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Back when I was a teenager and hadn’t yet learned to stop watching pet cops shows for the sake of my stress levels, I remember learning an interesting, if obvious, fact. People who abuse (and this is direct physical abuse, not criminal neglect) their animals are much more likely to become violent against others, especially their family members.
Now a county in New York State is taking that information to its next logical conclusion: Suffolk County, NY is launching a pet abuser registry. According to MSNBC, the purpose of the registry is to create a list of potential family abusers; just like sex offender registries are created to protect children, this list is meant to warn others about potentially dangerous people in their neighborhood.
As much as I might like to believe that the registry might exist to protect pets, that isn’t its main purpose (though it’s a positive side effect. I don’t doubt local shelters would search such registries before adopting out their pets). The list acknowledges a now accepted psychological truth that violence against animals is an early warning sign of domestic and other abuses.
“Animal abuse is not only the tip of the iceberg of family violence, but it’s often the first warning sign and the one a neighbor is most likely to call in,” said Phil Arkow, of the National Link Coalition, an organization dedicated toward teaching people about the interaction between animal and human abuse. “People assume the kids and the spouse can pick up the phone on their own, but they feel sorry for the animal because it’s a silent victim,” he said to MSNBC.
While the Suffolk County animal abuser registry is the first of its kind, it’s only the latest indication of growing acknowledgment of the link between animal and human abuse. Four states now list animal abuse as part of the definition of domestic violence, and nineteen states will issue restraining orders for family pets (that keep certain humans away from pets, not vice versa).
The statistics of the link between animal and human, especially domestic, abuse are just overwhelming. MSNBC has plenty of them: seventy-one percent of women in spousal/domestic abuse cases say that their pets were hurt or even killed by their abusers. Of battered women with pets, half claim that the reason they didn’t escape to shelters was due to the fact that they were worried about what would happen to pets left behind.
The link works both ways. Humane and animal abuse workers in California and Ohio are required to report any suspicions they might have of child abuse when they enter a home on a case. Scott Heiser of the Animal Legal Defense Fund encourages child abuse lawyers to open their interviews with children by asking after the family’s pets, because seeing how suspected abusers might have treated their animals could hint as to how they treated their children.
A Nashville domestic abuse hotline upgraded reports of abusers with weapons, talk of suicide, and threats to harm animals to high risk alerts. Deaths from domestic violence then fell 80%. Now women’s shelters are welcoming animals, or redirecting them to local animal safe houses, so the pets are not left alone in dangerous situations.
This is a tragic case of the bond between humans and animals. Luckily it’s being acknowledged so that humans and their pets can both be safe from sick, twisted individuals.
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*(This image by Joe Sullivan is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
