No Way Out

Here is another reason why Canada needs to fight for Bill C-373 to become law and I decided to use this article to show those that have never had to face this kind of reality, the fears of many victims.

What makes me an authority? I'm a survivor and for once, I'm going to expose a horrible part of my life with you.

Once the kids leave the nest and go on their own, matters become worse as there is nobody to witness what is going on behind closed doors. You finally realize why you were allowed to accumulate the 16 pets that were your only source of peace of mind and happiness. You've already been isolated from your friends and you let on like all is well anyway.

You're body broken and your brain so brainwashed that you are good for nothing. You're worthless. You couldn't live on your own if you tried. The worst of it is, you have finally began to believe him and you feel as worthless as a maggot. You feel lost and invisable. You wear different masks and get confused which one you should be wearing for what. You rely on totally him and he gives you nothing.

He knows you won't part with your beloved pets. He threatens you would be homeless and you picture yourself as a crazy bag woman pushing a shopping cart up and down the downtown area with your hands holding leashes of the dogs, the cart holds the cats in crates and the birds in cages. Their food is crammed in there too and you invision points and stares of kids saying, "Look Mom! There's that crazy lady again!"

Your body hurts from the conditions that manafested from that last straw blow that sent you to hospital not knowing if you would live, die or come out of it paralized from the neck down.

You lie to save him thinking he will love you once he see's how you have defended him even after that. You've just proven to him how stupid you are, but he's fine as long as you don't tell.

Meanwhile you're holding in the truth is killing you inside as he and his friends laugh at you about how stupid you are because his friends believe the rediculas story you made up.

Finally you slowley tell a friend countries away on the internet, never mentioning his name and only calling him Hubby, still protecting him...then he finds out and his rage makes him more dangerous. You're petrified, but where can you go with all your pets and he knows it.

As heart breaking as it is, on the sly you find good homes to limit yourself to what you can handle on your own. You make up excuses that you're thinking of parting with some as your health can't care for them all, but meanwhile they aren't to get picked up until the day you are finally ready to leave.

You don't know how you will survive with all your phobias, but you know you couldn't be anymore lonelier then you already are.

Although my pets were not abused by him, the stress effected them and once on my own their personalities changed. They became more loving and relaxed. My old dog that was ready for Rainbow Bridge perked up and gave me 3 more precious years with her until the age of 20.

Friends and family helped me. Then unexpectedly a pup came into my life and you know who I'm talking about. She taught me independence and self confidence. She got me through some phobias and as you remember only recently got me over another of my worst ones.

I now talk to people in the situation I was in and they know I know what they're going through and see how far I've come. But it took a loss of body limitations and health conditions and pets I loved so dearly. That's why this article hit me so hard and I want people to know, there are more victims besides the victim and the kids. The pets are victims as well and we need to protect them as they can't protect themselves.

Please! Support Bill C-373 and stop this and other harm and cruelty happening with all the animals. It takes our actions to defend them.

You can find the following article here.

No Way Out
February 03, 2007
Written by: Tracy Vogel, Staff Writer

Domestic violence has many victims.

There's the battered spouse -- man or woman, but usually a woman. There are the children -- battered themselves, objects of leverage, or witnesses to the abuse.



No one thinks about the third victim.

"They say, '"You leave, and I'll kill your dog,'" said Kerry Pecoraro, a counselor and advocate for Sunrise, a domestic violence shelter in Dade City, Fla.



"Also your mother, father, brother, and sister -- but the dog or the cat is the first thing to go. Sometimes they kill the animal right in front of them -- shoot them, cut the head off. Right in front of them."

Workers at domestic violence shelters encounter the situation frequently. "I've heard all kinds of horror stories about what was threatened to do to the animal, or what was done to the animal," said Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, which represents 2,000 domestic violence programs around the United States.

"It's so hard to imagine -- someone terrorizing the dog or the cat -- someone who's just there to love you."

It may sound almost frivolous to be worrying about a pet in a life-threatening situation of physical, emotional, and mental abuse. But it is an issue -- because it affects the victims.

Several studies have indicated that women will postpone leaving an abuser because of what might happen to the pets. Most domestic violence shelters -- strapped for cash and bound by health regulations -- don't have facilities to care for pets, which means the animals can't come along when the family flees the abuser.

Frank Ascione, a psychology professor at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, found during a statewide study that one in four women who sought refuge in shelters said that concern for pets had prevented them from seeking shelter earlier.

A similar study of a single South Carolina shelter by Clifton Flynn, a sociology professor at the University of South Carolina, Spartanburg, obtained similar results. One in five women who owned pets delayed coming to a shelter because of concern for the animals.

Of the eight women who delayed, five put off seeking safety for more than two months.

