Intimate partner violence and domestic violence linked to animal abuse: a review of the literature

Abstract

Animal abuse is an instrumental form of violence used in intimate partner violence and domestic violence. These two realities coexist in today’s society, leaving the victims with psychological scars. The main objective was to analyse the presence of animal abuse in cases of intimate partner and domestic violence, and to analyse the extent to which the affective relationship the victims have with their pets can influence the decision to leave their homes, fleeing from the aggressor. The work carried out using the Prisma Methodology consisted of a systematic review of scientific articles extracted from the Web Of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, Pubmed and Google Scholar databases from the last ten years, measuring their quality with the Newcastle-Ottawa scale. The results obtained were grouped into two tables with references, on the one hand, to the principal data concerning the reviewed articles and, on the other, to the characteristics and consequences of the abuse. These results provide relevant information concerning the presence of animal abuse in situations of violence, as a strategy of indirect harm towards the victim.