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Westmoreland County resident
Mary Ann Lauffer, Ph.D.,
managing director of Society
& Animals Forum would like
to share this excerpt of a
study with Inspiring Times
InWestmoreland readers. It
is a summary of “Animal
Abuse in Childhood and Later
Support for Interpersonal
Violence in Families”. The
author of the original
article was Clifton P. Flynn
and was published in Society
& Animals, Volume 7, Number
2, 1999. This was one of the
significant studies
providing evidence of the
“link” between animal abuse
and human violence and
supported the need to
intervene in the
self-reinforcing cycle of
domestic abuse.
The author surveyed 267
college students at a public
U.S. University in 1997.
Participants voluntarily
completed an 18-page
questionnaire on their
experiences with animal
abuse, experiences with the
attitudes about family
violence, and demographic
information. The
questionnaire enabled the
author to investigate
whether committing animal
abuse during childhood was
related to approval of
interpersonal violence
against children and women
in families. It asked
participants whether they
committed any of several
abuses – killed, tortured,
touched sex parts, or had
sex with animals – and
requested their levels of
agreement or disagreement
with statements that “it is
sometimes necessary to
discipline a child with a
good hard spanking” and that
they could “imagine a
situation in which they
would approve of a husband
slapping his wife.”
In this questionnaire as in
the U.S. generally, corporal
punishment received fairly
strong support and a husband
slapping a wife very little,
but respondents who had
perpetrated animal abuse
during childhood had
significantly more favorable
attitudes toward corporal
punishment and toward a
husband slapping his wife
than did those who had not
perpetrated animal abuse in
childhood. One out of six
respondents – one in three
male respondents and one in
10 female respondents had
harmed or killed at least
one animal – an alarming
high incidence of childhood
animal abuse. Incidents
excluded socially sanctioned
killing such as hunting,
killing for food, or mercy
killing.
Across the country animal
abuse has begun receiving
the legislative attention
that it deserves. Twenty
seven states have
strengthened their
anti-cruelty statutes by
adding counseling provisions
that allow or mandate the
courts to make counseling
part of the sentence of
convicted animal abusers.
Two of the states,
California and Iowa, mandate
counseling for both
juveniles and adults. These
developments have increased
the need for the training of
of more mental health
professionals.
For the past 2 years the
Society & Animals Forum has
been responding to this need
by providing workshops
across the county. In
conjunction with the Doris
Day Animal Foundation, they
developed the AniCare/AniCareChild
treatment approaches,
designed for clinical
professionals to understand,
assess and treat adult and
juvenile animal abusers.
Dr. Lauffer may be reached
at malauffer@societyandanimalsforum.org |
