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STATISTIC AND FACTS

Updated: Jul 17, 2020

Hello and welcome to this blog everyone! I am Amiera Nur Fadilla binti Muhammad Rusydan, the copywriter for Rawr.org. Today, I will introduce to you the statistic and data regarding animal abuse and cruelty cases either from their types, the time of the day when it happened and the reasons why animal abuse is a matter we shall not take it lightly.




Did you know that human and animals are actually connected deeper than what it seems? Human psychology and animals are actually more than what meets the eye. Would you believe me if I say that how human acts around animals is a mirror to their own selves?

Animal abuse and personal conflict is deeply connected through bonds that we can’t perceive through naked eyes. The cruelty inflicted on this animals are early signs of problematic emotional disturbance. From these they will evolve to hurting humans when the thoughts of ‘not enough’ resurfaces when they are doing it upon animals.

 “Murderers … very often start out by killing and torturing animals as kids,” says Robert K. Ressler, who developed profiles of serial killers for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). From there we can learn that hurting animals is not an act committed by a sane person.

This shows that without one another, it will not exist. Human abuse leads to animal abuse. By letting their rage of being useless out animals, will it makes any difference? Will it be better? Will the rage pass? No, in fact from there, they starts to become worse.

Numerous studies shows how the vicious criminals behind the bar starts with small acts of animal abuse, compared to the calmer criminals. Psychiatric patients with aggressive acts against other people are often linked to torturing dogs and cats. 100% of sexual homicide offenders had history of animal cruelty, marked a new South Wales newspaper, based on a study done by the police in Australia.

A fascination towards animal cruelty often raised reg flags in the background of rapists and serial killers for researchers. According to the FBI’s Ressler, “These are the kids who never learned it’s wrong to poke out a puppy’s eyes.” Prevention from early stages are important because we are racing against time. Often that these cases slipped past authority until it was too late that this act against animals evolved to a sin against humanity.


The question is, why does people abuses animals? There are a wide range of answers for it, really where one fact or one reasoning will not simply cover it all. From the abuses we can tell that there is a certain rhythm, a pattern that brings us to the owners or those who commit the act of cruelty against the animals pattern of behaviour. How they think, how they perceive the world that eventually lead them to harming those animals. Based on the patterns, it helps researcher to understand them better thus preventing others from doing the same in the future.

There are two types of animal abuse : active or passive. Or specifically, commission and omission.

Some of the neglected cases as a result of ignorance, the investigator will teach the pet owners as an attempt to re educate them. For example of the neglected cases are not preparing proper food or water for the animals, or having them caged outside, exposed to the weather. Later on the investigator will stop by from time to time in order to see if the pet owners are making progress with their pets or not. There are also scenarios where the situation becomes dire and the circumstances are not on the animals’ side where their removal from the surroundings will ensure their survival might be needed. They will be sent immediately for emergency care.

For passive cruelty, it’s the lack of action outweighing the actions themselves, but don’t be clouded by the line of thought. The abandonment of an animal can inflict massive pain and sufferings, worse than physical torment. The traumatized pets usually will act wild and untamed, stopping others from approaching them. This is their self-defense mechanism to avoid their past from repeating again.

Act of abandonment or neglect can be classified into several types. The basics are dehydration and starvation, a common occurrence for domestic pets. The owners allowing the collar to grow on their pets’ skin is considered as a case of neglect as well. Housing animals poorly and leaving them exposed to the extreme weather condition is downright horrible in my opinion.

This shows the cruelty of their master, the lack of empathy and possibly a reckless upbringing on their parts. How could they live upon others’ sufferings? Moreover cute animals that we just can’t say no upon them. It makes me wonder how humanity has stoop this low for animals.

There are also distinct cases where the owner fails to bring their pets to the vet wherever it is for vaccination or medical checkup or any other injuries. It might not looks like it but the injuries might proven fatal towards the animals. It actually makes me wonder if this how you act against animals, how will you act towards your family? Your children and spouses? Does it means if you were to leave those sick animals by themselves, will you abandon your flesh and blood behind as well?

Cruelty that has been executed with intentions are often tally up with any other crimes, including transgression against person.

In a scenario where Non-Accidental Injury (NAI), an implication of malicious intent and the person is deemed as intentionally brings harm to an animal is called Acts of Commission (Active Cruelty). This kind of act is a sign of a serious psychological problems for no sane person will commit an act where they intentionally hurt others, animal or human both. Recently, there’s a case near my house where my neighbour’s cat beaten and then the remnants were thrown inside the drain. As a cat owner myself, the act make me feel cautious for my own. I was informed that the cat was lounging at the person’s home. The cat didn’t impose any threat, nor did it poo anywhere. The only act the cat committed were relaxing on someone’s home. What could ever drive a sane person to murdering an animal if it were anything but intentional?



(Georgia)

Based on the graph above we can see the reported cases of animal cruelty from the time span of ten years, starting 2006. The graph points out both criminal cases and administrative cases. The highest cases of animal cruelty recorded in the 10 years is 2015 where 19 cases is recorded. This is an investigation launched in a small scale, involving a certain country. Imagine if this involved the whole country. The number recorded will increase by tenfold yet people tend to not care.

This is but a glimpse of how dire this situation is.

This cases are recorded in the Georgia, the 8th most populated area and 24th largest in United States. If this is the amount of the recorded cases, what about the unrecorded ones? Simply because cases upon animal cases aren’t compiled based off their states or federal agencies. Which makes recording the cases even harder because the lack of synchronicity in between departments. This doesn’t help in calculating the frequency of the cases, which in return why people are not giving enough attention in this matter.

Based on Georgian legislation, if any cruelty resulted in death or maiming of the animals or simply torturing them, the perpetrator will be fined or be punished by corrective labor up to a year. When the act is done by a group, or repeatedly, or under the presence of a minor, they shall receive imprisonment up to two years. (Article 259 of the Criminal Code and Article 104 of the Code of Administrative Offence).

The graph above is a result of a public keep seeing videos of violent treatments towards animal. The videos stirred up a question of, ‘were the perpetrator receive punishment?’  

The information is released by Ministry of State Affairs where the highest number of investigations launched are in 2015 and 2016. Where 21 and 19 cases were recorded, both are are administrative violations and acts that could be punished by law. The collected statistics shows that the Supreme Court of Georgia mixed both cases and statistics of administrative penalties for animal cruelty. While in the time span of 10 years all of the courts in Georgia received and handled 5 cases that were related to animal cruelty. Three out of five cases were were imposed with penalty harsher than a fine since the additional offenses to the animal cruelty.





The data above shows how most of the offenses committed against the animals are from residences. The lowest of all is the park where only 1% of the cases occurred. Why is the residence ranked the highest? Keep in mind that this graph came from 2016, where the total cases that was reported were 1 1256 with 237 arrests were issued, which was 21% from the reported cases. From there, 97% of them were adults while 3% were juveniles.

The most prominent issue whenever it involves residential area is either domestic abuse or child abuse. When parents fought it leaves a deep impression in their children. As they felt helpless and unable to stop their parents’ arguments, how can they channel all of those negative feelings?

Animals.

By hurting the animals, they feel like they are in control, stable. Inflicting pain satisfies them. Does the fault lies in the children only? What about the parents? Aren’t they supposed to teach their children compassion, empathy and kindness?

Well, no. A problematic family that can’t even take care of their own matters shouldn’t be trusted in handling children’s affairs.

In these kind of homes, animal abuse isn’t just as simple as ‘wounded animals’ or ‘neglecting’. A dominant spouse can use the pets as a method to ensure that their subjects will keep quiet about it. They can threaten to kill, torture, throw or cut the pets to make sure that the rest of the members will obey, whether it is for sexual causes, to silence them, physically abuse them through the way they shows off authority, making their victims frustrated and cutting them off from seeking help.

Besides that, the cases are common in both rural and urban. People from all kind of economic classes, poor or rich, middle class or higher are all involved in abusing animals at some point in their lives. Since they involves every social and economic classes we can’t rule out the cause of animal cruelty as economical pressure or background of an abuser although it does become one of the factors in contributing.

