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Nature and Status of Research on the Link Between Animal Cruelty and Child Abuse

NCJ Number
169511
Journal
Protecting Children Volume: 13 Issue: 2 Dated: (1997) Pages: 12-14
Author(s)
F Ascione
Date Published
1997
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This interview with Dr. Frank Ascione, who has been conducting research related to humane education and children's attitudes toward animals, reviews the status of research on the link between animal cruelty and child abuse and the policy implications of such research.
Abstract
Ascione's own current research focuses on how common abuse of animals is in homes where there is spouse or partner battering. Ascione notes that the majority of the research that currently exists has been retrospective and has dealt with populations such as criminal male offenders and persons convicted of sexual crimes. There is a lot of psychiatric research that has examined histories of cruelty to animals, fire setting, and enuresis in violent individuals. Although there have not been any large-scale studies that have focused on the effectiveness of therapies for violence toward animals, therapies that have been effective in treating family violence include working with the entire family in an effort to make certain that the environments of children foster the development of prosocial behaviors. Teaching children anger management techniques to assist them in their emotion regulation and also empathy development seems to be an important component to many of these programs. Other issues discussed in this interview with Ascione are attitudinal barriers that may hamper cooperation between child protection agencies and animal welfare agencies, the appropriate balance between child- protection and animal-protection laws, and the inclusion of research findings on cruelty to animals in the training of professionals likely to encounter this behavior in the course of their work.