Clothesline Project of Tampa Bay

The First Strike® campaign was created in 1997 to raise public and professional awareness about the connection between animal cruelty and human violence and to help communities identify some of the origins of violence, predict its patterns, and prevent its escalation.

Each year, the campaign works with local animal protection agencies around the United States to bring together animal shelter workers, animal control officers, social service workers, law enforcement officials, veterinarians, educators, and others to learn about the violence connection and to promote inter-agency collaborations to reduce animal cruelty, family violence, and community violence.

First Strike also provides investigative support, rewards, expert testimony, and information on the animal-human cruelty connection to law enforcement and prosecutors in high-profile animal cruelty cases. The campaign also works jointly with legislators and activists throughout the United States to press for the passage of well-enforced, felony-level anti-cruelty laws.

Is there a connection between animal cruelty and human violence?

Since 2000, The Humane Society of the United States has compiled reports of high-profile cases of animal cruelty and neglect from across the country. Based on a review of cases that occurred in 2002, The HSUS found that approximately 12% of intentional animal cruelty cases also involved some form of family violence, including domestic violence, child abuse, spouse/child witnessing animal cruelty, or elder abuse.

In cases where there was a co-occurrence of domestic violence, child abuse, or where the spouse/child witnessed the abuse, the most common offenses included suffocating, throwing, and torturing the animal. Here is a breakdown of the co-occurrence of animal cruelty and family violence by gender.