Collecting animals in massive numbers are counted as an abusive act as well. With the increased capacity, some of them might missed their owner’s attentions since the housing prepared might be far from what their owner managed to. They would not be taken care of properly, imposing severe hoarding disorder towards the animals. These animals will terrorizes them for their entire life.

Often than naught persons that collect these animals are in need of social and mental help services. Based on some surveys completed, those who intentionally hurt animals are typically male in gender and above 30 in age. While for these animal collectors are to be woman under 60.



This chart shows the time where the animal cruelty crimes happened. The graph bar is uneven but we can see that the peak of it occurred on noon, which is 12 p.m. to 12:59 p.m. The lowest rate occurred on 3 am until 4:59 a.m. where at this time most of the people are sleeping.

In the U.S where the assaulted men and women ratio were 20 per minute, about 70 million pet dogs and 74.1 million pet cats were abused with the ratio of 10 million per year.

Pets were targeted by physical abuser in 71 percent of domestic abuse, as reported by their victims. Whereas for animal abuse in problematic families, the percentage are 88 percents, which based of a survey on families that are under investigation for physically abusing their children.

This proves the fact that children abuse and domestic violence are in a way, interacting with the spiking number on animal abuse that targeted by the spouses of the abuser.

Because of public corruption, dog fighting, cockfighting and other well-arranged animal fighting and gambling on them has spread wide.

In Kentucky, a cockfighting pit has been recorded by uniformed police officers, stated The HSUS. Drug dealers has been doing operations, smuggling narcotics through dog fighting and cockfighting, where multiple cases has been prosecuted by The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

Places where dog fighting and cockfighting were held has become a place of attraction for homicide cases.

A $10 cockfight bet has caused a disagreement which killed a man in California.

In fighting public corruption, HSUS issued an investigation team who works alongside FBI on the cases in Tennessee and Virginia. The law enforcement in both country were indicated and prosecuted. Although the situation for both country is getting better, what about any other countries?

Besides, most of the cases committed were done during daylight, or waking hours, if you prefer more. This shows how there are more cases out there, probably right under our own noses themselves. We can no longer use passive, traditional methods to handle this. People are growing bolder which means the enforcers should be as well.


From the graph above we can conclude that dogs and cats aren’t majorly victimized unlike the rumors. Although live stocks were wildly reported, since the laws regarding it aren’t fully enforced, the prosecutions are few, only the most shocking cases reported are persecuted.

HSUS has been running the front line in forcing a stricter law enforcement for cruelty against animals and training for officials in preventing these cases from happening. They have been trained on how to detect and act if these cases were to be reported.

In March 2004, South Dakota has joined the fight in preventing more abused cases slipped past the eye of law enforcement. With it, animal cruelty laws has been successfully included in all 50 states.

If the perpetrator has past conviction on animal cruelty, they will be convicted under felony charges which some states has allowed. Although HSUS is determined to support the charges on those who convicted either they have been charged in the past under the same charges or not, they will not support felony charges unless the past charges are heavy enough under the category.

First offense provisions are now in 46 out of 50 countries in the U.S. Subsequent offenses in the other four states which are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa and Mississippi have their own laws about applying felony charges upon the second time conviction. Aggravated cruelty, torture or cruelty to companion animals are the limited cases where anti-cruelty laws can be applied on.

Here are some of the convicts that has been detected to abuse animals before moving on to murdering people.

Albert DeSalvo (The Boston Strangler)

-killed 13 women

-trapped dogs and cats and shot arrows at them through boxes in his youth.


Jeffret Dahmer (Serial Killer)

-impaled frogs, cats and dogs’ heads on sticks.


Dennis Rader (The Bill Killer)

-terrorized people in Kansas.  

-wrote a chronological account of his childhood that he hung a dog and a cat.


Lee Boyd Mako (a convicted sniper)

-During his trial, a psychology professor testified that the teenager had killed 10 people with a rifle.

-the professor stated that he pelted and probably killed numerous cats with marbles from a slingshot when he was about 14.

That’s it all from me, everyone! Thank you for reading this post!

 
 
 

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