The term entangled victimization refers to the way young children become coerced into the victimization of their pets. I want to distinguish this from direct victimization, where one individual directly abuses another sexually, psychologically, or physically. In entangled victimization, the child is forced to witness the other person harming the pet or forced to participate in the act of harming the pet. We're not talking about situations where children initiate the abuse of animals. Research shows that many abused children also abuse animals, and that's a troubling issue in itself. In those cases, the pet serve the role of a scapegoat for aggression or a more vulnerable target for an abused child to practice abusive tactics learned from their abusers. That's not what we're discussing here. We're discussing children who are attached to their pets and love them and depend on them for support and comfort but their love for their pets becomes a reason for an adult to abuse the animals. We've known for a long time that this frequently occurs in intimate partner battering. There is usually more than one victim in households where domestic violence takes place. Battered women often report that their abusers harm their companion animals to inflict emotional abuse on the women themselves. Women turn to their animals for emotional support and even delayed leaving violent situations for fear that their partners would harm their pets. Fortunately, there are a growing number of options to get pets out of domestic violence situations so that women less often have to fear leaving a pet behind only to suffer and maybe even die. There are co-sheltering programs, protective orders, and cross-reporting in animal welfare in law enforcement agencies. The concept of entangled victimization describes what happens when adult perpetrators threaten children's pets and force children to witness and even participate in acts of abuse. The sociologist Dana Atwood-Harvey conducted a rare study of entangled victimization, drawing on both retrospective accounts by adults and on her own childhood diaries recounting this experience. Through other research, battered women describe how their children witness the abuse of their pets, but this is based on women's reporting of what happened. Dana Atwood-Harvey asks about the children's firsthand experience. She writes that children reported that their animal companions suffered a whole host of atrocities. These beloved pets were neglected, abandoned, terrorized, intimidated, beaten, sexually abused, and killed. Children became entangled victims of this animal abuse through various levels of participation, threats, witness, and direct involvement. Let's see how each of these mechanisms works. In terms of threats, abusers threatened to harm or kill children's pets to silence them and terrorize them. Abusers use threats of violence to gain control, take revenge, or coerce the child into complying with a particular demand. One young girl reported that her father threatened to take her cat to the pond if she resisted his sexual abuse. Witnessing the abuse of their pets left children deeply traumatized. Atwood-Harvey writes that she will never forget the day that her DogSpot was carried away in a wire cage in the back of a pickup truck. She recalls, "I fell to my knees in front of my father, sobbing and begging, I will do whatever you want. I will be good. Just don't take him away from us." When a child is forced to witness the animal abuse, that child is the ultimate target of the abuse, even though it's the animal who experiences the physical abuse. The close bond that children share with their pets makes this a powerful form of abuse. The adult exploits the depth of the child's relationship with the pet as a method of harm and control. Finally, many children are forced or coerced into direct involvement in animal abuse. They're forced to participate in the neglect, abandonment, and physical or sexual abuse of their pets by one or both parents. In one particularly graphic account, a woman recounts how at the age of 4, her father coerced or into sexually abusing her dog and one of her puppies. Children will sometimes engage in cruelty to their pets to protect the animals from being victims of worst harm at the hands of the adult abusers. Of course, many children resist or attempt to resist and stand up for their animals, despite the consequences for themselves. From the research on domestic violence, we've known for a long time that animal abuse and intimate partner abuse frequently co-occur. Domestic violence is about power and both children and animals are vulnerable targets because they're in positions of powerlessness. Abusers will use pets to display and assert their power. There are two important takeaways from this difficult discussion. First is that in entangled victimization, the abuse of the animal is not an end in itself. The animal abuse takes place because the abuser knows that the animal's suffering will terrorize and traumatize the ultimate victim, in this case the child. The second takeaway is this, although some studies claim to find a link between witnessing animal abuse and a tendency to commit other forms of violence, there's also evidence that witnessing harm to animals can promote a sense of compassion. There is no question that entangled victimization is a deeply traumatic experience. Despite the emotional, psychological, and physical scars, or maybe because of them, children often grow into caring and compassionate adults.
