The Relationship Between Domestic Violence and Animal Abuse

Abstract

Several North American studies have found a connection between domestic violence and animal abuse. This article reports on the first Australian research to examine this connection. A group of 102 women recruited through 24 domestic violence services in the state of Victoria and a nondomestic violence comparison group (102 women) recruited from the community took part in the study. Significantly higher rates of partner pet abuse, partner threats of pet abuse, and pet abuse by other family members were found in the violent families compared with the nondomestic violence group. As hypothesized, children from the violent families were reported by their mothers to have witnessed and committed significantly more animal abuse than children from the nonviolent families. Logistic regression analyses revealed, for the group as a whole, that a woman whose partner had threatened the pets was 5 times more likely to belong to the intimate partner violence group.

Examining the links between animal abuse and human violence

“…In the study by Ascione and his colleagues [7], 61.5% of the children from women at the shelters had witnessed pet abuse, compared with just 2.9% of children of nonshelter women. A similar pattern was found in the Australian study reviewed above-29% vs. 0% [48]. Further, both of these studies uncovered relatively high rates of animal abuse among the children of battered women -13%-19%.…”

“…According to the data, between one-half to three-fourths of battered women with pets report that their companion animals have been threatened, harmed or killed by their abusers. These findings have been confirmed in studies involving women from different ethnic groups (e.g., Hispanics - [16]), as well as from other cultures (e.g., Australia - [48]). …”

“…Battered women were eleven times more likely to report that their pets had been threatened or abused than a sample of community women -54% vs. 5%. These findings were recently replicated by researchers in Australia [48]. Women who were receiving services from either a shelter or outreach agency serving battered women who owned at least one pet during their violent relationship were compared with a group of non-battered women who were recruited from neighborhood houses, workplaces, and leisure and recreational groups.…”

Friendliness to Animals and Verbal Aggressiveness to People: Using Prison Inmates Education Networks as an Illustration

“…It has already been supported that there is a positive relation between animal cruelty and violence (from homicide to family violence) [33] [34] [35] [36] [37]. Dominant hypotheses on this issue are that overflowing aggressiveness or hatred against human beings is supposed to occur on animals or that the same violence which is directed against human beings of society in general, is also directed against animals.…”

Elaboração de laudos periciais médico-veterinários: uma análise retrospectiva e prospectiva.

“…Outro aspecto que mostra a relevância dos crimes de maustratos é a existência de inúmeros estudos que relacionam a prática de maus-tratos contra animais com a ocorrência de violência doméstica (FLYNN, 2000;SIMMONS;LELHMANN, 2007;MUNRO, 2008;VOLANT et al, 2008) e a formação de personalidades criminosas (MARLET, 1995;FARACO;SEMINOTTI, 2006). A violência contra um animal é uma prática que, caso não seja coibida, pode ser entendida como normal e aceita pela sociedade, tendo como resultado o progresso da escalada da violência (MERCK, 2007).…”