‘Ethical farmer’ and wife of gangland lawyer charged with animal cruelty

A self-proclaimed ethical farmer and author of several books on sustainable food production has faced Geelong Magistrates’ Court over three charges of serious animal cruelty alleged to have happened at her family’s hobby farm. Clare Voitin, 57, was charged with aggravated cruelty of a chestnut and white pony called Harry following an investigation by RSPCA inspectors. The pony was found covered in urine and flies in October 2023, after the RSPCA received a report the animal had been lying down for three days at the property, and had been the subject of a previous investigation, according to court documents.

The pony was euthanised as a result of its extensive injuries, and Voitin was also charged with failing to provide appropriate veterinary attention and confining the animal in a way that caused unreasonable suffering. Court documents reveal the RSPCA is seeking a disqualification order that would ban Voitin from owning animals. Lawyer Seda Kilic, acting for Voitin, did not enter a plea on her client’s behalf in a hearing on Wednesday, but asked the magistrate to suppress her client’s identity because of safety concerns.

However, the request was denied because Voitin failed to provide the court with evidence, other than a document that referred to a psychologist’s report from 2020, when her husband, underworld lawyer John Voitin, was shot in the leg outside their home. The court ordered that details about the location of Voitin’s farm and other properties could not be published. The charges laid by the RSPCA appear at odds with Voitin’s professed commitment to ethical and sustainable agriculture, which she regularly espouses on social media and her personal website.

Voitin previously posted that the farm had provided her three children with the chance to embrace the “life cycle of planting, growing and harvesting their own foods”. “They also appreciate the challenges that our local primary producers face, and understand and respect the life cycle of animals – one that is imperative we treat with uncompromised ethics and respect and must be significantly improved in our current, flawed, food system,” Voitin wrote on her website. She said the 31-hectare property was “home to sheep, pigs, horses, cows, chooks and peacocks, as well as enjoying the [area’s] largest heirloom apple orchard, countless fruit trees and acreage food gardens, all grown organically and with the dedicated mindset of nurturing the land”.

On a separate website that promotes her alcohol brand, Heathcote Gin, Voitin describes herself as a “sustainability nerd” and espouses the environmental benefits of paddock-to-plate food production. “Clare has always committed to adopting an ethical and sustainable approach to farming and agriculture, always striving to protect and respect the land she is privileged to use, and to ensure that a more sustainable future in farming is possible for the generations that will follow in her footsteps,” the Heathcote Gin website says. In 2020, Voitin posted to social media about an injured Wagyu calf that she was forced to euthanise.

“It’s like ending the life of your family pets. Despite what some critics may say, farmers absolutely care about their animals. No normal human copes with this type of suffering,” she wrote.

Over the past five years, Voitin has been confronted by a series of significant setbacks, including afire at her rural property and the recent incarceration of her husband. John Voitin, a disgraced underworld lawyer, was sentenced to a 12-month jail term in September after pleading guilty in the County Court to two counts of obtaining financial advantage by deception and one count of perverting the course of justice. Judge Gavan Meredith said Voitin had abused the position of trust he held as a lawyer by creating fake debts as part of an elaborate sham to help his clients dodge bankruptcy and avoid debts with legitimate creditors.

“As a member of the legal profession, any activity to pervert the course of justice must be treated seriously,” Meredith said in his judgment last year. “Your offending was … protracted and involved the misuse by you of your legal training.”

In 2018, detectives from the anti-bikie taskforce raided John Voitin’s former luxury home and the South Melbourne offices of his former firm, Stanton Grant Legal, as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering by the Comancheros outlaw motorcycle gang. At the time, police said the businesses they targeted were suspected of being “used as a front for organised crime activities and … used in money-laundering activities”.

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