Nikolas Cruz had got into trouble for shooting chickens. He had also boasted about killing animals and posted images of them on social media. There are even stories about him trying to get his dog to attack a neighbour’s potbellied piglets.
In February 2018, Cruz killed 17 staff and students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Florida.
In the UK, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables would often, according to neighbours, shoot pigeons with air rifles and tie rabbits to railway lines to watch them be run over. In 1993, when they were just 10 years old, they killed toddler James Bulger in Liverpool.
It’s a familiar scenario: a heinous crime has been committed and, afterwards, the background of the perpetrators is analysed and picked over in a bid to uncover if there were warning signs that might have been missed or chances to intervene that were lost.
A picture of chaotic childhoods, peppered with abandonment and violence, often emerges – and, in among the flow of shocking stories, we often hear tales of animal cruelty.
That link between animal cruelty and extreme acts of violence – and psychopathic behaviour traits – has become well established in the public psyche. So much so, in fact, that fears over wrongly outing a child as the next Venables is stopping teachers from reporting incidents, according to Gilly Mendes Ferreira, head of education and policy at the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA). Most teachers recognise there are likely other reasons for the cruelty, but they fear that reporting it will mean only the worst-case conclusion will be considered.
It has become, says Ferreira, something of a “silent area” as a result. And that silence can be extremely damaging.
Changing perceptions
This story is from the October 03, 2019 edition of TES.
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This story is from the October 03, 2019 edition of TES.
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