"They worried a lot about it," said Mr. Flynn, who interviewed shelter women as part of a second study. "They missed their animals, they worried about their animals, and when [the animals] were still with the batterer, that gave that another dimension."

Women had reason to worry about the safety of their pets. Seventy-two percent of shelter women in Mr. Ascione's national study said partners had threatened to harm or had killed or injured their pets.

Narrowing that further, more than half -- 54 percent -- of the shelter women said their pets had actually been hurt or killed.

Mr. Flynn heard lots of stories about animal abuse during the interviews. "Everything from kicking animals to tossing cats across the room," he said. One husband put gunpowder in the dog's food. Others would shoot at the pets, or stomp near their faces to terrorize them.

One husband ran over the woman's dog with his motorcycle and strung it up with a clothesline -- she had to cut it down. Eventually, he killed it.

Mr. Ascione told of husbands who had nailed pets to doors or bludgeoned them to death, sometimes in front of the woman and children. "It's done to terrorize the humans that are around, and to inflict severe harm," he said.
The human victims catch on to the message quickly, Mr. Flynn said. "For many women, the pet abuse is very much part of the abuser's strategy to intimidate or control -- to show the family "'what I'm capable of -- here's what I can do.'"

While the problem hasn't been addressed on a large scale, programs designed to deal with pets endangered by domestic violence are cropping up here and there. Mr. Ascione has written a guide, "Safe Havens for Pets: Guidlelines for Programs Sheltering Pets for Women who are Battered."

The Toronto Humane Society, in Toronto, Canada, has offered the Helping Hands program since 1994.

It started with a single woman fleeing an abusive home, said Amy White, spokesperson for the Toronto Humane Society. "She had left her husband, and when she arrived [at the shelter], she was told 'You can't bring your dog.'"

At a loss, the woman contacted the humane society. A staff member took the dog into her home and looked after it until the woman had moved on to a place where she could care for the pet herself.

The agency has since set up a network of foster homes -- better than placing the animals in a shelter, since the time periods are often lengthy -- to care for pets in such emergency situations.

In Florida, two sisters are putting together a program, tentatively called the Humane Education Project, to care for pets in domestic violence situations.

Michelle Rivera, a Jupiter, Fla., writer for Animal Rights Online and a former paralegal for The Animal Rights Foundation of Florida, and her sister, Ms. Pecoraro, are working together on the project. The ideal scenario would be shelters with pet facilities, but in the meantime, the organization will settle for temporary foster homes.

Women won't even call a shelter for fear their pets will be taken to the pound, Ms. Pecoraro said. They may consider sheltering their pets with family or friends -- but the abuser knows about those people, and will be able to track the animal down.

Another option shelters recommend is a boarding facility -- but women fleeing an abusive husband often aren't in any position to pay for that. "'I have no money -- I'm supposed to pay $15 a day?' They don't call back," Ms. Pecoraro said.

Ms. Pecoraro is familiar with the situation. She was a Newfoundland dog breeder with an abusive husband. She stayed with him for 27 years. "The times he was nice for awhile, I would think, 'How do I get rid of 20 to 30 animals if the children [and I] have to leave in the middle of the night?'"

Ms. Pecoraro's husband didn't abuse her pets -- they brought in money. The emotional factor came into play as well. "He would never hurt the animals -- he knew that would be the straw that broke the camel's back. If he hurt the animals, I would kill him."

The animals were absolutely vital - they meant more than even the children, Ms. Pecoraro said. "I could talk to them. I learned non-verbal communication with animals and practiced it. It kept me sane."

The dogs provided an escape, she said. She would throw herself into learning their body language, their souls. "In my profession, I couldn't talk to anyone else," she said. "I was an AKC judge and everyone thought I'd got it all together. They don't know what goes on behind closed doors."

Mr. Flynn discovered in his study that women whose pets were abused were most likely to identify the pets as sources of emotional support. That presents two possibilities.

Women could be identifying with the abused pet because both were being battered. Or the pet was being targeted because the abuser could tell the relationship was a valuable one. A combination of the two possibilities is also likely, he said.

Ms. Pecoraro got in touch with pet rescue people and slowly began to get rid of her Newfoundlands. She told her husband she had a heart condition and had to cut back. She knew he would never buy it if all the dogs disappeared, so she began working with a smaller breed -- bulldogs.

Eventually she ended up with 13 bulldogs, and all the Newfoundlands were in good homes. One day, she dumped all the furniture from her motor home, filled it with crated bulldogs, and escaped -- driving from New York to Florida, where she had family who could help her.

Today, Ms. Pecoraro still misses her Newfoundlands -- it's too hot in Florida to keep such a dog comfortably. "I always say I was a Newfoundland dog [in a previous life], because I have such a camaraderie with them."

Instead, she has a bulldog, a cockatoo, and a few kittens -- "portable pets," she calls them. And she still has the motor home.

