The good news for roosters in Page County is that a former flourishing cockfighting venue has been closed. The bad news, according to authorities, is that occasional backyard fights continue for the amusement of those who regard the activity as a sport.
It’s no sport. Like dogfighting, which Michael Vick drew to the state’s attention as he sat out a couple of football seasons in a federal penitentiary, it is a violent, brutal sport that should not be condoned at any level.
Reports of cockfighting have surfaced in Central Virginia from time to time in the past decade or so, but rarely has anyone been charged or convicted of animal cruelty under federal or state law.
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In Page County last week, as The Associated Press and the Harrisonburg Daily News Record have reported, animal rights activist John Goodwin got a look inside the cockfighting pit he worked years to close. For decades, countless rooster fights were held in a barn containing a pit known as Little Boxwood. A raid by federal agents closed it in 2007.
Goodwin, manager of the U.S. Humane Society’s anti-animal-fighting campaign, saw all the trappings of an organized cockfighting venue. Most prominent was the roughly 10-foot by 15-foot fenced fighting pit surrounded by stadium-style seating. Nearby were three drag pits, where organizers tossed the birds to finish a fight that had gone on too long. With bloodied heads and punctured air sacs, most were struggling to breathe at that point.
“It was an elaborate criminal operation,” said Goodwin, adding that “Little Boxwood was on the national circuit.”
Behind the seating were more than two dozen rooms used to store the birds before fights. Each room held about a dozen. Combined with 14 storage sheds outside the barn, more than 500 could be stored for one derby.
Goodwin also found obscene messages left for law enforcement officers and animal rights activists written around the building following the 2007 raid that shut down the venture. “You’ll never stop it,” one of them read. “For another 100 years, it’ll still happen,” said another scribbled on the wall below the cockpit’s scoreboard.
It has stopped for now. In September 2007, a federal grand jury indicted four Virginia men, including Little Boxwood’s owner, two other organizers and a county Republican leader who was accused of funneling a $500 bribe to former Page County Sheriff Daniel Presgraves by way of a campaign contribution.
The now former sheriff was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2008, along with the Virginia Gamefowl Breeders Association and its president. Goodwin testified against Presgraves in front of the federal grand jury and was slated to do so again if the case had gone to trial, as planned. Instead, Presgraves pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges in U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg and is awaiting sentencing.
Everyone involved in the Little Boxwood case either has pleaded guilty or been convicted of various federal charges.
And with those convictions has come a change in attitude among the residents of Page County. Goodwin says the county sheriff is enforcing the law and a sheriff’s investigator said the community is more willing to phone in tips since the change in leadership.
The federal raids and prosecution of those involved have put a virtual end to the brutal and inhumane activity that a diminishing number of folks refer to as a sport. May their numbers continue to decrease as Virginia heads into a more civilized era known as the 21st century.
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