Bear with me...

This is going to get horrible. I'm going to tell you a horrible story.

I spend a large part of my working life listening to stories from survivors of sadism, from the small episodes of barely perceptible bullying which cumulatively sap a persons will to live to the episodes of larger scale out-and-out sadism. I know that inside every human is the capacity to do some horrific things. It's fascinating that more of us don't, and it's amazing that humans can live through the things they do and still love at the end of it.

I always remind myself that my listening to stories is perhaps a thousandth as hard as the person had it surviving the story. I am well supported, and able to leave most things 'at the door'. You're no good to anyone if you can't.

When child abuse cases come on the news I'm often listening with my public sector services-ear. What could have been different? What ought to have been done? How can I change my practice personally to make children safer? I think that makes it less difficult to hear, but also makes you feel more responsible. It definitely stops you for collapsing into seeing the professionals involved as terrible beasts who never cared.

For some reason deliberate cruelty to animals really gets to me. It's not a vegetarian thing. I mean kids throwing dogs and cats off the top of high rise estates, dog fighting, and harming animals for satisfaction. It's often said that the English treat the animals better than their family, but it's not really true. We might not go in for bull-fighting and we let our pets in the house, but our shelters are over-run with healthy abandoned animals and many people are too selfish to neuter. But still, we have people who do terrible things to the beasts on purpose. Don't let our tendency to run donkey sanctuaries fool you. And in our midst we have people who in some kind of moral yoga will decide to threaten to kill you if you become known to them as an animal abuser, although as yet I don't think anyone has been killed.

Just recently in the UK we have had a case of horrific sadism towards a pet which made Mary Bale the cat-binner look like St Francis of Assisi.

A man named Sherlock put his 7 year old nephew's kitten in a microwave, in a tumble drier, and then a freezer (all 3 were switched on) and then submerged it into a bowl of washing up water, whilst it was filmed on a mobile phone. He went to prison for not a very long time (126 days but may only serve half), and has been banned from keeping animals for 10 years. In his defence he said that he had been drinking and was egged on by the youngsters who filmed it. The footage was to prove his undoing, as someone recognised him and reported him to the police.

I'm glad he went to prison. As the young people who filmed it were under 18 their right to anonymity is protected but they will be charged with causing unnecessary suffering and mental and physical torture to an animal in January 2011. I really hope that services are taking a long hard look at these young people and what the fuck is going on in their lives for them to think this is a thing that's okay to do. Letting kids get away with stuff like this would be a kind of neglect by the state.

It's never 'just a cat'. People who like to harm the vulnerable don't often stick to one kind of harm. Spouse-batterers and child abusers frequently use threaten or harm beloved pets to further manipulate and hurt their victims. There are lines which most people know they ought not to cross, and once one boundary is violated all the others can begin to look a bit less secure.

Thankfully the kitten which was tortured somehow lived through its ordeal. However the RSPCA have said she is too traumatised to be re-homed.

In another striking news story, in the past few weeks a group of UK based animal rights activists who made it their business to torture humans for their alleged relationship to animals testing have been sentenced. If we still have compassion in our hearts, let's hope for Sherlock's sake they don't cross paths.