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Animal Abuse and Family Violence: What Veterinary Professionals Need to Know
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Lockwood, Randall |
| Copyright Year | 2005 |
| Abstract | A decade ago, stories of animal cruelty and human violence attracted little media attention and were not a significant part of American popular culture. There was comparatively little professional interest in the topic outside of the animal care and control community and only limited discussion of the issue within the professions most directly affected by the abuse of animals and its links to other forms of violencenamely mental health, criminal justice and veterinary medicine (Lockwood, 1999). The situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Serious animal cruelty cases receive national attention in the U.S. and Canada. A recent incident of road rage in California involving a Bichon Frise thrown into traffic by an irate motorist launched a national manhunt and rewards in excess of $120,000, culminating in a successful conviction and a three year prison sentence for the perpetrator. Many factors are responsible for this shift: First, there is stronger scientific evidence for the connection between animal cruelty and violence against humans (Arkow, 1992; Lockwood and Ascione, 1998; Ascione and Arkow, 1999; Ascione and Lockwood, 2001). Although much of this literature existed well before 1980, it attracted little attention until popularized by animal advocacy groups, social service workers and growing public fascination with the life histories of violent offenders. Second, public interest in animal cruelty is a natural corollary of growing concern about the overall proliferation of violence in society and a strong movement to find effective tools for identifying victims and perpetrators of violence at the earliest stages of abuse. Finally, interest in the connection has been strengthened by the practical validity of paying attention to the maltreatment of animals when confronting violence. Law-enforcement officers benefit by taking the actions of animal abusers seriously, social workers and mental health professionals get useful information by asking clients about the treatment of family pets and therapists seeking interventions that will build empathy and develop non-violent skills see the benefits of fostering compassion for animals. Professions other than humane agents and animal care and control workers have begun to take interest in these connections in recent years. Indicators of this change in the mental health and law-enforcement communities are the inclusion of animal cruelty into the diagnostic criteria for Conduct Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and the widespread distribution of material on animal cruelty by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (Lockwood, 1989, Ponder and Lockwood, 2001) and substantial inclusion of material on the subject in the Jumpstart training program for newly appointed prosecutors launched in 1998 by the National Association of District Attorneys and the American Prosecutors Research Institute. Veterinary involvement in the animal cruelty/human violence issue has been comparatively slow to build, but is attracting increasing attention. The topic has been addressed in the veterinary literature sporadically over the last decade, usually by non-veterinarians (Lockwood, 1985; Arkow, 1992; Rollin, 1994; Geisler, 1995; Christy, 1995). This was followed by several first-hand accounts of the treatment of animal injuries associated with suspicions of other ongoing violence or the potential for violence (Butler and Lagoni, 1995; Craig and Loar, 1998). Landau (1999) surveyed the deans of 31 American and Canadian schools of veterinary medicine. Of these, 97% agreed that veterinarians would encounter instances of intentional animal abuse and 63% agreed that veterinary professionals would encounter cases of animal cruelty associated with family violence. Thirty-one percent of deans reported that their schools had a policy requiring reporting suspected animal abuse. Two of these policies have been discussed in the literature (Rollin, 1994; Arkow, 1999). However, based on inquiries received by The Humane Society of the United States, many veterinary students feel that the issue is inadequately addressed in their training. This is consistent with Landau’s finding that only 17% of deans reported that students are explicitly made aware of policies on responding to suspected abuse, and her estimate that the average veterinary curriculum spends only eight minutes on the issue of animal cruelty and human violence. In another survey of small animal practitioners, Sharpe (1999) estimated that the average practitioner saw 5.6 cases of animal abuse per 1,000 patients, with little effect of location in a rural, urban or suburban practice. She reported that only 8% of the 368 respondents felt that they had received adequate training in general abuse prevention and fewer than 44% thought they adequately understood their rights and responsibilities when responding to suspected animal or human abuse. ---1. Presented at North American Veterinary Conference, Orlando, FL, January 13, 2002. An earlier version of this presentation appeared in The Canadian Veterinary Journal, 41:876-878, (2000). |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://cdn.ymaws.com/colovma.site-ym.com/resource/resmgr/imported/lockwood%20animal%20abuse%20and%20family%20violence.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
