Domestic Abuse Awareness Month

Coercive control is the most likely form of domestic abuse to lead to homicide. Our event in June 2023 was held at Hogarth’s House in London, where William Hogarth first highlighted the transition from animal cruelty to murder.

Animal abuse as a form of coercive control

Animal abuse occurs in approximately half of all households affected by domestic abuse where animals are within families.
Victim-survivors experience an average of 50 incidents of abuse before getting effective help.
Individuals and families will often delay fleeing a violent situation due to concerns regarding the safety of their companion animal, with one study reporting that 35% of women delayed seeking refuge for this reason.
Another study showed that individuals who witnessed animal cruelty are eight times more likely to be perpetrators and witnessing animal cruelty was the biggest predictor of later violence.
Around 70% of animal cruelty in the home occurs in front of children and children exposed to domestic abuse are nearly three times more likely to exhibit cruelty to animals.

Whitehall 1212

This was the first telephone number (in 1932) of the Metropolitan Police, formed in 1829 just after the RSPCA who were founded in 1824. An interesting fact is that the new police force changed their uniforms to follow that of the first pioneering rescue society for the protection of animals.

Whitehall 1212 was how members of the public reported incidents of crime and could ask for advice. Now, of course, that is all done online, but when we researched the 44 police websites of England and Wales, we saw that NONE made any reference to the situation of animals caught up within in domestic abuse.

We wanted to change that.

Working alongside the Metropolitan Domestic Abuse team, we helped to not only change their internal police advice, training and policy but, in addition, 80% of police websites now offer advice to those affected and, most importantly, explain where to go to find safety for animals. Of course, that leaves 20%, but we are working on that!

This police department have been so helpful, and we can’t thank them enough for listening. We made a first-ever Naturewatch Foundation animal welfare presentation to senior officers and specialists in New Scotland Yard during October and caught up with Dexter, a police welfare dog. We also presented online to ‘Domestic Abuse Champions’ around England and Wales. These are the officers who spread the word to all other frontline police officers.

It has been quite a month.

We went to Parliament too

We have worked closely with APDAWG (the All-party Parliamentary Dog Advisory Welfare Group) before and so were delighted to be asked to take our campaign to be the theme of the October event.

We invited speakers from RSPCA, Scottish SPCA, the Links Group, the Dogs Trust and other specialists, lawyers and trainers. We also heard a very emotional talk from someone who lived through the abuse for years. MPs from the Labour Party, the Conservative Party and the Scottish National Party attended the event.

Working together, we can protect animals and protect people.

Talking helps

On this campaign, we have taken part in podcasts, most recently as far away as Ohio, USA. We have appeared on the ITN News with our wonderful Patron, Wendy Turner-Webster, herself a survivor of domestic abuse where animals were involved.

We have made government submissions to the Online Harms Bill, to a consultation on Violence and Women and Girls and to the Sentencing Council on animal cruelty sentencing.

What would we like to see now?

We want to see animal abuse awareness added to the criminal justice toolkit within public protection.
We want to support the animal victims of domestic abuse.
We want to continue to highlight the signs of animal abuse within coercive control.

One in four women between 16 and 74 are affected by domestic abuse. If you would like support, please consider the following web pages: