Animal /child abuse

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, October 1997:

Northeastern University sociologist Arnold Arluke and
Carter Luke of the Massachusetts SPCA on August 28 reported
that of 153 violent animal abusers involved in 401 cases whose
behavior they tracked for 10 years, 70% committed other crimes,
and 38% committed crimes of violence––but only 15% of the
alleged animal abuse went to court, and only 8% of the alleged perpetrators
drew any jail time for their crimes against animals, which
usually preceded the crimes against humans. The point, said
MSPCA president Gus Thornton, is that “People who burn the
neighbor’s cat are not otherwise well-adjusted adults.”
The association of animal abuse with human abuse was
demonstrated to national media but little remarked in that context on
August 20, when 30 young women joined 428 men on the freshman
“rat line,” to endure six months of mandatory hazing as their initiation
to the Virginia Military Academy. The arrival of the women,
the first admitted to VMI, was anonymously protested by someone
who left 30 dead lab rats and a sign reading “Save the Males” on the
parade ground where the hazing commenced. “Somebody has a
really sick mind,” observed VMI superintendent Josiah Bunting to
David Reed of Associated Press.

Twelve parents from Monroeville, Pennsylvania, in
late June sued the Gateway School District and the psychiatric hospital
at the University of Pittsburgh, arguing that their children,
ages 5 through 10, were frightened by a 1995 survey, called the
Pittsburgh School Wide Intervention Model, which asked
whether they had ever set fires, tortured animals, used weapons, or
forced others into sexual acts. The survey was given to 1,500
Pittsburgh students during the preceding 10 years with little incident,
but in Monroeville was cancelled after three months due to parental
protest, and became subject of a state legislative hearing. The survey
was designed by William Pelham Jr., then with the Western
Psychiatric Institute at the University of Pittsburgh and now at the
State University of New York in Buffalo.