Magistrates have put a restraining order on animal rights protester Cynthia O'Neill after finding her guilty of harassment.

The 60-year-old campaigner has been ordered not to have any contact with farmer Chris Brown who breeds cats for research at Hillgrove Farm, Minster Lovell.

She has also been told not to go within one mile of the farm, even when she goes shopping into nearby Witney.

O'Neill, of Church Meadow, Milton-under-Wychwood, pleaded not guilty at Witney Magistrates Court yesterday to being abusive and threatening to Mr Brown between July last year and January.

The charge was brought under the so-called "stalking" law of the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act.

Chairman of the magistrates Ann Peverel-Cooper said: "We are not here to discuss the rights and wrongs of Mr Brown's business but whether Mrs O'Neill overstepped the mark in protesting about it."

Mr Brown took a diary to court and referred to a catalogue of incidents over a six-month period. He said O'Neill shouted at and abused him - sometimes using a megaphone - at his farm and in Witney town centre. He said: "It disrupts my daily life. It is irritating and very distressing to other members of my family."

He said he had been called a "cat killer" and "the man who breeds cats for torture."

Bill White, prosecuting, argued that her actions "went beyond lawful protest and entered the ambit of harassment."said despite a High Court injunction taken out last year which banned O'Neill from going near the farm, she had repeatedly entered the driveway to Mr Brown's house and farm buildings.

Kevin Tomlinson, defending, said: "There is no evidence that she has ever threatened Mr Brown. All it amounts to is that she shouted at him, sometimes with a megaphone."

Magistrates fined O'Neill £50 plus £75 costs. Afterwards she said: "This is a grave miscarriage of justice and we are seriously considering an appeal.

"I have a citizen's right and duty to protest about the evil trade from which farmer Brown makes money."

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