JOHNSON COUNTY, Kan. — A convicted Johnson County animal abuser is behind bars after she was arrested twice for animal cruelty.
A judge revoked Julie Bernet’s probation and ordered her to serve a year in jail. Bernet was convicted of 11 counts of animal abuse last year. Police found 13 dogs on her property, and three of them were dead.
Prosecutors in Johnson County said Bernet violated several terms of her probation for animal abuse. Assistant District Attorney Jason Covington said she didn’t pay her fees, didn’t get counseling and didn’t report to her probation officer. There was a warrant out for her arrest because of that.
Court documents from 2015 detail the deplorable conditions dogs lived in on Bernet’s property, like improper shelter and no access to water or food.
“Several of them died as a result, and several of them were close to dying,” Covington said.
According to Covinginton, Bernet bred German Shepherds but earned a bad reputation with potential buyers.
“Those dogs that she was formerly trying to sell were a big part of what came to be abused at her property,” Covington said.
Just a few months after her March 2017 conviction in Johnson County, Bernet was arrested in Morgan County for animal cruelty again. The arresting officer testified at her probation hearing yesterday about a dirty, feces-filled residence.
“He thought there was a dead animal or a person in the house because the odor was so bad,” Covington said.
Those charges were dropped, but in January of this year, Missouri State Highway Patrol officers arrested Bernet at a St. Louis casino on a warrant for violating probation.
“She also had a dog in her truck, and she didn’t tell anyone about this, and the dog was out in the truck while she was under arrest for about seven or eight hours in 8-degree weather,” Covington said.
Officers had to break the truck’s window to save the dog. While Bernet was in jail, Covington said officers caught her trying to flush illegal pills down the toilet. All of those events are what landed her behind bars for the next year.
“This is the type of crime that we as prosecutors wished there was a range of punishment to punish the more egregious cases,” Covington said.
According to the ADA, if Bernet commits the same animal abuse crimes again when she gets out of jail, she would face felony charges. Her current convictions are misdemeanors.
