Bestiality and zoophilia - Evolve For Animals

Bestiality and Zoophiliainterviews to investigate the connection between sexual abuse in childhoodor adolescence and sexual activities, interests, and deviations among asample of 36 sexually oriented murderers. They found that 43% of the participantshad been sexually abused in childhood, 32% in adolescence, and37% as adults. Those sexually abused in childhood were more likely toreport active cruelty to animals in childhood (58% versus 15% of those notsexually abused in childhood), cruelty to children (73% versus 38%), andassaulting adults (58% versus 15%). Of the perpetrators who had experiencedsexual abuse as adolescents, 67% (versus 31% of the non-abused)engaged in animal abuse. Twenty-three percent of the perpetrators indicatedan interest in sexual contact with animals.In their study of a normative sample of 880 children and 276 sexuallyabused children, aged 2 to 12 years, Friedrich et al. (1992 cited in Ascioneet al. 2003) found significantly higher rates of animal abuse among the sexuallyabused group; 34.8% of the boys and 27.5% of the girls, comparedto 4.9% of the boys and 3.3% of the girls in the normative group. Anotherstudy documenting a higher prevalence of animal cruelty among sexuallyabused children was conducted by McClellan et al. (1995).Animal Abuse and Interpersonal ViolenceA growing number of studies document the existence of a link between animalabuse and interpersonal violence, even though neither causal norchronological relations between these two phenomena have been establishedfor certain. Hellmann and Blackman (1966) studied 53 male prisoners whohad committed non-aggressive crimes and 31 male prisoners convicted ofviolent crimes. Seventeen percent of the first group reported cruelty towardsanimals, while significantly more (52%) of the violent criminals had abusedanimals. In their study of homicidally aggressive children in an inpatientward, Lewis et al. (1983) found that 14% had a record of animal cruelty, incomparison to only 3% of non-homicidally aggressive children.Similarly, among a sample studied by Felthous and Kellert (1986), 25%of criminals classified as aggressive, but only 5.8% of the non-aggressivecriminals and none of the non-criminals, had abused animals in childhoodmore than five times. Noteworthy is the distinction the authors madebetween abusive acts according to the severity, frequency, and the species ofanimal and its social value. Also, the criminals were classified as either loworhigh-aggressive; substantial animal abuse was significantly related to theimpulsive and recurrent violence of the high-aggressive group. Felthous andKellert (1987) emphasized the importance of assessing the severity and frequencyof animal abuse when investigating links to interpersonal violence.Bestiality and zoophilia: Associations with sex and violence offending 51