AN ANTI-hunt campaigner has been cleared of harassing a North Wales hunt’s terrier man.

But Judith Hewitt, aged 69, failed to overturn her conviction for assaulting Robert Smith after he shot a fox on a country estate near Denbigh.

Hewitt, of Hadley Crescent, Rhyl, denied laying a finger on him.

Judge Geraint Walters, sitting with two magistrates at an appeal hearing at Mold Crown Court, said she had not lied to the court in any deliberate sense.

“But her emotions consumed her and she has large blanks in her memory of events,” he said.

“We put that down to the fact that she was labouring under intense emotion.”

Hewitt later told how it had been two and a half years of misery for her but pledged that she would be campaigning again.

She told how she had been subjected to a hate campaign against her following the incident at The Plas Newydd Estate at Trefnant, on January 28, 2014.

“The on-line abuse has been horrific,” she explained.

She had been subject to all sorts of disgusting threats, whole forums had been set up to abuse her and she had been unable to continue with her anti hunt work.

Hewitt said that she was delighted the harassment charge had gone, she was “a little disappointed“ with the assault conviction but said a lot of people stood by her.

In court, the judge said he had decided at the end of the prosecution case that there was no case to answer on the harassment charge.

He ruled that on-line entries made by Hewitt on Facebook, and others on an anti-hunt site, were not directed at Mr Smith.

Mr Smith said that day he was using a terrier to get a fox out of a hole in the ground to enable him to shoot it.

He had the landowner’s permission to pursue foxes with a terrier, not for sport, but because pheasants were being killed, and had the necessary paperwork.

Hewitt’s view was that they were trying to draw a fox from the ground in order to drive it into the path of the hunt that was taking place that day, which would be unlawful, the judge said.

It was Mr Smith’s evidence that earlier that day he had laid a scent for the Flint and Denbigh Hunt to follow well away from the area where he wanted to shoot a fox – and the judge said the court accepted that.

When Hewitt, a hunt monitor, turned up with colleagues, Mr Smith said that she tried to prevent him flushing the fox from the ground, he told her to stand back, and said if the fox came out then he was going to shoot it.

Much of what happened was then captured on film by Hewitt herself using a hand held device, which the court had seen, and which was posted on YouTube.

It was Mr Smith’s evidence that when he shot the fox, Hewitt became seriously upset; screaming and crying and sobbing out loud.

She ended up collecting some of the fox’s blood from the ground and pleaded with him to hand the fox over to her so that she could “lay it to rest”. Mr Smith refused.

It was while in that emotional state that Mr Smith said she lashed out at him, striking him to the back with either slaps or punches in an endeavour to get at the dead fox.

“The appellant categorically denied that she laid a finger on him,” Judge Walters said.

She denied that she was hysterical, accepting she was merely upset, did not assault him and alleged that Mr Smith pushed her.

When Hewitt requested a colleague to dial 999 it was suggested that Mr Smith had threatened her with a gun, something she adamantly denied ever saying.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, the judge said it was clear that the impression was given that a threat with a firearm had been made because as a result armed police officers and a police helicopter arrived.

“It follows from that, that we take the view that the appellant is not always accurate when she seeks now to piece together the events of that day.

“She sees things now rather differently to what they were during this highly charged and emotional episode,” the judge said.

The court did not accept that she had been pushed, but did not condemn her as an untruthful witness, but one where her emotions had completely consumed her reason and recall.

The court also rejected an argument by defending barrister Ellis Sareen that if the court found she had assaulted Mr Smith, then she was acting to prevent a crime, the digging of a badger sett where the fox was.

“We are sure that she did strike him and equally sure that she was not doing so to prevent any crime from being committed,” he said.

Judge Walters said that Hewitt was passionate about her cause and felt real pain when she witnessed what she firmly believed to be the needless and senseless killing of a wild animal.

“We do not doubt her sincerity,” he said.

“But on this day there came a point when she lost all control, and reason, and therefore acted out of character.”