The Link Between Cruelty to Animals and Violence Towards Humans

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

- Margaret Mead

The statement in our introduction is chilling. Up until the past 20 years, the connection between violence against animals and violence against humans went unrecognized. Now a growing body of research has shown that people who abuse animals rarely stop there.

Increasingly, child protection and social service agencies, mental health professionals, and educators recognize that animal abuse is aggressive and antisocial behavior. It’s also a reliable predictor of violence against people after a young abuser grows up.

NO EMPATHY

Some children fail to develop empathy, and without this key quality, they cannot recognise their victims’ pain. When they begin to “act out”, the first target animals. As adults, they find new victims among the most vulnerable – children, partners, and the elderly. In South Africa, women are targeted.

Did you know that in the USA the FBI sees animal cruelty as a predictor of violence against people and considers past animal abuse when profiling serial killers? National and state studies have established that approximately 71 per cent of women seeking shelter from abuse reported that their partners had threatened, injured, or killed one or more family pets. In assessing youth at risk of becoming violent, the U.S. Department of Justice stresses a history of animal abuse.

Even more chilling is that more than 80 per cent of family members being treated for child abuse also had abused animals. In two thirds of these cases, an abusive parent had killed or injured a pet.