Cruelty Against Animals Is No Minor Misdemeanour

[Mila's Mum]

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/sunday-...f-1226032565085

EXCUSES, excuses. It's time magistrates dismissed the feeble explanations for deliberate acts of animal cruelty and got tough on torturers.

You can't tell me that a father and son dragging a pony behind their car was an accident, as the court heard last month.

Or that Andrew Cook, 33, and his son Zachary, 17, believed that tethering the pony to the sedan and making it gallop behind the speeding vehicle was an acceptable way to transport the animal.

I don't buy the Dumb and Dumber defence, and neither should anyone else.

In recent weeks, we've had a children's pet cat drowned in a wheelie bin by an elderly neighbour who was sleep deprived and an ibis fatally stomped on by a law student because it startled him while he was eating lunch in a park.

The imbecile who took a video of himself driving down the emergency lane of a busy highway with his pet parrot clinging to the windscreen wiper is clearly no Rhodes scholar, but when he comes before the judiciary, as indeed he must, for tormenting this bird, he should be disciplined properly.

Cruelty against animals is no minor misdemeanour.

The RSPCA knows it, the police service knows it, and the State Government knows it last month it announced a new serious animal cruelty offence, increasing the maximum jail sentence from the current two years to seven.

Premier Anna Bligh might win public admiration (read votes) by responding to justified community outrage, but tougher jail sentences won't fix the problem.

It's not because, as experience has shown, magistrates will refuse to impose the full seven years (they've never given the two years we have now).

And it's not because police, who will effectively take over from the RSPCA in apprehending these social menaces, already have their hands full or, as the RSCPA has suggested, are more concerned with collecting unpaid traffic fines than curbing animal cruelty.

The fundamental reason that more jail time won't work is that prison is no place for rehabilitation.

As with bullies on our roads, which I wrote about last week, tossing them in jail only fills their damaged brains with other ideas on how to be anti-social.

Perpetrators of animal cruelty certainly don't need any prompting to take the next step and mete out their aggression on humans. A litany of research shows that people who hurt animals exhibit the same psychopathic personality disorders as serial rapists and murderers.

Martin Bryant, who killed 35 people in the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, tortured animals as a child.

He also claimed he'd had sex with a horse, according to a former girlfriend.

Remember Jeffrey Dahmer, the American serial killer who raped, tortured and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991?

As a boy, he dissected dead animals at home and once put a dog's head on a stake.

As an adult, he put human heads in the fridge.

The RSPCA's affiliate in the US has a website specifically for children.

ASPCA Kids explains why people hurt animals this way: "These people have serious, psychological problems that will probably not go away on their own.

They often need the help of licensed professionals, such as a psychologist.

"We are not 100 per cent sure why people become like this most are probably born with their problems, but others can get their problems from brain damage, poisonous environments, or by being treated badly themselves."

Hard to think of a more poisonous environment than prison, except maybe a family circle defined by aggression, cruelty and fear.

Children who abuse animals have often seen it done by a parent (typically their father) or have been physically abused themselves. The bullied becomes the bully.

In the case of the pony, its abusers were ordered to pay vet bills of $7642.

The father, a role model of positive parenting if ever there was one, was sentenced to three months' jail wholly suspended for three years, while the son received two years' probation. No convictions were recorded.

They walked free, a little poorer but not noticeably wiser. Where's the mandatory counselling? Where's the enforced stint in a psychiatric institution to teach these people how to act humanely?

This is how our government and our justice system can effect positive change and build a safer society for all by addressing the root of the problem, which is psychological.

Animal cruelty is no accident. As parents, we might bear this in mind if we see our kids pulling tails off lizards or playing backyard cricket using cane toads as cricket balls.

[john.davey.1960]

There is no evidence animal cruelty leads to human cruelty. Plenty of conjecture and psychologists being paid to say the opposite. Animal cruelty should be punished for what it is, not what some perceive it may lead to.

[Ripley]

Is animal cruelty on the rise or is it just the internet means we hear about it in the media more and via social networking?

Just yesterday a pack of cruel teenagers threw rocks at a nesting female swan in a Melbourne park, leaving her with a large gash in her head which killed her. Just for fun. They ran away and you can be they wouldn't be charged with anything if caught or made to do community service. I doubt if anything would happen and now a beautiful swan is dead and her mate is alone. The dead female swan's male partner is now on the nest and if the eggs hatch, he will have to raise the cygnets alone - he may even starve to death before they hatch as he can't leave the nest.

Also, there was that incident over Christmas where a teenager purposely mowed down a black swan on his jetski for fun in a Gold Coast canal (swan is still recoving at Currumbin sanctuary on the Gold Coast and may not be fit for release, such is her injured leg).

about the swan yesterday:

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/swan-gri...0407-1d4sf.html

Edited April 7, 2011 by Ripley

[poodlefan]

There is no evidence animal cruelty leads to human cruelty. Plenty of conjecture and psychologists being paid to say the opposite. Animal cruelty should be punished for what it is, not what some perceive it may lead to.

Criminological studies indicate otherwise.

Link to studies here

[john.davey.1960]

There is no evidence animal cruelty leads to human cruelty. Plenty of conjecture and psychologists being paid to say the opposite. Animal cruelty should be punished for what it is, not what some perceive it may lead to.

Criminological studies indicate otherwise.

Link to studies here

These are not studies, much more akin to gossip and second hand reports. What exactly is animal cruelty? Killing healthy adoptable pets (like the proponents of bsl advocate)? The greatest mass murderer in history was a vegetarian and loved animals, kinda like a PETA clone! Punish the perpetrators for what they do, not what they may do.

[poodlefan]

There is no evidence animal cruelty leads to human cruelty. Plenty of conjecture and psychologists being paid to say the opposite. Animal cruelty should be punished for what it is, not what some perceive it may lead to.

Criminological studies indicate otherwise.

Link to studies here

These are not studies, much more akin to gossip and second hand reports. What exactly is animal cruelty? Killing healthy adoptable pets (like the proponents of bsl advocate)? The greatest mass murderer in history was a vegetarian and loved animals, kinda like a PETA clone! Punish the perpetrators for what they do, not what they may do.

You're saying that surveying violent criminals/crime for evidence of earlier animal cruelty is "gossip" Ok. What evidence would satisfy you?

Lets leave Hitler out of it..and lets not forget he tested his preferred poison on his German Shepherd before taking it himself.

[john.davey.1960]

There is no evidence animal cruelty leads to human cruelty. Plenty of conjecture and psychologists being paid to say the opposite. Animal cruelty should be punished for what it is, not what some perceive it may lead to.

Criminological studies indicate otherwise.

Link to studies here

These are not studies, much more akin to gossip and second hand reports. What exactly is animal cruelty? Killing healthy adoptable pets (like the proponents of bsl advocate)? The greatest mass murderer in history was a vegetarian and loved animals, kinda like a PETA clone! Punish the perpetrators for what they do, not what they may do.

You're saying that surveying violent criminals/crime for evidence of earlier animal cruelty is "gossip" Ok. What evidence would satisfy you?

Lets leave Hitler out of it..and lets not forget he tested his preferred poison on his German Shepherd before taking it himself.

Yep, anything to break the monotony of prison life is good as far as their concerned. He killed his dog to prevent him falling into Russian hands, something many Germans did. Gossip is gossip. Facts are facts. When people deal in the latter they can be taken seriously.