Maine adds pets to protection laws
PORTLAND, Maine – Spurred by growing evidence of a link between domestic violence and animal abuse, Maine has enacted a first-in-the-nation law that allows judges to include pets in protection orders for spouses and partners leaving abusive relationships.
In helping pets, advocates hope to help battered women and others who aren’t willing to abandon their animals to be saved themselves.
“This is a very innovative, new approach, and it makes perfect sense because the protection order is a critical stage for women and others seeking protection,” said Nancy Perry of the Washington, D.C.-based Humane Society of the United States.
Gov. John Baldacci says the law, which provides for civil penalties such as fines or jail time for those who violate a protection order, should give pause to abusers who might resort to violence or threats against pets as a means of keeping their victims from leaving a relationship.
Law enforcement officials, animal welfare agents and advocates for domestic violence victims say it’s not unusual to hear of abusers who vent their rage against a partner’s pet.
“It’s just another tactic to keep power and control over the victim,” said Cindy Peoples of Caring Unlimited, a shelter in York County.
Susan Walsh, whose dog and sheep were killed by her husband, said many victims stand to benefit from including pets in protection orders.
“I’ve heard so many horror stories from other women that I knew I was not alone,” she said.
When the bill came up for consideration at a public hearing in January, Walsh recounted how she remained in an abusive marriage in part out of fear for what might happen to her pets and farm animals if she left.
Walsh said her husband shot two of her sheep inside their Ellsworth barn. Another time, when she was visiting her parents in Pennsylvania, he deliberately ran his truck over her deaf and blind border collie in their driveway, she said.
The law was an outgrowth of a seminar by the Maine State Bar Association in June on the connection between animal abuse and domestic violence, said Anne Jordan, a Portland lawyer who serves on the Animal Welfare Advisory Council.
During an informal discussion after the presentation, a judge raised the idea of expanding the scope of protection orders, Jordan recalled.
Legislative support was overwhelming, said the bill’s sponsor, Rep. John Piotti, a Democrat. He and others cited a study that found that 71 percent of pet-owning women in a Utah shelter said their abusers had either harmed, killed or threatened their pets.