Animal Abuse and Domestic Violence
Domestic violence refers to a wide variety of behaviors used by individuals to exert power and control, through fear and intimidation, over their intimate partners, former partners, or family members. Domestic violence or battering includes physical abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, and any other tactics employed to reinforce control over the victim.

An animal in a family’s home may serve as a barometer of domestic violence experienced within. Spotting animal abuse may be easier for neighbors because animals are often outside and without covering, such as clothing, making abusive injuries and neglect easier to identify. Animals also are more likely to howl when hurt, thereby alerting neighbors. Additionally, people are more willing to report animal abuse than child abuse, often deciding that interfering with someone else’s children is inappropriate.

Most pet owners consider their animals to be family members, and have a strong bond with them. Because batterers often harm or destroy things that their victims hold dear, animals become targets for abuse.

• Pets are beaten or killed in order to coerce or intimidate the victim with the message “you could be next.”
   
• Batterers may coerce children into silence regarding sexual abuse, with threats to kill their pets.
   
• Batterers may threaten to have a pet euthanized or sent to the shelter in order to punish victims.
   
• Batterers have engaged in bestiality or forced victims to engage in bestiality as a form of humiliation.
   
• Children sometimes abuse animals as a result of ‘pecking order’ violence, where they will abuse a living being that is smaller than themselves just as they have been abused by an adult.
   
• Pet neglect is less predictive of violence but may still be evidence that social services are needed in the home. Neglect can also be the beginning – batterers have been known to neglect pets or refuse to let them have food as a way of punishing others.
   
• Sometimes pets simply disappear.