Over the years researchers have recorded an inexplicable link between children that abuse and torture animals and adults that perpetrate the same violent tendencies towards humans. It is important to understand how we are socialized into this culture of violence. Animals provide a dominant theme in children's entertainment and violence is a factor in these experiences.
Animal abuse can promote violence to humans.
There is compelling evidence to indicate that people who are multiple murders share a common history of torturing and killing animals. Earl Kenneth Shriner, who raped, stabbed, and mutilated a 7- year old boy, had been widely known in his neighborhood as the man who put firecrackers in the rectum of dogs and strung up cats. Carroll Edward Cole, executed for five of 35 murders of which he was accused, said his first act of violence as a child was to strangle a puppy. Patrick Sherrill, who killed 14 coworkers at a post office and then shot himself, had a history of stealing local pets and allowing his own dog to attack and mutilate them. Brenda Spencer, who opened fire at a San Diego school, killing two children and injuring nine others, had repeatedly abused cats and dogs, often by setting their tails on fire.