UTAH ANIMALS NEED YOUR HELP!
A plea to Help Pass Henry's Law
 
Utah has one of the weakest animal cruelty statutes in the country.  If you'd like the penalties to better fit violent crimes against companion animals, please CALL, WRITE or E-mail your state legislators! Ask them to support Henry’s Law in 2008, sponsored by Senator Gene Davis (D-Salt Lake)

For email addresses and district maps: www.le.state.ut.us
(Or if you don't know the names of YOUR legislators, call your County Elections Clerk.) Check on the status of Henry's Law and how you can help.

Please sign the petition!!

Facts About The Current Animal Cruelty Law
1. Under Utah law, all animal mistreatment--neglect, abandonment, even the most heinous and intentional cruelty--are Class C, B, or A misdemeanors, depending whether the abuse was intentionally or recklessly caused. When juveniles vandalized some businesses, sexually mutilated and decapitated a puppy a few years ago in Cache Co., they were charged only with vandalism because it carried stronger penalties, despite their unprovoked violence.

2. In Utah, intentionally mutilating, poisoning, or killing an animal without legal privilege are considered only slightly more serious than loitering, stealing a candy bar, and roller-blading on city sidewalks (all misdemeanors). The maximum penalty for even the most heinous case of cruelty to an animal is a $1000.00 fine and up to a year in jail!  Even Sean Dougherty didn’t receive this light penalty when he was convicted in 1995 for torturing his wife’s dog in front of their children:

"Dougherty became enraged with 'Daug' for urinating on the living-room floor. While his two stepchildren watched, Dougherty choked and kicked the dog, stomped on its chest and sprayed water into his eyes before throwing it into a canal behind his home."—S. L. Tribune

Last year two men mutilated and shot two prize horses on their employers’ ranch in Kane County.  Despite the terrible, bloody crime they committed and the suffering they caused the horses and their owners, these grown men were convicted only of criminal mischief (trespassing), ordered to pay a small fine, and write a letter of apology.  These violent men were given probation, and freely re-entered society.

Five Reasons to Amend Utah's Animal Cruelty Statute…NOW
1. Utah’s animal-protection law is outdated, weak, and not reflective of the value and status that most of Utah citizens (73 percent of households have pets) give their companion animals:  as family members and living creatures capable of much suffering in the wrong hands. In fact, 43 other states and D.C. have already made crimes of animal cruelty a felony.  It’s time for Utah, with our society’s emphasis on compassion and kindness, to do the same.

2. Last year more than 60,000 Utah voters from all over the state signed petitions calling for tougher penalties for crimes of animal abuse and torture.
 
3.  Henry’s Law, as the bill as become known, creates an expanded tiered level of penalties, depending on the seriousness and intent of the abuse or torture: from a Class C misdemeanor for unintentional neglect to a second degree felony for intentionally torturing or causing the death of animal and if done in the presence of a child. The felony is important, because it gives prosecutors an incentive to take on these cases. It gives them room to plea bargain down, to get the offender off the street and into counseling.  The offender then carries the appropriate stigma of a convicted felon, alerting society to his capacity for unrestrained, unprovoked violence.
                                       
4. An Early Indicator of Child and Spousal Abuse in the Home
 Animal abuse and other forms of domestic violence are similar types of crimes, conveying the depraved and uncontrollable violent capacity of the offender. Prosecutors, psychologists, sociologists and cruelty investigators have documented that people who abuse animals often go on to abuse human beings. Further, children who abuse animals are likely acting out sexual, physical, or emotional abuse that they've witnessed or that has been done to them. Unable to talk about their painful experiences of abuse, they act out their frustration on the only member of the household more vulnerable than they: the family pet. Women in protective shelters commonly report that their partners had threatened, tortured, starved, or killed the family pet as a means of controlling her or the children. Animal cruelty is a clear warning sign of trouble ahead, says Utah State University’s Dr. Frank Ascione, world-renowned for his clinical studies.                       
"Animal abuse is not just the result of some personality flaw in the abuser, but a symptom of a deeply disturbed family," states Dr. Randall Lockwood, Humane Society of the U. S.   
       
5. The Animal Cruelty Act does not set precedent and does not create more protections for animals than exist for children, as some have falsely stated. In fact, 43 other states have already added felony classifications for crimes of intentional animal cruelty, having recognized the violent capacity of the offenders (often the same ones who are abusing children).