Courts lenient on abuse, says SPCA

By NICOLA BOYES


An Auckland cat cooked alive in a microwave, a Nelson dog beaten on the head with a hammer and Wellington cats put live into a freezer.

These are just three cases from a horror list of animal abuse dealt with by the SPCA, which says the courts are not handing out tough enough sentences for animal cruelty.

The second annual SPCA list of shame was released yesterday, detailing 30 accounts of animal cruelty dealt with between January and September this year.

Peter Mason, the national president of the society, said the list showed the sadistic nature of some New Zealanders.

Two prosecutions this year resulted in prison terms, the first since the 1999 Animal Welfare Act came in, but given the penalties available, some sentences were still lenient.

"I think there has been some improvement, but there are still some sentences that are coming out that are still pretty poor."

In August a man was sentenced in the Christchurch District Court to three months in jail and a $2500 fine for beating a malnourished dog with a baseball bat, taping its mouth shut and leaving it to die.

He was also banned from owning a pet for five years.

In May, a 37-year-old man was sentenced to three months in prison and banned from owning a pet for five years after stabbing a dog to death.

Mr Mason said it was time judges took animal cruelty more seriously and imposed the penalties available.

The maximum penalty for ill-treating an animal is a $25,000 fine and/or six months in prison.

The penalty for wilfully ill-treating an animal is a maximum fine of $50,000 and a jail sentence of up to three years.

Other cases in this year's list included a live turkey in Ashburton being kicked around a carpark like a football and a Northland dog dragged behind a car at up to 80km/h. In another incident a group of 9-year-old boys deliberately killed 12 hens.

Mr Mason said children's involvement in animal cruelty was disturbing given research which linked animal cruelty in adolescence with violence against humans later in life.

Auckland SPCA chief executive Bob Kerridge said the list showed the severity of deliberate acts dealt out by humans to animals.

"If we did it to a human there would be an outcry."

He said a recent case in Northland in which a couple were sentenced to 200 hours' community service and a $1000 fine for running a dog fighting ring showed what some courts thought about animal cruelty.

Judge Thomas Everitt said in sentencing the couple that offences against animals had to be put on a lesser level than those against humans.