23/01/25
Our ‘Protect Animals. Protect People’ campaign aims to raise the profile of animals with politicians, prosecutors and police officers by highlighting how animal welfare and human welfare overlap. For example, we aim to explain how pets can be threatened or abused as part of coercive control.
Those who watched Emmerdale in 2024 will have seen how Belle Dingle’s dog, Piper, was abused by her partner, Tom King, and how he exploited her relationship with her pet to exert control. This coercive control echoes storylines in The Archers and was seen in the ITV documentary Behind Closed Doors with Queen Camilla.
People with pets in the home understand the human-animal bond and see their pets as part of the family. Perpetrators or abusers also recognise this bond and exploit it through Machiavellian manoeuvres to control a partner or elderly relative, or abuse a child.
Our campaign in 2025
The government have stated they want to ‘halve violence against women and girls in a decade.’
With such crimes making up 18% of all recorded crime, the National Police Chiefs Council are using language more commonly associated with counter terrorism to address this national emergency.
They want to Protect individuals and communities, to Pursue perpetrators, to Prevent such crimes and to Prepare policing to effectively respond.
We can help
Our aim is to:
- Add animal abuse awareness to the domestic abuse prevention toolkit for the criminal justice system.
- Support the animal victims of domestic abuse.
- Explain how to Know the signs of animal abuse within coercive control.
By mirroring the police and government strategy we want to:
- Prepare – train all those who attend domestic abuse crime scenes on how animals are threatened or harmed as part of coercive control.
- Prevent – the abuse of human and non-human victims and survivors of domestic abuse.
- Pursue – the perpetrators of domestic abuse.
- Protect animals, protect people.
What we have done so far this year
It’s only January, but we already have some great news. Now, because of our campaigning, 98% (43/44) of all police forces in England and Wales have updated their websites to offer information about animals within domestic abuse.
We have already conducted a workshop for the Prison Service and expanded our global reach by speaking at Pakistan’s first conference for animals. We have helped the police training project in Greece and been the subject of an academic study published in Romania.
What we will be asking from you
This phase of our campaign was launched in June 2023, and since then, we have visited the UK Parliament twice and presented in Estonia, Kosovo, Belfast, Greece, and various locations across the UK, including Scotland Yard. We have contributed to changes in public protection policies, strategies, and training. Twenty-two MPs from across the political spectrum attended our Westminster event to show their support.
This year we will be reaching even wider. We will be asking for mandatory training for all those who attend domestic abuse crime scenes and we will be supporting Ruby’s Law, aiming to address legislation gaps in the Family Law Act 1996.
We will be asking you to sign petitions and write letters to representatives to ensure that animal welfare is taken seriously within the criminal justice system. (To find out how you can help, please sign up for our emails here.)
Chinese New Year is celebrated at the end of January – the year of the snake signifies wisdom and transformation. We need to see that transformation to protect animals and protect people.
#BreakingTheLink, together.
Notes:
3. Labour’s Manifesto – Take back our streets
4. Domestic abuse in England and Wales overview: November 2021
