Hunt saboteur injured while trying to disrupt fox hunt in Leicestershire
Lisa Jaffray tells ITV News Anglia's Stuart Leithes about her injuries
A hunt saboteur said she has been left in constant pain after a collision with a car as she tried to stop a fox hunt.
Lisa Jaffray, 47, was badly bruised and has been given morphine for her severe pain after the crash on a country estate in Knossington in Leicestershire last week.
She was on foot on a country lane before the collision with the four-wheel drive vehicle on 26 October, which was captured on camera by other members of the Northampton Saboteur Group.
Police later arrested a 59-year-old woman on suspicion of wounding with intent.
Mother-of-three Ms Jaffray, from Fen Drayton in Cambridgeshire, joined Northampton Saboteur Group in opposition to illegal hunting that sees foxes being killed by dogs.
She said: "I'm opposed to any form of animal abuse - whether that's killing them for sport or killing them for food. But the way that the fox is killed in a fox hunt is particularly graphic and violent.
"It's literally ripped apart. And they don't kill it immediately, they will run at it for miles and miles and that's part of the fun for them."
In the UK, it is illegal to hunt foxes with a pack of dogs. However, up to two dogs can be used to flush foxes out of hiding if the fox is shot quickly after it is found.
Many traditional fox hunts have moved to "drag hunting" where the hounds follow an artificial scent trail instead.
But Ms Jaffray said many hunts are still breaking the law.
She said: "Part of the sport of it is running that fox for that long that it becomes that exhausted that it can't get away from the hounds anymore and it's at that point the hounds go in and rip it apart. It's horrific."
Despite her mental and physical injuries, the mother-of-three is determined to be back out in the field as soon as possible.
"Psychologically it's been really difficult," she said, adding that she was still in shock."And it's also painful. My lower back is quite painful and I'm on morphine at the moment that's not even really masking the pain, so my doctor says we'll need to check if there's any spinal disc damage.
"My leg hurts a lot - the bruising is only just starting to come up but it's just painful, it hurts to do anything."
Ms Jaffray has been signed off work for a month, though she believes her physical injuries will heal quicker than the psychological trauma.
However, she said her injuries had not affected her desire to return as a hunt saboteur."It's the one bit of direct action where you see an immediate result," she said. "If you see a fox running across the field and you can distract the dogs and stop them from going after that fox then that's its life saved straight away.
"And sometimes it's not just foxes, it's other wildlife too. The dogs will get the scent of a muntjac or a deer or a hare or rabbit and we get in the way so they can't be killed."
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