By Jennifer Golson/The Star-Ledger
May 30, 2010, 6:00AM
Amanda Brown/The Star-Ledger
EATONTOWN — The argument in the motel room in Eatontown last summer was loud and furious.
A Linden man had assaulted his girlfriend and, just as she went to lock herself in the bathroom, she saw her 6-week-old kitten fly across the room.
The gray and white tabby, named Pooter, smashed into a hardwood wall. The blow killed the pet, according to Victor “Buddy” Amato of the Monmouth County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
On April 9 Rodney Shivers, who had thrown the kitten, was sentenced to four months in the Monmouth County jail. Shivers, 19, also must perform 60 hours of community service and undergo anger-management counseling, said Thomas Rosenthal, spokesman for the state Office of the Public Defender.
Previous coverage:
• Linden man is sentenced to 4 months in jail for killing kitten
• Linden man accused of fatally abusing kitten
• Hunterdon County man gets probation for killing family dog
“He went after the animal to hurt the victim,” said Eatontown Police Chief Michael Goldfarb.
Shivers is one jarring example of people who attack pets to hurt the pets’ owners — a cruel twist to domestic-violence disputes. Awareness of the tactic has increased recently, just as more people are becoming aware of animal abuse.
Consider: In October 2007, a former Holland Township man killed the family dog by slitting its throat after his wife asked for divorce. He pleaded guilty to third-degree animal cruelty.
In November, a Forked River man was indicted on charges of beating his ex-girlfriend’s cats, killing one.
And in December, a former employee of the state Juvenile Justice Commission was accused of assaulting his wife and killing the family greyhound.
“The bond between pets and their owners can be very strong, which is exactly why an abuser knows they can exploit the victim’s love of a pet by threatening to injure the animal if the victim speaks up,” said Ida Petkus, director of the Domestic Violence Advocacy Center in Mount Holly.
And while no one knows exactly how many domestic violence cases involve animals, Petkus said family pets have always been used as pawns, just as children have been, and anything else the victim considers important.
Abuse experts and animal advocates say there is a greater need to cross-train law enforcement officials and social service workers to make them aware that when one form of violence is present, another form is likely.
For a woman who wants to escape with her pet from an abusive situation, the options are few, though officials around the country are working to change that through legislation, pet-friendly shelters and greater exposure.
In New Jersey, elected officials also are sponsoring measures that would authorize a court to include animals in domestic-violence restraining orders. Sen. Thomas Kean Jr. (R-Union) and Assemblywomen Connie Wagner (D-Bergen) and Charlotte Vandervalk (R-Bergen) introduced bills this year with the same purpose: “to provide specific statutory authorization for courts to issue orders covering animals in situations where a person abuses or threatens to abuse an animal as part of a domestic dispute.”
Kean said: “Successful enforcement of this bill would remove one of the levels of control that abusers use frequently over their spouse.
“Not only is there a very strong correlation between those that would abuse their pets and those that would abuse others, but in addition, what we have found is the abusers use the pet as an instrument of control over their family members.”
SUSCEPTIBLE TARGETS
Gordon Reibman, accused of beating his wife and killing the family dog.
The day after Gordon Reibman, 60, was accused of punching and kicking his wife, leaving her bruised, police had to return to their Hamilton Township home. The second call concerned Renny, the family greyhound.
Reibman allegedly had turned on the dog last Dec. 7, punching and kicking it to death.
“The victim’s sister received a call at approximately 12:50 p.m. from the defendant,” said Casey DeBlasio, a spokeswoman for the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office. The man allegedly had told his sister-in-law he “went too far with Renny” and said, “I think she’s dead,” according to DeBlasio.
Reibman, who was an education program development specialist with the Juvenile Justice Commission, was indicted this month on third-degree charges of aggravated assault and animal cruelty, which each carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Reibman’s defense lawyer, Robin Kay Lord, did not return repeated calls for comment.
Animals are considered part of the family, and experts say that makes them susceptible to domestic violence.
“If there’s domestic violence going on in a house, there’s a good chance the animals are being abused, also,” said Amato, the Monmouth SPCA’s chief animal cruelty officer. “The pets more so, because of the fact that they can’t speak for themselves. ... A dog can’t pick up the phone and call 911, and a dog can’t make a statement.”
Frank Ascione, executive director of the Institute for Human-Animal Connection, at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, has studied the correlation between domestic violence and animal abuse.
In 2007, Ascione and his colleagues surveyed 100 battered women at Utah shelters, and 72 of them said their partners had hurt or killed pets or threatened to do so.
“It was important to conduct these surveys, because before all the research was actually conducted and reported, all we had were primarily anecdotal reports from those who work in the field of domestic violence and those who work in animal welfare,” Ascione said.
The attackers don’t hate animals, said Evan Stark, a forensic social worker and a professor in the Rutgers University School of Public Affairs and Administration.
“Most of what these guys do is very calculated and is designed because they know it’s going to have an effect,” Stark said. They exert their power like any other bully, “by picking on something that’s helpless.”
