Anne Shumate Williams aka Anne Goland, 57, charged in Orange animal cruelty case is out on bond

VIRGINIA -- The Orange County woman facing 27 counts of animal cruelty related to a Somerset horse rescue operation was released from jail Friday evening on a $75,000 bond.

Central Virginia Regional Jail officials confirmed that Anne Goland, 57, was released from the facility. Earlier in the day, an Orange County judge approved the bond after defense attorneys and county prosecutors negotiated the amount.

Goland has been in jail since her Oct. 26 arrest and had been held without bond as a possible flight risk.

Goland, who also is known as Anne Shumate Williams, was arrested after sheriff’s deputies and animal control officers seized more than 110 animals, including 81 horses. They also seized donkeys, dogs, cats and chickens from her Peaceable Farm Inc. rescue facility.

  

Photos: Horseandman.com

The Orange County Sheriff’s Office and animal control personnel searched the property on Oct. 19 and Oct. 26 and arrested Goland on Oct. 26.

Orange County General District Court records show that she is scheduled for a hearing on the charges Wednesday.

At the time of the arrest, Sheriff Mark Amos said the farm “was one of the most horrendous sites” he’d seen in his years in law enforcement, adding that deputies found six dead horses, a dead donkey and some dogs, cats and chickens. He said nine horses had to be euthanized.

Hope’s Legacy Equine Rescue, of Afton, took 29 of the horses seized from Peaceable Farm. Executive Director Maya Proulx said four have died.

“The other horses are doing well,” she said. “We have 25 survivors and they are starting to gain weight and their personalities are coming through.”

 

Proulx said of the four horses that died, one was euthanized due to injuries that had been improperly treated, one was euthanized for tumors in an infected eye socket, one collapsed in its stall and could not get up and another died of what may have been a heart defect.

Proulx said she was not pleased that Goland was granted bond.

“I am, of course, disappointed,” she said. “I am happy that under the bond’s conditions she is not allowed on the property or to terminate her sister’s power of attorney.”

Goland was the president of Peaceable Farm, which had a nonprofit status with the IRS.

According to the nonprofit’s mission statement, Peaceable Farm was created to “purchase at auction horses that otherwise would be bought by slaughterhouses in Canada and/or Mexico where they are inhumanely processed and then shipped out for both human and animal consumption.”

IRS forms filed by the nonprofit from 2011 to 2013 show the organization formed in 2011 and quickly began losing money.

In 2011 the nonprofit had $696,582 in income and donations and $622,415 in expenses, for a balance of $74,167. In 2012, it had a little over $1 million in income but expenses exceeded income by $45,321.

In 2013, the last year for which the nonprofit has filed an IRS 990 form, Peaceable Farm brought in $1.127 million but had $1.193 in expenses, finishing the year some $66,000 in the red.

Forms for 2014 are not available. It’s common for nonprofits to file 990 forms a year to 18 months after a fiscal year ends.

Peaceable Farm also had a property in Maryland, which was investigated by Montgomery County Animal Control, according to officials there. The investigation led to charges of improperly watering horses. Montgomery officials said questionable sanitary conditions were addressed and that the animals at the property were not considered malnourished or maltreated so no other charges were filed.

Those horses were later moved from the Maryland property to the Orange County property, according to Montgomery officials.

(Daily Progress - Nov 14, 2015)

Earlier:

• Seizure hearing Nov. 18 in Somerset animal cruelty case