When you think about The LINK between Animal Abuse and Human Violence you have to think about Phil. A lecturer, author and educator, he is coordinator of the National LINK Coalition, the National Resource Center on The LINK – and edits the monthly LINK-Letter. He chairs the Latham Foundation’s Animal Abuse and Family Violence Prevention Project. He teaches at the University of Florida, and Harcum College. He has presented over 250 times in 17 countries, 38 states and 9 Canadian provinces, and has authored over 80 key reference works on human-animal interactions and violence prevention.
He co-founded the National Link Coalition, the National Animal Control Association, and the Colorado and New Jersey humane federations. He has served with the AVMA, the ASPCA, American Humane, the Delta Society, the Animals & Society Institute, the National Sheriffs Association, the National Coalition on Violence Against Animals, the National District Attorneys Association, the Academy on Violence & Abuse, and the American Association of Human-Animal Bond Veterinarians. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from New Jersey Child Assault Prevention.
Statutes are starting to use the term animal ‘abuse’ rather than ‘cruelty’; the former parallels the child protection field and suggests that maltreatment occurred without having to prove the additional hurdle implied by ‘cruelty’ that the perpetrator maliciously intended to harm the animal.
- Were you involved in animal law/policy/advocacy in 1995? Yes.
- What were you doing? In 1995 I was finishing up an aborted experience as an animal shelter executive director; after 20 years as an animal shelter education & publicity director, I thought I was ready for a directorship; instead, all I did was prove that the Peter Principle was still alive and well.
- What were the major issues in 1995? I made a conscious decision around that time. What had started out as a fairly generalized field (animal welfare) was rapidly becoming much more specialized. It was becoming impossible to keep up with all the new developments, whether in technology, shelter administration, legislation, academic research, and so forth. But overriding all this was what I perceived to be a hijacking of the animal welfare movement by the animal rights community which was creating a potentially lethal schism between the open-admission and no-kill shelters to the detriment of both and which exacerbated the chronic confusion of legislators who don’t care about animal issues, period. I decided that I would focus on two specific areas: the “good side” of the human-animal bond (animal-assisted interventions), and the ”dark side” of the human-animal bond (The Link between animal abuse and human violence). These two aspects of human-animal interactions have the common thread that caring about animals helps human health and safety – an idea more palatable to legislators (and funders) – and that avoids the animal rights/welfare divide.
- What are the positive developments in last 25 years in animal law, policy or welfare. The focus on how animal abuse hurts people had an immediate and positive effect on policy:
- in 1992, only 5 states had felony-level animal cruelty laws. Today, all 50 do.
- The focus on The Link has enabled animal care and control agencies to partner with counterparts in domestic, child and elder abuse in collaborative community programs that pool limited resources in species-spanning programs affecting humane and human services.
- Prosecutors are now creating animal cruelty units specialized in handling the complexities of animal cruelty cases.
- Over 144 law schools now teach Animal Law, and there are student chapters of ALDF nationwide – creating a significant pool of passionate young lawyers willing to work in these prosecutions.
- Statutes are starting to use the term animal “abuse” rather than “cruelty”; the former parallels the child protection field and suggests that maltreatment occurred without having to prove the additional hurdle implied by “cruelty” that the perpetrator maliciously intended to harm the animal.
- Over 200 domestic violence shelters are now pet-friendly, thereby removing a significant barrier that keeps thousands of abused spouses, children and pets from leaving abusive homes. Corporate and private philanthropy and federal funding are now available to help shelters with these capital construction and operational expenses.
- 35 states have enacted Pet Protection Orders which allow courts to include pets in domestic violence protection-from-abuse orders, and the new federal Pet And Women Safety Act allows these orders to be enforced across state lines. 10 states define animal abuse used as a coercive control tactic as an act of domestic violence as well as animal cruelty.
- Three states have enacted “CASA for animals” – pro bono attorneys representing animals in court cases, similar to the Court-Appointed Special Advocates system in child abuse cases.
- Four states have enacted provisions allowing courts to award custody of pets in divorce cases in the animals’ best interests – again paralleling child custody decisions.
- Bestiality – or animal sexual abuse, as we prefer to think of it – is now illegal in 46 states and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Research is demonstrating significant linkages between animal and child sexual abuse and pornography.
- The FBI has included four types of animal abuse within its National Incident Based Reporting System, bringing attention to the significance of these crimes and giving us the first objective look at the scope of these crimes, their interface with other crimes, and how they are (or are not) prosecuted.
- Major advances in veterinary medicine, all working to put veterinary medicine on a societal par with human medicine and to cause the veterinarian to be as proactive in preventing violence as physicians have long been:
- Inclusion of the animal abuse/human violence Link within the One Health/One Welfare model;
- 36 state laws and 5 national veterinary association statements either mandating or permitting veterinarians to break patient-client- practitioner confidentialities to report suspected animal abuse;
- the growth of veterinary forensics and veterinary social work as viable specialties;
- publication of training materials to aid in the diagnosis of non-accidental injury and the resolution of client confrontations over animal welfare issues; and
- an emerging awareness in what is rapidly becoming a female-driven profession that veterinarians have a responsibility to respond to domestic violence – an approach we’re calling “DV and the DVM.”
5. What are the negatives?
- Legislators at all levels still need to be convinced that laws affecting animal well-being are important and worthy of their attention.
- Enforcement of animal cruelty laws is still weak and haphazard at best, and nonexistent in many parts of the country.
- The animal care and control field remains horribly fragmented, not only along ideological lines but also through a crushing lack of systemization; where the child, domestic and elder abuse fields have statewide uniform hotlines, a disconnected patchwork of over 6,500 different agencies is responsible for investigating animal cruelty, abuse and neglect with no consistency and significant public confusion. The overwhelming majority of animal care and control agencies are so insular and so self-righteous of their work that they fail to include on their websites or social media basic contact information of who to call in their community to report suspected abuse.
- Schools of social work are still almost universally humanocentric and do not consider pets to be part of the family dynamic for social workers’ clients. Only 25 schools of social work in the U.S. (and 7 in Canada) include human-animal relationships within the curriculum.
- As a result, the child protection field is still a “missing link” and has yet to widely grasp the significance of childhood perpetration and exposure to animal abuse as an Adverse Childhood Experience (despite the irony that it was the animal protection movement that gave birth to child welfare).
6. What did we learn in the last 25 years?
- That preventing, prosecuting and punishing animal cruelty, abuse and neglect benefit not only Man’s Best Friend, but also Man… and especially Woman.
- That the philosophy in the animal welfare community is switching to addressing human problems that underlie crises with animals.
- That pet policy is a unique field of political struggle, a conflict that originates from differing perspectives about whether pets are property or autonomous beings, and clashing norms about the care of animals; the result of the political struggle is difficulty in the enactment of policies and especially in the implementation and enforcement of laws that might improve the welfare of companion animals.
- And that Margaret Mead was right when she wrote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
7. Looking toward the future, what are your predictions? We would like to see continuous expansion of the positive developments listed in (4), and resolution of the negatives in (5).