Paw Prints the Magazine

Connecting the Dots Between Animal Cruelty and Human Violence

[Recently, the New York Times published an article titled "The Animal-Cruelty Syndrome" that has been getting a fair amount of attention on some of the social networking sites. We feel very strongly about this subject and thought we'd re-publish the article I wrote on the subject a while ago.]

By Stacy E. Smith

Now, more than ever, pets are considered a part of the family. They’re pampered and fawned over; they’re groomed within an inch of their lives and dressed to the nines. They have baby sitters, daycare and report cards. Some even come to work with us and others have their own rooms. Their lives so closely parallel our own, you can bet if the family is experiencing violence they can become targets as well.

In a violent home however, pets have a dual role. They often serve not only as an important source of comfort and stability to the victims of abuse, particularly children, but abusive family members may threaten, injure, or kill pets, often as a way of threatening or controlling others in the family. Professionals who help families in crisis are increasingly recognizing the role that animals play in the dynamics of family violence. Law enforcement agencies are (very slowly) getting a clue and training officers who respond to domestic violence calls to be aware of signs that a situation is life-threatening. These include situations where the batterer has threatened suicide, is displaying a firearm, or has hurt or killed a family pet.

In domestic violence situations, women are often afraid to leave the home out of fear the abuser will harm the family pet. It is not particularly uncommon for batterers to punish victims for leaving by abusing or killing the family pets, which has lead to the creation of animal safe house or safe haven programs, which provide foster care for the pets of victims in domestic violence situations, empowering them to leave the abusive situation and get help. (In my opinion, first responders to abuse situations and abuse hot lines would do well to have a list of those programs handy and provided automatically in places they are available.)

Pets are not only at targets within the walls of violent homes. As we have seen all too many times on the evening news, companion animals are often targets for anyone that has access to them; any passerby that believes torturing and murdering animals presents an easy source of entertainment. That type of sickening behavior is often just the disturbing tip of the iceberg.

“One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a child is to kill or torture an animal and get away with it”
~Margaret Mead-Anthropologist

Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last 25 years have shown that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty. The FBI has actually recognized the connection since the 1970s, when its analysis of the lives of serial killers suggested that most had killed or tortured animals as children. Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder. Some experts go so far as to say that those who abuse animals for no obvious reason are simply budding psychopaths. That type of behavior makes it abundantly clear that they have no empathy and only see the world as what it’s going to do for them.

The line separating an animal abuser from someone capable of committing human abuse is much finer than most people care to consider – possibly microscopic. People abuse animals for the same reasons they abuse people. Some of them will stop with animals, but enough have been proven to continue on to commit violent crimes to people that it’s worth paying attention to.

Virtually every serious violent offender has a history of animal abuse in their past, and since there’s no way to know which animal abuser is going to stop there (as if that’s not bad enough) and which will continue on to commit violent human crimes, they should ALL be taken that seriously. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Allen Brantley was quoted as saying “Animal cruelty… is not a harmless venting of emotion in a healthy individual; this is a warning sign…” It should be looked at as exactly that. It is a clear indicator of psychological issues that can and often DO lead to more violent human crimes.

History is actually full of high-profile examples that illustrate this connection:

• Patrick Sherrill, who killed 14 coworkers at a post office and then shot himself, had a history of stealing local pets and allowing his own dog to attack and mutilate them.
• Earl Kenneth Shriner, who raped, stabbed, and mutilated a 7-year-old boy, had been widely known in his neighborhood as the man who put firecrackers in dogs’ rectums and strung up cats.
• Brenda Spencer, who opened fire at a San Diego school, killing two children and injuring nine others, had repeatedly abused cats and dogs, often by setting their tails on fire.
• Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler” who killed 13 women, trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes in his youth.
• Carroll Edward Cole, executed for five of the 35 murders of which he was accused, said his first act of violence as a child was to strangle a puppy.
• In 1987, three Missouri high school students were charged with the beating death of a classmate. They had histories of repeated acts of animal mutilation starting several years earlier. One confessed that he had killed so many cats he’d lost count.
• Two brothers who murdered their parents had previously told classmates that they had decapitated a cat.
• Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had impaled the heads of dogs, frogs, and cats on sticks.
• Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 12 classmates before turning their guns on themselves, bragged to their friends about mutilating animals.
• When he was young, Dennis Rader (the BTK serial killer from Wichita, KS) would torture and hang animals.

It is not only essential for those who respond to family violence and animal cruelty to be alert to this connection, but society should go a step further. Professionals in domestic violence intervention, law enforcement, child protection, human and veterinary medicine, education, and animal care and control should get to know their counterparts in other professions and work together to establish strategies for a coordinated response to these needs.

*Animal Cruelty/Human Violence Awareness Week is in April, but we believe it should be every day of every week of every month.

To read the NY Times article click here.

Tags: abuse, abuse victim, abusers, animal abuse, animal cruelty, animal cruelty syndrome, babysitter, batterer, daycare, domestic violence, family violence, FBI, intervention, Margaret Mead, New York Times, psychological issues, safe haven