"If he ever comes stalking me, I can throw every animal I own into it, and get the hell out of Dodge," she said. "I would never sell it. I know I'll be afraid for the rest of my life."

The program Ms. Pecoraro and Ms. Rivera plan would include community education, and efforts to get law enforcement to follow up on animal cruelty complaints.

"Until we start taking that stuff seriously, prosecuting people and getting them in the system, it's going to keep happening," Ms. Rivera said. "If they start looking at animal abuse complaints more seriously, they would be getting into homes and on property for other reasons. Maybe they'll find stolen property, or drugs, or evidence of child abuse."

Mr. Flynn said he'd like to see animal cruelty evidence used to help obtain orders of protection, or even used in arrests. It would also help to cross-train animal control workers and social workers to look for evidence of child abuse and animal abuse in a home.

The relationship between animal abuse and the abuse of humans has been well documented. Studies have shown that serial killers, aggressive criminals, and sexually aggressive criminals often abused animals when they're young.
Animal abuse needs to be investigated for another reason -- unlike elder, spousal, or child abuse, it isn't hidden.

"Animals are very often the most obvious or visible victim," said Lt. Sherry Schlueter of Florida's Broward County Sheriff's Office.

An abuser will control the life of his victim, hiding the abuse from the public eye. But since animal abuse often isn't prosecuted, the abuser feels no need to hide the family dog or cat.

"They can never report against the offender, never testify against the offender, and never remove themselves voluntarily from the offender," Lt. Schlueter said.

That vulnerability means pets are also often the first victim -- so if animal abuse offenders are prosecuted, law enforcement may be able to cut off the cycle of violence before it reaches the children or spouse, Lt. Schlueter said.

Lt. Schlueter is section supervisor of the special victims and family crimes section. Her goal is to integrate investigation of such crimes as animal abuse, child abuse, abuse of the disabled, elder abuse, sexual crimes and missing person cases -- linking them to one another, using them as indicators for one another.

"The indicator nature of animal cruelty needs to become better known to law enforcement officers," she said.
Not only could the animal be taken out of jeopardy, the legal system also could try to impose intervention -- anger management classes, or parenting classes, for instance, she said. "Maybe if we would address the animal issues early on, we would reduce the crimes against people."

Lt. Schlueter is working on reintroducing a bill to the Florida legislature that would make cross-reporting of family violence crimes mandatory. People investigating human abuse would be required to report animal abuse to the appropriate agency, and vice versa.

Several years ago, Lt. Schlueter set up a program called the Domestic Violence Companion Animal Rescue Effort. The program, not related to the sheriff's office, has the help of the local humane society and a variety of volunteers.

People often say they can't believe someone would stay in such a violent situation because of a pet. Lt. Schlueter reminds them that during evacuation situations from natural disasters, many people will refuse to leave their homes because their pets can't accompany them to safety at public evacuation centers.

And that's just because of the threat of danger. "Imagine a domestic violence victim that knows what's going to happen."

Lt. Schlueter makes her pager number available for the program members -- victims or shelters can call at any time to put the process in motion. Owners often need lots of reassurance that the pet will be returned to them when they're ready.

Women have burst into tears over the phone after getting an answer to the page, Lt. Schlueter said. "They say, 'I wish I'd known about this four years ago -- the only thing that kept me here was the dog.' Or horse, or iguana, or bunny."

Pets can be a desperate issue for the entire family in domestic violence situations, Ms. White said. She recalled one child who slipped the family cat into the shelter, and was keeping it in a dresser drawer to avoid being discovered. When the cat was found, the director did make an exception for the family.

Children, like the women, can be deeply affected by the danger to the pet. According to Mr. Ascione's study, 51 percent of the children of shelter mothers said they had tried to protect their pets when violence erupted in the home.

Mr. Flynn recalled one shelter child, talking to a therapist, who would always include the cats in his drawings of his family.

A woman fled an abusive husband with her two sons. Their cat went into Lt. Schlueter's foster program.
The fostering went on longer than was typical -- the mother was having trouble saving up enough money for a down payment on a place to live. But the family kept calling, staying in touch with Lt. Schlueter, which was unusual.

When they finally could pick up the cat, the mother spoke to Lieut. Schlueter again. "She said, 'I can't tell you how much that program meant to me and my boys,'" Lt. Schlueter recalled. "'I'm an adult, and I'm used to being disappointed, but my sons -- the only thing they had to cling to was knowing they were going to be reunited with their pet.'"

The boys had been crossing the days off on a calendar, Lt. Schlueter discovered. "'Fifteen days until we see Simba. Thirteen days until we see Simba.'"

The story touched Lt. Schlueter. "It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done in my life," she said. "I believe it literally saves lives when the victims call me."