A farming couple who used secret cameras to catch a perverted worker having sex with their calves have revealed they are still rocked by the trauma three years later.
Ian and Tracey Farwell still have CCTV cameras monitoring their livestock 24/7 and are trying to reclaim thousands of pounds they lost through Liam Brown’s actions.
The couple hit the headlines in December 2023 when Brown was sentenced for sexual penetration of a live animal and causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal.
The Farwells knew something was wrong when the calves on their fourth-generation farm kept mysteriously dying.
But despite suspicious things like gates left open and rubber gloves strewn around, police said there was little they could do unless the family caught the culprit in the act.
The issues started in January 2022 and before Brown was arrested, they had between 20 to 30 calves die at the farm in Burton, Christchurch in Dorset.
Over a six month period the couple found surgical gloves, a discarded cow rope and a pair of trousers scattered around their fourth generation farm.
Determined to get to the bottom of the matter, they installed several CCTV cameras in the cowshed and devised a plan to catch the culprit.
They finally caught him when their son Ralph heard a calf in distress and saw a figure in the pen with the young cows on the CCTV. Several family members surrounded the cowshed, blocking all the exits.
Brown tried to flee but jumped over a fence into another pen and was trampled by the cows. The Farwells surrounded him and realised it was Brown, the son of a former farm worker who they had known since he was five.
He avoided jail and was handed a community order with unpaid work and was ordered to pay the Farwells £600 compensation, which Mrs Farwell said he has paid.
She said they have not seen or heard from him since, but she still worries every morning that he will have made a midnight visit.
Tracey said: ‘I always worry that he might come back. I still check the shed every morning and think I hope he hasn’t been here and we still have the CCTV cameras up.
‘But thankfully I’ve seen nothing of him since the court case and he did pay the compensation.
‘It’s a huge relief not walking around the farm and finding dead or dying calves any more.
‘Deaths do happen, but I think we’ve had maybe nine since April last year and when he was doing what he was doing we had up to 30.
‘I knew something wasn’t right, we considered everything – germs, some sort of bacterial infection.
‘We always got our calves from our neighbouring farm, they did all sorts of testing but couldn’t find any explanation and said they must be picking up something at our farm.
‘The vets came out and did all sorts of tests – urine, poo, blood – and could not find anything to explain the deaths.
‘All the vet visits cost us thousands of pounds – it was about £100 a test and about £150 an hour for visits.
‘And each calf cost £200 to buy, but then it’s the lost value as well. They would have stayed here for about two years before we sold them and then they would go for about £1,300 each at the time, so tens of thousands lost.
‘We’ve just started to go through an insurance claim. Originally they said we weren’t covered for that sort of thing but it was picked up by them a few months ago so we are waiting to find out now.
‘Everything has gone back to normal. People do try to ask us about it all the time, I usually just say I don’t want to talk about it and change the subject.
‘It sounds like a joke but it was very serious. My husband and I were under so much stress, blaming each other. He basically murdered those babies and I do worry what if he does something else, something even worse.’
Mr Farwell said 20 calves had died prematurely before Brown’s arrest in June 2022 – compared to three in the 18 months since.
But he said at the time: ‘We can’t prove it 100 per cent it was because of him, they could have been ill. But since it stopped last year we have only had two or three die. It has cost us tens of thousands.’
The court heard that Brown had no qualifications but was working with an agency and had been doing night shifts stacking shelves.
In 2023, Judge Keith Cutler sentenced Brown to a three-year community order with rehabilitation requirements and 150 hours of unpaid work.
The Farwell family have run their cattle farm for 144 years and have about 400 cows.
Tracey said at the time: ‘You never think that somebody could be so depraved.
‘It was my job to feed the calves. They would be fine when I left them at night and then I would find them ill in the morning and struggling to breathe.
‘I thought they had pneumonia so I was trying to treat them for that but it was actually because he was strangling them with his belt.
‘He took his belt off to tie the calf to the gate.
‘He should have gone to prison.’