I keep my daughter updated on Humane Society news. Now eight, she’s been submersed in animal welfare issues since a pre-schooler and says she wants to be a “an activist” when she grows up. She watched a spay surgery when she was four. She has fostered dozens of kittens with me. Kittens that we have loved and then went through the heartache of kissing goodbye, trusting that the world would not abuse them. When she was five she suggested adopters take “lie atector tests”. When she was six she instinctively understood the importance of organizational branding and would correct anyone who left the “of Huron Valley” off the end of the “Humane Society”. When she sees pit bulls walking with their owners she hopes out loud that they are good to their dog and “don’t make them fight”.
After she recounted her school day to me yesterday, I gave her the good news that we won another prosecution against someone who was mean to their animal (see press release). She then asked me what the person had done wrong. I debated internally for a moment with my usual concern about how knowing these harsh realities might affect her and said gently, “She starved her dog until it died.”
And she said, without missing a beat and as if I were the stupidest idiot on the planet, “God, mom, of course we won. That’d be like you starving me!”
I find that children understand the immorality in hurting animals much better than adults–their sense of honesty and goodness is still simple and clean. As adults we get caught up in emotions and politics and excuses for all sorts of wrongs. Children seem to know quite intuitively that animals are innocent and defenseless, and make no choices about their situations. I believe they see in them their own vulnerability.
But what I haven’t told her yet, because I want her to believe that people get punished for terrible wrongs, is that I have yet to see one single person spend one single day in jail for hurting an animal. This is not because we don’t have good laws or sympathetic prosecutors or judges. We do. I am told it is because of things like sentencing guidelines and full jails.
But in my heart I cannot believe it isn’t really because we as a society do not value animals or take responsibility for the suffering that we humans create. Animal abusers don’t get put in jail because they are not considered a true threat to the community.
I wonder how things would be different if children were doling out the punishments?
