On March 31, Maine Governor John Baldacci signed a bill allowing animals to be included in protection orders in domestic violence cases. The measure comes out of a growing realization of the link between animal cruelty and domestic violence, and the way an abuser can use beloved pets to torment or manipulate a partner. An incredibly sad article in the New York Times sketches out some of these stories, including that of a woman whose partner started mailing her pieces of her cat after she left him the first time.

The article cites the findings of a Utah State University psychologist named Frank Ascione, who conducted a series of interviews beginning in the 1990s to study these relationships. Among 101 people interviewed in shelters for battered women, fifty-four percent said that their partners had killed or hurt their pets. Out of 42 men in prison who had violent histories with women, half said they had abused or killed pets.

Drawing a link between cruelty to animals and general violence is nothing new, of course. A book reviewed in last week’s New York Times, Pets in America: A History, by Katherine C. Grier, reportedly discusses the Victorian ethic that saw cruelty to animals as "one outward expression of inward moral collapse." And in 1997, the Human Society began a program called “First Strike,” which aimed to explore the connections between the two forms of violence, as well as their origins and patterns. The website for this program cites a 1997 study in which 85% of women and 63% of children entering shelters for battered women reported incidents of pet abuse in the family.

Whether or not the Victorian theories of behavioral science are entirely accurate, a person’s relationship toward animals can serve as a powerful symbol of his or her own capacity for compassion and love. The stories in the New York Times article illustrate this connection in touching and painful ways, particularly in their portrayal of the profound connection that some victims feel toward their pets.

"There are some batterers who are prone to using coercion and terrorizing tactics who very well know how strongly attached their partner is to the animals in her life," said Frank A. Ascione.... "It's the dynamic of preying on the love and affection that women often have for the animals in their lives, who may be their only source of solace, their only source of unconditional love."