Cynthia Wilcox Lischick says she was 7 or 8 when her stepfather broke a rear leg and front paw of the family’s poodle puppy, Desiree.
“We lived in fear and terror, and so did the dog after that,” said Lischick, who was living with her family in Florida. “We also knew he could do that to us.”
There were more threats than actual violence, but Lischick remembers her mother being battered and the man eventually going to jail for trying to strangle her mother. The experience, she said, played a role in Lischick becoming a licensed professional counselor with a doctorate in cognitive psychology. She is a certified domestic violence specialist, an adjunct in the same Rutgers department as Stark.
“What we did live with was a lot of intimidation and a lot of coercion within the home and a lot of threats, threatening violence if you don’t do something you’re told,” she said. What had brought the stepfather down on the dog was that he had left the closet open and Desiree got a hold of one of his golf shoes, Lischick said.
DEATH OF A CAT
It may be hard to recognize the animal abuse as a crime.
Matt Rainey/The Star-Ledger
Veterinarian Laura Collins (right) still remembers Domino, the cat who came to her office with mysterious injuries and returned a week later -- dead.
Laura Collins still can’t discuss Domino without tears. A veterinarian at Tabby’s Place, a cat sanctuary in Ringoes, Collins recalled meeting the big, friendly black-and-white cat about five years ago, while she was working at an East Brunswick animal hospital.
Domino had suspicious injuries consistent with trauma.
“Initially I thought he might have been hit by a car,” Collins said. The cat’s owner was living with her boyfriend but said she doubted he had been responsible for the injuries.
Two weeks later, Domino was back at the hospital for a necropsy, or an animal autopsy.
“He had multiple fractured ribs, he had a fractured tooth, he had burn marks on the abdomen from previous episodes that had occurred prior to the day of death,” Collins said.
She called the owner at home. “I said, ‘You need to get out of that house.’ I figured she was in danger. ... Then I called the cops and asked them to go check on her.”
The boyfriend would later be prosecuted for a variety of offenses, including stealing the woman’s belongings, Collins said.
Victims of domestic violence are often too afraid to share stories of personal abuse, but they will talk about their animals, said Phil Arkow, a New Jersey-based consultant with the American Humane Association. Arkow has written manuals to cross-train employees of animal shelters, child-protection agencies and domestic violence protection programs.
Experts are training law enforcement officers and social service workers to recognize all forms of abuse, whether human or animal, so they know which agency to call for collaboration, Arkow said.
For seven years, the New Mexico state government has hosted an annual conference on the issue. “The biggest thing we have seen is a huge, huge improvement between the various people in law enforcement, child-services workers and domestic violence workers,” said Tammy Fiebelkorn, a volunteer and animal activist who organizes the event. “They’re all starting to work together now.”
In New Jersey, there has been a lot more interaction than one might know, due to the confidentiality needed, said Heather Cammisa, state director for the Humane Society of the United States.
On March 21 the Animal Welfare Federation of New Jersey held its annual two-day conference at Rutgers University. Cammisa, in a topic titled “Cruelty 101,” encouraged animal welfare professionals across the state to return to their communities and network with social service agencies, domestic violence centers and others.
HAVENS
Even if New Jersey enacts legislation that adds pets to domestic violence restraining orders, there would still be an obstacle for women who want to take their animals with them. Domestic violence shelters typically do not take pets, said Petkus from the Mount Holly advocacy center.
“A number of animal shelters have networks of people who act as foster families in emergency situations,” she said. Her organization runs Project Overnight, placing victims and their pets in a pet-friendly location for three days until they can get a support network in place.
Associated Humane Societies has had a Safe Haven Program for 15 years, where victims of domestic violence can leave their pets for 30 days for free, said Roseann Trezza, the executive director. If the family can’t make other arrangements, the shelter will place the pets up for adoption or, for animals that are harder to adopt because of age or other factors, at their Animal Haven Farm in Forked River.
Chip and Noel have been at the Ocean County facility for about two years, since the two dogs were shipped from North Carolina, where a woman was fleeing her abuser, who would soon be out of jail. She wanted to save herself and her family of five dogs, but she couldn’t take them all. Chip, a reddish-brown husky mix, and Noel, with the black-and-gray markings of a German shepherd, were too big.
The dogs are about 12 years old and must be adopted as a pair, said John Bergman, general manager of the Animal Haven Farm. “We knew their story and we weren’t going to separate them,” he said.
There are ways to address the lack of shelters for survivors of abuse and their pets, said Allie Phillips, public policy director for the American Humane Association. She maintains a national list called the Pets and Women’s Shelters Program, or PAWS. The association helps shelters devise ways to house clients with their pets. The Domestic Violence Advocacy Center in Mount Holly is on the list.
“Families will stay behind in an abusive home to protect their pets, or they may go back into the abusive home if they’ve left their pet behind,” Phillips said. “The PAWS program goes one step further. It acknowledges that even if the person can leave with their pet, they don’t want to be separated from their pet.”
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