In Ascione's oft-cited 1997 survey of one large domestic
violence agency in every state, more than 80% of the shelter
directors reported that women sometimes talked about their
abusers also abusing animals in the household, and 60% reported
that the women's children talked about witnessing animal abuse.8
Those numbers are probably more surprising because only one of
every three shelters included a question about animal abuse as
part of its intake inventory or other formal communication. In
other words, these women and children were often volunteering
information about abuse of their pets without prompts. "This
confirmed my suspicion that pet abuse was another form of family
violence to which children might be exposed," Ascione writes.
"The most basic question I had—how often do women who are
battered report that pets are threatened or abused?—did not, at
that time, have an answer."9 In more recent studies, researchers
have interviewed more than 700 women who were victims of
intimate partner violence about ani