Animal Abuse
According to a 1997 study done by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Northeastern University, animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against people and four times more likely to commit property crimes than are individuals without a history of animal abuse.
Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last 25 years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty. The FBI has recognized the connection since the 1970s, when its analysis of the lives of serial killers suggested that most had killed or tortured animals as children.
Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder.
May 9th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
“Hurt people, hurt people -and themselves”. That’s a saying on the wall of my office where I work as a licensed substance abuse counselor and where my special area of interest is Anger Education. Daniel Goleman, author of the book, “Emotional Intelligence” says: “Our society is emotionally ignorant”, and I agree. If we provided our children with a simple understanding about painful emotions -what they were, how they worked, and the secret of releasing them, they could have a way of controlling their hurtful emotions. Because of ignorance however, by default, people do hurtful things to others, themselves, and to animals and they do it for this simple reason: It helps temporarily reduce the intensity of their stored up (emotional) hurts. Hurt, a mixture of anger and grief, that feels like it will never go away is a powerful motivator for relief. The temporary relief of such pain, that alcohol and drugs provide, is making them ever more attractive to younger children. I propose we make a commitment to teach our children a basic understanding about the key emotion of anger (my specialty). To do so, would empower them to be able to say NO to the temporary relief of misplaced revenge and to drugs and alcohol as well.