Animal Cruelty in PA

Currently, animal abuse is treated very leniently in the state of Pennsylvania, with some claiming PA is in the bottom five states for penalties.  After learning about Northstar and realizing that his abuser could be charged with as little as a summary offense, which is much like a parking ticket, we decided it needed to change.

We learned late last year that a bill had been introduced by Rep. Dom Costa in October 2012 called, "Angel's Law" (previously known as HB2663.)  Angel's Law essentially increases summary offenses to misdemeanors, misdemeanors to felonies and so on.  This would allow for not only harsher penalties, but would enable better tracking of repeat abusers via fingerprints and databases.  Since it is factual that animal abusers often develop violent tendencies toward humans, tracking them is imperative!

Unfortunately, we learned about Angel's Law too late and weren't able to rally any real support from our followers and the session ended prior to any movement on the bill.  Refusing to let it die, Dom Costa worked again to get sponsors for the bill and it is with great delight that we can report Dom intends to reintroduce Angel's Law on February 14, 2013!!!  Once it is introduced, it will be assigned a new number and we need your help in order to move the bill through the process of becoming law.  You can do this by writing to your legislator.  You can find who to write to here: Find my Legislator.  When the new bill number is available, I'll post sample letters you can use when contacting your officials on this page as well as on Facebook and Twitter.


Here is a Summary of current PA Animal Cruelty Law.

More info courtesy of Pet-Abuse.com:

According to a 1997 study done by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and Northeastern University, animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes against people and four times more likely to commit property crimes than are individuals without a history of animal abuse.

Many studies in psychology, sociology, and criminology during the last 25 years have demonstrated that violent offenders frequently have childhood and adolescent histories of serious and repeated animal cruelty. The FBI has recognized the connection since the 1970s, when its analysis of the lives of serial killers suggested that most had killed or tortured animals as children. Other research has shown consistent patterns of animal cruelty among perpetrators of more common forms of violence, including child abuse, spouse abuse, and elder abuse. In fact, the American Psychiatric Association considers animal cruelty one of the diagnostic criteria of conduct disorder.

• 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.
• 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 dogs' rectums and strung up cats.
• 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.
• Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler" who killed 13 women, trapped dogs and cats in orange crates and shot arrows through the boxes in his youth.
• Carroll Edward Cole, executed for five of the 35 murders of which he was accused, said his first act of violence as a child was to strangle a puppy.
• In 1987, three Missouri high school students were charged with the beating death of a classmate. They had histories of repeated acts of animal mutilation starting several years earlier. One confessed that he had killed so many cats he'd lost count. Two brothers who murdered their parents had previously told classmates that they had decapitated a cat.
• Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer had impaled dogs' heads, frogs, and cats on sticks.

More recently, high school killers such as 15-year-old Kip Kinkel in Springfield, Ore., and Luke Woodham, 16, in Pearl, Miss., tortured animals before embarking on shooting sprees. Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot and killed 12 classmates before turning their guns on themselves, bragged about mutilating animals to their friends.