The following will be submitted today February 6, 2009 during the Senate Judiciary Public Hearing by me:
My name is ***** and I want to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak in support of passage of Seraphina's Bill SB 5402
My family and I raise and own llamas in Olympia. As such, one component of our commitment to llamas and the llama community has been to assist law enforcement, private organizations, and individuals in various types of mentoring, assistance, and unfortunately very real animal cruelty events. My childhood included spending my time on my grandfather's dairy farm on the east coast learning the practical and moral aspects of animal ownership.
I am not here today to discuss the animal corpses I have encountered laying in fields starved to death, nor the animals who's bones could be counted through years of fiber so matted that you could smell the rotting fiber long before you got close enough to handle the animal, nor even the llama with a compound leg fracture crawling with maggots left untreated. The news media and the internet is ripe with photos of the all too painful graphic realities, AND the stories about the pain and suffering of animals at the hands of their supposed caretakers.
I would like instead to address the logical and moral imperative Seraphina's Bill addresses when it comes to human obligations to the animals they have chosen to make a part of their lives.
It is a rare moment for any legislator to have the opportunity to look at a piece of legislation for its moral and ethical value in relation to the wishes of those they represent without having to ask ‘at what price'.
The current state economic crisis makes this doubly true. THE LANGUAGE in SB 5402 HAS NO COST or additional expenses to the state, or to the taxpayers . It is all about one simple truth, DOING THE RIGHT THING.
The current animal cruelty law represents the first generation recognition that the death of an animal due to substantial pain and undue suffering is not to be tolerated in this state but falls short of providing any permanent protection from convicted animal abusers. Seraphina's Bill in the form of SB 5402 is the next step.
Parents who abuse their children lose their parental rights. Sexual abusers of children lose the freedom to travel this state without informing law enforcement, are required to be registered, are publicized by many communities as a warning, and are banned for life for interacting even from a distance with children. People convicted of domestic violence can receive harsh and long jail sentences and will most likely be prevented from interacting with their victims indefinitely.
HOWEVER, the current animal cruelty law provides a paltry 2 year only maximum prohibition from ownership of similar animals, and there is no legal definition of similar animals within the current law. An individual convicted of felony animal cruelty resulting in the death of a horse COULD IN REALITY go out and buy a mule without violating the ownership prohibition, if a judge imposed one at all.
No one in this room would ever consider turning to a convicted child abuser or pedophile and saying "you may not interact with children BUT only for two years, and oh by the way since your victims of choice are boys, you can interact with girls." BUT, we do exactly that for people convicted of felony animal cruelty. The current law pretends that they have ‘learned their lesson', when nothing could be further from the truth.
Dorothy Oxford has THREE separate convictions for animal cruelty in Spokane County going back prior to 1984. The AKC's Management Disciplinary Committee has suspended all AKC privileges for LIFE, effective February 8, 2008, and imposed a $5000 fine for, and I QUOTE
"Conduct prejudicial to purebred dogs, purebred dog events, or to the best interests of The American Kennel Club based on her violation of the AKC's Cruelty Conviction Policy; and for circumventing her suspension."
In 1993 she received a similar PERMANENT ban from the National Cat Fanciers Association. BUT she continued with her animal cruelty activities and after each conviction in a court of law was unleashed again after 2 years to own and abuse animals. Banned from cats, she switches to dogs.
That is perhaps the best most solid argument I can make by example of the need to define similar animals, and represents EXACTLY the reason for imposing a lifetime ban on similar animal ownership.
Two major highly respected animal breed associations recognized the heinous nature behind her convictions and have banned her for life, but the laws in this state continue to allow her to own animals again, and again, and again, and will continue to do this until this bill passes.
It allows the man who kicks and beats his dog until it dies from internal bleeding to go right back to owning another dog in two years and kicking and beating it again because ‘it barked too much'. It allows another to chain his dog to a tree with a wire cable, let it get a leg tangled up in it, and die from gangrene because, ‘if the dog is too stupid to figure it out, oh well' there's always another dog out there I can buy.
In Skagit and Snohomish Counties more than 600 dogs have recently been seized. Seven of those have already been destroyed because of their health conditions and dogs were found dead on the properties. It is anticipated that if all of the pregnant females finally have live births there will be more than 1500 dogs involved. IF the individuals involved are convicted of felony animal cruelty, their multi-million dollar business will be allowed to start up all over again in 2 years because of the inadequacy of the current law.
THAT is the cost to society, and to the communities they will choose to live in. It is a cost and drain in real raw dollars that will only be known after all the animals are born, and after all the bills for their care is tallied. But it is more than just money, it is the emotional and physical drain of resources on those communities that this bill will help prevent.
If you walk through your respective communities and ask what should happen to people convicted of felony animal cruelty your constituents will provide you with a wide range of thoughts.
BUT... if you tell them that currently a person convicted of felony animal cruelty is banned from ownership of a similar animal for TWO YEARS AT THE MOST, you will discover, as I have, an almost unanimous disbelief and outrage at the inadequacy of that aspect of the law.
SB 5402 [Seraphina's Bill] will provide prosecutors and judges the ammunition needed to protect their communities, Seraphina's Bill will tighten the noose around the necks of people who believe that animals because they have no words can be beaten, mutilated, starved, caged and kept pregnant living in their own excrement simply for sake of doing so.... And that is exactly where it should be placed.
Thank you.