Certainly. There has been about 50 years of research into the links, when an animal is suffering, with what is happening around that animal and the kind of suffering that happens there. A great deal of it has come out of the United States, until very recently. We now have a professor here in Canada, Dr. Amy Fitzgerald, who is at the University of Windsor. She is doing the same or similar research that we see in the United States, to get us some Canadian data on the links, particularly between animal violence and domestic and interpersonal violence. It's not surprising that it's similar to what we see in the States. What is surprising is that it's actually a little worse here. By that, I mean, the instances of women reporting that when they're in a violent situation, their animal is also in a violent situation. Sixty-five per cent of women report delaying leaving a violent situation because of their animal, because of concerns about the safety of that animal. The animal is used to extort or coerce the partner or spouse and the children, typically, into different acts that they may not want to commit. It is also shocking, in the cases of those women who did leave, that almost a third of them report going back for the animal, to either check in on it or to resume living with the abuser because they cannot get their animal out.
We see very strong relationships between those two forms of violence because, of course, an animal is part of the family. It's a vulnerable part of the family and as you likely all know, there's a great deal of love that goes between humans to their animals. It's a very easy target for an abuser to use to coerce the abused, unfortunately. There is a great deal of evidence.
There is also the formation of the Canadian Violence Link Coalition here in Canada. It was started last year. Humane Canada helped bring that to the forefront. We also launched the first conference in order to study and bring forward all of the different academic research that's going on and that supports the links between animal violence and human violence. We see it ranging not only from domestic violence, interpersonal violence, but all the way up to probably the classic that most people think of, the serial killer. While not all abusers are serial killers, all serial killers are animal abusers. That evidence exists and it's a common step up from animal abuse if they have a propensity for serial violence. I shouldn't just say serial killers; it's serial violence; it's serial rapists as well.