Teachers Should Be Required to Report Students Who Abuse Animals

When I first read the headline Teacher Fired for Reporting Animal Abuse on School Grounds Reinstated, I was appalled at the thought of a teacher getting reprimanded for reporting animal abuse in the first place. Animal cruelty shouldn't be taken lightly, especially not by the people who are supposed to be teaching children.

In April, eight dead baby opposums were found on school grounds in Bath County, Kentucky. They had been tortured. Teacher Lorraine Leadingham discovered who the suspects were and reported them to an outside agency. "I took a stand and put my job on the line for it. And I feel what I did was right." She was fired for it. The independent tribunal who overturned her firing saw her good intentions for what they were, especially since school officials were trying to sweep the incident under the rug because the suspects were "children of prominent community citizens."

Teachers are required to report signs of child abuse. The same should be true when they have reason to believe children are abusing animals.

What the kids did was wrong. No question. The only problem in this case was that the outside agency Leadingham chose to turn to was PETA.

Considering it's generally frowned upon for teachers to release the names of students to anyone, putting these minors in PETA's crosshairs was rash. PETA may get headlines and may be responsible for a number of successful campaigns that protect animals, but they have no authority to prosecute animal cruelty, nor are they bound by due process in how they handle information (except, perhaps to avoid those fine lines that mark the boundaries of slander and harassment). Leadingham admits that she was so distraught over the torture and abuse that "I guess I acted before I gave good forethought."

Leadingham was absolutely right in reporting the kids, but she should have reported them to the proper authorities — the local police, humane society, or prosecutor — whose job it is to pursue a cruelty investigation and possible charges. And the school should have been behind her one hundred percent. Animal cruelty can be an indicator of domestic violence in the home, as well as a warning sign for a litany of other violent and delinquent behaviors.

The American Humane Association has compiled research showing the link between violent acts toward animals and violence toward people. Here's a sampling of the results that involve kids:

• Children exposed to domestic violence were three times more likely to be cruel to animals than children from nonviolent households.
• In a Wisconsin study, 75 percent of battered women reported that pets had been abused in front of children. A New Jersey study found, in pet-owning families being investigated for child abuse, that one-third of the children had abused animals, using them as scapegoats for their anger.
• Sexually abused children were five times more likely to abuse animals, and 20 percent of children who sexually abused other children had histories of sexually abusing animals.
• The FBI identifies animal cruelty as one of the juvenile behaviors associated with increasingly violent behavior.
• Fifty percent of school shooters have histories of animal cruelty.

Teachers are on the front lines when it comes to observing behavior in children. It should be just as important for them to report signs of animal abuse as it is for them to get involved when there's evidence of domestic violence or any other crime, and they should be protected when they do so.

Urge your representatives to make animal abuse reporting mandatory in schools. Compassionate teachers like Lorraine Leadingham can save both animal and human lives.

Photo credit: michale