This is new and different.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – 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.
Why would they do this? Well, here are a few reasons:
“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.
Walsh, who stayed in the marriage for more than 12 years before her divorce in 2001, said she would have left sooner had it not been for her responsibilities to the animals.
“It’s kind of hard to pack up a whole barn full of animals,” she said. “And I knew that any animal I left behind would be dead in 24 hours.”
I think it’s a great law.
Of course, I’m sure that there will be many conservatives who will manage to find this to be yet another hegemonic, misandrist, man-hating law that must be stopped before it becomes nationwide and leads to yet more feminization of men, but then, most of them don’t read my blog. (Of course, watch this be the first time in years they check in to see what I’m saying.)
Well this conservative thinks it’s a terrific law!