Cruelty to animals often translates into cruelty to other humans

By on January 4, 2014

We’ve heard this if-then statement before, but a recent article highlights the notion that if one is cruel to animals, one is likely going to turn on other people eventually.

From the Las Cruces News in New Mexico- Dr. Wayne Barber, a board-certified psychiatrist in Las Cruces, writes about the notion and gives some startling cases where he has seen animal cruelty translate into violence towards people later in life. Read the entire article here and check below for some startling correlations he’s noted.

•100 percent of sexual homicide offenders had a history of cruelty towards animals.

•40 percent of all animal abusers had committed violent crimes against people.

•63.3 percent of men who had committed crimes of aggression admitted to cruelty to animals.

•48 percent of rapists and 30 percent of child molesters acknowledged committing animal abuse during childhood or adolescence.

•Men who abused animals were five times more likely to have been arrested for violence towards humans, four times more likely to have committed property crimes, and three times more likely to have records for drug and disorderly conduct offenses.

•36 percent of assaultive women acknowledged cruelty to animals.

This nation’s recent history is noteworthy for serial killers and mass murderers whose early career included unspeakable acts of animal cruelty. Among them:

•Jeffrey Dahmer (the Milwaukee murderer of 30 years ago who raped, then killed and dismembered 17 boys), as a youth, decapitated dogs and staked cats to trees.

•Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler” of the early 1960s who confessed to murdering 13 women, trapped dogs and cats and shot arrows at them through boxes when he was a youth.

•Ted Bundy, a serial killer, rapist, kidnapper and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s was said to have tortured pets.

•Edmund Emil Kemper III, also known as “The Co-ed Killer,” who murdered and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area of California, began his career by decapitating one of his mother’s cats and hacked the other to pieces with a machete, advancing by age 15 to murdering his grandparents and mutilating their bodies.

•Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 12 students at Columbine High School in 1999, proudly spoke to their classmates of mutilating animals.

•Kip Kinkel, who at age 15 in 1998 murdered his parents and engaged in a school shooting at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., tortured animals before going on his shooting spree. He was reported to have blown up cows and decapitated cats.

If you see anyone mistreating animals, this information should tell you that worse things are probably on the horizon. Alert the authorities if you witness such acts and you may just save a life down the road.

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