Former Carlton player is slapped with 10-year ban from owning cattle after pleading guilty to shocking animal cruelty charges
Joseph Dare, 33, joined the Carlton Football Club during the 2010 Rookie Draft but would never make a first-grade appearance for the club.
The dairy farmer, who lives in Victoria, was convicted and was also fined $75,000 for the offences, which were described by Magistrate Franz Holzer as 'one of the worst examples of animal neglect that I have seen'.
A well-known footballer among the Victorian local leagues, Dare had first faced 33 charges of animal cruelty in September. Further charges came in April, with 13 aggravated animal cruelty offences and 16 animal cruelty charges for alleged offending being made against the ex-footballer.
The incidents were said to have occurred between July 2022 and January 2024.
The Colac Magistrates Court heard accounts of how livestock had both suffered and died on his Dreeite farm.
Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action prosecutor Scott Ward told the court that his farm had been visited by officers from Agriculture Victoria on multiple occasions during that period.
He presented photographs to the court, while detailing graphic incidents where cattle had suffered or died on Dare's farm.
The charges levied included allegations that Dare had not provided appropriate care, treatment or attention to the animals and had also failed to provide his livestock with sufficient food.
Ward explained that cattle were found to have body score conditions of 0-1. Some of the animals were suffering from issues including lung disease, pneumonia, starvation, dehydration and trauma.
Speaking to the court, he said one officer had described the cows as 'walking skeletons and still had calves suckling from them.'
Officers found a total of 170 animals on the farm, however, 45 had to be euthanised.
Dare was charged with in relation to breaches of Victoria's Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986.
During sentencing, Magistrate Holzer described Dare's farm as 'animal killing fields'.
'He got animals that were unwell and then neglected them even further … that's just shameful, shameful,' the magistrate explained.
After leaving Carlton, Dare, who is the son of a dairy farmer, moved to play football for the Northern Bullants in 2011 and again moved to Cobden in 2012.
After hanging up his footy boots, Dare took up a coaching role at Alvie, going on to help the side win a premiership.
Dare told police that his business had grown from 200 milking cows to 2,000, the court was told. He had just one farmhand after losing multiple members of staff back in 2023.
But Magistrate Holzer believed that his background in farming should have meant that Dare was better able to care for his animals.
'It's such a significant departure from the standards expected,' Holzer added.
'He was growing his business too quickly, he didn't have the financial capacity … It seems to me he was out of his depth, well and truly.'
Dare had been farming in the Nalangil district, 15km from Colac.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
20 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Uber driver allegedly kicks woman to the ground during collection in Perth: 'I was terrified'
Distressing footage has surfaced of a rideshare driver appearing to kick a female supermarket worker to the ground, prompting calls for stronger worker protections. The woman, aged in her 20s, was left 'terrified' by the incident, which unfolded in the carpark of a Coles supermarket in Inglewood, in Perth 's inner-city, on Tuesday last week. CCTV footage obtained by ABC News captured the moment the man appeared to walk past her nonchalantly before allegedly kicking her to the ground. She remained on the asphalt for a few moments before the man appeared to chase her out of view of the camera. Police allege the rideshare driver, a 27-year-old man from Beckenham, made verbal threats against the worker before physically assaulting her and driving away. He was charged with assaulting a retail worker who was performing their duties and making a threat to unlawfully do an act. The worker, who did not wish to be named, told the broadcaster the man kicked her after she asked him to separate the delivery orders. 'I was so scared, like, terrified,' she said. She said her employer contacted the rideshare platform and asked them to ban the 27-year-old from driving for them until an investigation into the incident was concluded. Her mother described the incident as 'shocking' and said it posed 'a real concern' for female safety. 'To be in that situation was quite clearly terrifying,' she said. She also raised concerns about information sharing between rideshare platforms, asking whether the driver in question could feasibly work for another service. It cast doubts on recent efforts to crack down on retail worker violence across the state, including a new 'assault retail worker' offence imposed in WA in July last year. Since, then 329 people have been charged with the new offence which increased the maximum penalty to seven years imprisonment, or three years and a fine of $36,000. 'Just like other Western Australians, retail workers have every right to feel safe in their workplace,' Police Minister Paul Papalia said at the time. 'These tougher penalties send a strong message that violent behaviour towards staff simply doing their job won't be tolerated.' The 27-year-old man is due to appear in Perth Magistrates Court next month.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Australian women win right to sue Qatar Airways over invasive searches
