NCJ Number
234376
Journal
Journal of Interpersonal Violence Volume: 21 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2006 Pages: 910-923
Date Published
July 2006
Length
14 pages
Annotation
This study examined the link between bestiality and violence towards humans.
Abstract
Bestiality is a serious although less frequently occurring form of animal cruelty that may be linked to subsequent aggression against humans. This investigation examines whether a perpetrator's race, childhood residence, education, commission of a personal crime, and the number of personal crimes committed affects acts of bestiality committed during childhood or adolescence among a sample of incarcerated males. The results show that respondents with less education and those who had been convicted of committing crimes against people on one or more occasions were more likely to have had sex with animals during their childhood or adolescence than other respondents in the sample. These findings lend some support to the sexually polymorphous theory that among these perpetrators sex and aggression have become mutually inclusive and that bestiality as a form of animal cruelty may be linked with interpersonal human violence. (Published Abstract)