In 2005, Nicole LaDue had a chihuahua with a perfect marking of Mickey Mouse on his back.
One day, she came home to find her house looking as if it had been broken into and ransacked and Mickey, her dog, dead. LaDue, now 44, said it was the first sign the person she was living with was abusive.
“Animals are used as a manipulative tool against a victim,” LaDue said. “Mickey’s life was looked at like it was just a dog.”
Florida lawmakers are now considering bills with bipartisan support in the House and Senate that would broaden the conditions under which domestic violence victims could receive an order of protection to include threats made against their pets. It’s one of several bills in the current legislative session in Tallahassee that address animal cruelty, as well as domestic violence.
Rep. Debra Tendrich, D-Lake Worth, who is sponsoring the House bill along with Rep. Danny Nix Jr., R-Sarasota, cited a study showing that 89% of women who had “companion animals while experiencing domestic violence reported that their abuser threatened, injured or killed their pets.”
“Many victims,” she said in an email, “delay leaving abusive situations because they cannot safely escape with their pets.”
The study Tendrich referenced – “Animal maltreatment as a risk marker of more frequent and severe forms of intimate partner violence” done by a group of Canadian researchers in 2017 – found women whose pets were more frequently and severely abused reported greater levels of abuse directed at them compared with those who reported little or no maltreatment of their pets by their partner.
Under current Florida law, pets are only considered as cause for protective orders if they’ve already been harmed or killed. Threats to the animals aren’t taken into account.
“That threatening component is really, critically important,” said Amy Fitzgerald, a professor at the University of Windsor in Canada who authored the study as part of a research group that focuses on the intersection of animal and intimate partner violence. Their research found more than half of the women studied reported they delayed leaving their abuser out of concern for their pet's safety, and one third who had left considered going back because their abuser still had their pet.
LaDue, who said her abuser was never charged, testified last month in support of the sweeping domestic violence bill, which includes the provision dealing with threats to pets, before the state Senate Criminal Justice Committee. Senators voted unanimously to pass the bill, which is awaiting consideration by two other Senate panels before a possible floor vote. The House version of the legislation has cleared the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee and awaits consideration by two other committees before it can reach the floor.
“Because animal cruelty is so deeply linked to other violent criminal offenses, [the bill] empowers the courts to intervene more effectively not only against this direct type of abuse, but also before these patterns of behavior escalate further,” said Senate Minority Leader Lori Berman, D-Boynton Beach, a sponsor, along with Sen. Alexis Calatayud, R-Miami.
The House and Senate domestic violence bills are not identical, but both contain the provision dealing with threats to pets. Differences in the proposals would need to be resolved before the measure could be signed into law if it passes the Legislature.
“Abuse is abuse is abuse,” said House Democratic policy chair Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, who serves on the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee. “Anything we can do to tighten up that legislation or make sure the penalty is suitable for the crime, we should be working toward that.”
Research highlighted by the FBI also has shown animal cruelty can be predictive of violence against partners, children and elders. Because pets serve as a source of comfort to victims, the abuser often exploits that connection to “manipulate, control and punish victims” by threatening or harming the animal, the FBI noted.
“[Pets are] used as a kind of hostages and pawns,” said Travis Moore, a lobbyist with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which is lobbying in support of Tendrich’s bill.
Moore noted Florida doesn’t have clauses including threats to pets in protective orders as some other states do, including Tennessee, Nevada and Colorado.
Other provisions in the broad domestic violence bills focus largely on protecting victims and their family members in domestic violence situations. Those include enhanced penalties for domestic violence offenses if a person has a prior domestic violence conviction, and authorizing courts to order electronic monitoring in certain domestic violence, dating violence, repeat violence and sexual violence cases.
Meanwhile, more than two decades after Mickey was killed by her partner at the time, LaDue has four dogs and two cats who help her and her four children heal from their past. Animal health and safety are causes close to her heart; she grew up working in her father’s 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital.
Today, LaDue spends every Tuesday morning at the Humane Society of Tampa Bay, where there is a free pet food pantry twice weekly and low-cost veterinary services, as she continues to advocate for domestic violence victims and their pets.
By her side are dogs Rooney, Trixie, Pearl and Ezra.
This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. The reporter can be reached at zherukhamarta@ufl.edu.