Five Australian women who were strip-searched and invasively examined at Doha airport have won the right to sue Qatar Airways after an women were ordered off a flight and checked for whether they had given birth after a baby was found abandoned in an airport bin in 2020 - an incident that sparked global Australian judge last year found the state-owned airline could not be prosecuted under the laws governing global travel, and said the proposition its staff could have intervened was "fanciful, trifling, implausible, improbable, [and] tenuous".The women appealed, with the full bench of the Federal Court finding the primary judge erred in throwing out the case. The five women filed a lawsuit in 2021, against Qatar Airways, Qatar's Civil Aviation Authority and the operators of Hamad International Airport, a firm called sought damages over the alleged "unlawful physical contact" and false imprisonment, which had caused mental health impacts including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Other passengers who were invasively searched - including from the UK and New Zealand - were not part of the three respondents applied to have the case thrown out before it reached John Halley in April 2024 found that Qatar Airways could not be held responsible under a multilateral treaty called the Montreal Convention, which is used to establish airline liability in the event of death or injury to if the airline could be sued, the women's case had no real prospect of success, he said: Qatar Airways staff could not have influenced the actions of Qatari police who removed the women from the flight, nor the nurses who examined them in ambulances on the Halley also struck out the women's case against Qatar's aviation regulator, saying it was immune from foreign prosecution, but said they could proceed with parts of their case against Justice Angus Stewart, Justice Debra Mortimer and Justice James Stellios found the primary judge had made rulings on issues that could only be decided at upheld Justice Halley's decision to throw out the case against Qatar's aviation regulator, but said the complainants had the right to sue both Qatar Airways and case is now expected to continue to trial in the Federal Court, the women's lawyer Damian Sturzaker said."Our clients endured a traumatic experience on that night in Doha and they deserve to have their day in court and compensation for their suffering," Mr Sturzaker said, according to The Australian. The women have previously told the BBC they did not consent to the examinations and were not given explanations for what was happening to them."I felt like I had been raped," said British grandmother Mandy, who asked to withhold her said she thought she was being kidnapped and held Gulf state launched a criminal prosecution which led to a suspended jail term for an airport Mr Sturzaker in 2021 told the BBC the women were suing because of a perceived lack of action from wanted a formal apology from Qatar and for the airport to change its procedures to make sure the incident does not happen again.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
Court grants leave for Australian women to sue Qatar Airways over alleged invasive physical examinations
Five Australian women who allege they were forced off a Qatar Airways plane by armed guards before some were intimately examined at Doha airport will be able to sue the airline directly, the federal court has ruled. The women launched an appeal in April last year hoping to overturn a ruling that the airline could not face trial for the October 2020 incident, when they were among more than a dozen women forcibly led from a Sydney-bound plane and escorted into ambulances. Four of the women underwent bodily examinations – three of which were invasive – without consent as part of a local investigation to find the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a bathroom in Hamad international airport. The infant survived. The episode sparked international outrage, with the women suing Qatar Airways Group, Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) and Matar, the Qatari company responsible for airports operation and management, for negligence, assault, false imprisonment and battery. Sign up: AU Breaking News email But the case against the airline, in which they sought damages over alleged 'unlawful physical contact', was dismissed, with Justice John Halley finding that Qatar Airways should not have to go to trial because its employees could not have influenced the actions of Qatari police, who boarded the planes to remove the women. Halley also found that the QCAA was immune from the court's jurisdiction and determined that the five women could instead refile their claims for damages against Matar. The women lodged an appeal against the judgment, hoping to pursue Qatar Airways and the QCAA directly. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion On Thursday morning the federal chief justice, Angus Stewart, said the court found that Halley had 'erred' when he summarily dismissed the airline's claims that the invasive examinations had not taken place in 'the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking' the aircraft. 'There is no sufficiently high degree of certainty that what happened to the appellants in the ambulance could not ultimately be found to have been in 'the course of any of the operations of embarking or disembarking',' Stewart told the court. The issue could 'only be decided at trial and not on a summary basis'. He also found that Matar's application to set aside service should have been dismissed – and that its claim a nurse who had who performed the bodily examinations was not its employee was arguable. It was an 'error to conclude at this stage of the proceeding that Matar's duty of care cannot possibly extend to the circumstances in and around the ambulance', he ruled. He ordered Qatar Airways and Matar to pay the costs of the appeal. But the judge dismissed the women's appeal against the QCAA, telling the court the evidence showed management activities of the government-run authority 'were in pursuit of public functions of the State of Qatar'.
