The SPCA was very aware of all the animals that suffered at Rutledge's hands for so long.

But even after Rutledge's severe neglect was exposed in the press, the SPCA felt so invulnerable, that it did nothing.

Seeing the suffering animals at Rutledge's, and knowing that the SPCA was going to do nothing and get away with it again, is one of the many reasons for AAS's determination to expose the SPCA for its of decades self-serving, not animal-serving.

The mental image of those poor animals, especially the ducklings, were added to all the other images of suffering animals being ignored by the SPCA that AAS saw for years.

In fact, the SPCA was invulnerable. Infrequently, stories of SPCA atrocities would bob up but they weren't tied together. The media, and so the public, thought what they were reading were just innocent lapses made by a Society of animal lovers who were, according to SPCA p.r., overworked and understaffed, and each was forgiven and forgotten.

AAS knew that all the evidence of decades of SPCA self-serving policies and practices and hundreds of examples had to be put together in one place and all the dots connected if the SPCA were ever to be made to actually prevent cruelty instead of enabling it, and that is what AAS did.

We did it for thousands of chained dogs, and gassed cats, and starving horses and cows...and we did it for the ducklings. And it worked. The SPCA is now, for the first time in its hundred years plus history, actually preventing cruelty.