Mississippi Animal Abuse is Only a Slap on the Wrist

By: Dina Halligan

Mississippi Animal Abuse is Only a Slap on the Wrist

Big blue eyes, fluffy thick fur, and a wagging tongue hanging out. As the saying goes dogs are mans best friend. So who would ever want to hurt a dog, let alone any animal?

“Do you see this face? Look at this darling face,” says Terri Rue who adopted her pet dog Apollo from the Oxford Lafayette Humane Society. “I don’t know how anyone could be abuse something that is this darn cute!”

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) website, A New Jersey study found that in 88 percent of families where there had been physical abuse of children, there were also records of animal abuse.

Animal abusers that are convicted can be found on multiple websites such as pet-abuse.com where anyone can find local and nation wide animal abusers.

According to pet-abuse.com in 2006 a Columbus veterinarian, Samuel Wilcox, was fined for misdemeanor animal cruelty chargers. Former employees of Wilcox testified that they saw him repeatedly kick an Australian shepherd after it bit Wilcox on the hand.

“I think that this information should be public,” says Rue. “I have a right to know who these sick people are and I don’t want them around my furry baby.”

“Our animal control officer keeps file of people who have surrendered animals to us and their name is on our computer system,” says Riki Roederer a kennel attendant at the Oxford Lafayette Humane Society.

“We do make everyone who adopts from us go through an application process. It’s a front and back page that tells us a little bit more about them and about how the animal will be taken care of,” says Roederer.

“Most of the time you can tell if an application is filled out kind of sketchy,” says Roederer. “We can tell if the people seem like they aren’t very good pet owners, and we’ll check into that before we let them adopt from us.”

While researching the public information of convicted animal abusers on ASPCA.org and pet-abuse.com it is clear that not many people get serious sentences when they are convicted of animal abuse. Most convicted abusers get a fine of a few 100 dollars and that’s it.

“In Mississippi animal cruelty and abuse is only a fine, basically a slap on the wrist. They were working on making it a felony but they only have made it so far to where the second offense is a felony,” says Roderer.

Cara Horn is an intern at the Oxford Lafayette Humane Society and thinks that this punishment isn’t even hard enough.

“I think that the punishment should be harder,” says Horn. “I see too many animals come into and out of the shelter, these animals need a loving caring home.”

According to pet-abuse.com there are only four states without felony provisions for cruelty to animals and Mississippi is one of them. In the state of Mississippi the maximum amount of jail time is six months; compared to the states of Alabama and Louisiana where the maximum amount of jail time for a convicted animal abuser is ten years

“I personally would lock them away forever depending on what their abuse was, however any abuse period is not okay,” says Roderer.