Neurobiology researchers John Schlag and Madeleine Schlag-Rey filed a police report in late April reporting that their home had been vandalized by animal rights activists while they were at home. Schlag and Schlag-Rey study the visual systems of monkeys and human beings.
The actions of the animal rights extremists took place at the same time that a University of Calfornia-Los Angeles campus group was holding protests and demonstrations for World Week for Animals in Laboratories.
According to the couple, at about 10:15 p.m. on April 28, 2003 they heard loud banging and kicking noises directed at their door. “The way it proceeded,” Schlag-Rey told the Daily Bruin, “. . . we felt that the door was going to be kicked in.”
The vandals broke a street lamp, a door window, and broke a screen in front of their house with a large rock that had been thrown from the street. “We could have been killed (by the rock),” Schlag-Rey told the Daily Bruin.
Erica Sutherland of UCLA’s Students for Animal Liberation told The Daily Bruin that her group only participated in peaceful protests and she had no idea who might have terrorized the couple.
Sutherland justified protesting outside of people’s houses saying,
I think it’s incredibly important that neighbors know that they are living near animal abusers.
Schlag-Rey told The Daily Bruin, however, that the entire point of the home protests is to intimidate researchers. But she added, “We as researchers are not intimidated — we are not hiding.”
Source:
Researchers’ Home Vandalized. Jennie Herriot, The Daily Bruin, April 30, 2003.