orders against Ms Hollingsworth. She, in turn, is applying for orders against them.
Ms Hollingsworth says her enemies have made death threats against her, trespassed on her properties, stolen her car, and almost driven her to suicide. She said one of the woman campaigning against her had threatened to slit one of her horse’s throat.
‘They’re just jealous,’ she said. ‘I was saving horse after horse. I’ve never said no to a horse in my life. I think I just got too big for my boots in their eyes. I was saving too many horses.’
Defamed: ‘The Facebook hate group defamed me with fake or misleading photographs like this example where they convinced Facebookers this carcass was one of my dead horses I had starved to death,’ Ms Hollingsworth said. ‘It was found to be an unrelated deceased cow. I received death threats over it and similar photos.’
This chestnut brumby was found to have an infestation of lice.
Bay brumby mare with its foal, Teddy.
This bay brumby mare was infested with lice. Ms Hollingsworth denies any wrongdoing.
Ms Hollingsworth was dismissed as a NSW Police trainee in 1995 after failing to reveal her past as a prostitute and stripper in Sydney’s notorious Kings Cross.
Her story became part of the TV series based on John Ibrahim in Underbelly: The Golden Mile.
She was recruited as an undercover detective to act as an informant for the Wood royal commission into police corruption in the lates 1980s and early 1990s. Those experiences led her to being diagnosed with post traumatic stress syndrome.
Ms Hollingsworth said it was only due to what she had been through during those years that she had not thrown herself under a train.
‘This has traumatised me more than the police force thing,’ she said. ‘This is criminal what these people are doing to me and the horses.’
READER COMMENTS
In other countries they call what the R$PCA is doing “baksheesh”, or just plain old corruption. Extracting 2% from every sale without adding anything of value to the product is just another layer of inefficiency. Worse, it embodies a generalised imputation that non-certified products are of a lesser standard which is unsupported by the facts. If the same imputation was made about a specific product or brand it would be illegal under both the Trade Practices Act and the Defamation Act. But once again we have these sleazy low life stretching every limit of acceptable behaviour.
Duped is rather strong , there would need to be a intent of misleading .
Using the name of what was once a respected organisation to grab a piece of the factory pig-farming action. Having sold its soul for thirty pieces of silver it has nothing left to sell to the public in the name of charity.
A small group trying to discredit the RSPCA does not deserve so much press. Australian pig producers do a good job and have to compete with imported pork, with unknown standards. Stick together and you may have a chance.
Stock Journal needs to ask RSPCA how much they receive in royalties from their accredited farms and how much their accreditation expenses are!
Bullfrog, The RSPCA discredited itself when it resorted to polical activism against the live cattle export industry. The factory pig-farming industry has none but itself to blame for teaming up with the political activists who now control the RSPCA.
Consumer are demanding changes to production systems and are voting with their dollars. And industry deals with the problem by trying to deceive them. Take a look at producer that are truly free ranging and you will find, very profitable operations. Study supply and demand principles. Fact: At present demand is falling for intensely farmed products and increasing for free range products.
A standard gangster’s “Protection Racket” works on the basis that everyone will be robbed unless they pay up front to avoid being robbed. And anyone doubting this false logic is absolutely certain to be robbed. The R$PCA’s “Protection Racket” works on the basis that every producer is deemed to be cruel unless they pay up front to avoid being accused of cruelty. New context, same old scam, same old contemptible sleazy low life. Same old official innaction.
The once universally respected rspca is nothing more than a part of the animal lib organisation, involveing themselves in areas which are far beyond it’s original conception for animal welfare. The rspca obviously has too much money, judging by the amount of surgery performed on animals shown in their tv program, reflecting the urban unreality that animals are four legged humans. This royalty “extortion” must be how they raise a lot of this money.
So, the RSPCA has now become a certified assessing organisation now, or has it? Under who’s authority, who audits them? Just another case of a once proud and defensible organisation overtaken by vegan animal activists that will self destruct as the general public witness their mischief and decline donating to their once worthy causes.