Dotsie,
Sometimes I think kids deliberately do things that they know will hurt their parents: either out of spite, for attention, or plain meanness. I don't know why mon and dad are the first ones blamed. I'm with you; they're not always at fault.

celtic, I agree on the animal theory. As a child, I saw a neighbor beat his dog with a wooden bat because it ran away from home. I've often wondered what he did to his children.

Dotis,
As most abuse comes from is handed down to the kids , because the parents were abused as kids themselves and abuse of animals are included . There are a lot of parents out there that a hurting and kids pay the price . Lynnie can tell you that . You have to stop the abuse before it is spree to the children and animals. Getting Therapy helps

Blessings,

Celtic...yes the handling of pets..You are so right.
I do believe there are people beynd the majority of us.
Scott Peck wrote "People of the Lie" I have met several.They are mostly "I" people without empathy.In my type of work sadly those people did harm often and easiily.
Yet we must keep trying. Autism explaims some of this concept but there is more I am sure.
Mountain ash

This story is sickening. I can't really comprehend. It's a fact that abusing animals is a symptom of a violent personality. In families, pet abuse often rises to people abuse. Ash, what do you mean by "your type of work?" Do you work with mentally ill? Usually a very dangerous diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenia. While most paranoid schizophrenics are not violent, some Paranoid Schizophrenics hear voices, have delusions, that tell them to hurt themselves and/or others. I've never read anything about a correlation between autism and violence. However, generally autism does denote an inability to relate to others. I think empathy is different than conscience. This serial killer obviously had no conscience. So many victims!

a chappy named Foder explaned such things as autisum and other disorders with his brain model called modularity of mind. He clamed certine area of brain can be effected theirfore produces certine ideosuncrises or strange mental function buth the rest of the brain functions as normal. Hence with Autisum its the part to do with socibility emphatetic responces such as naming emotions and understanding others emotions. Its a varience but an important one from someone with psychotic tendencies. In that instances they have or know that an action will offend hurt someone but it is the inability to care regarding that indivduel. Other brain functions are as anyones elses and in some situasions are highten compared to the avarage person hence high functioning autistic engineers, surgions,atcuteck becouse of their intense focus and fasinasion on detail.

Most Autistic behaviour if it involves agression is to do with the autistick person being overwhelmed and in panik and in desprite need to get out of the situasion they are in that may have them pushing or agrtessivly treating another, its born out of fear and panic.

The psychotic personality or sociopath as i have said knows exactly the effect and distress they have on another they just don't care about it at times looking as if they don't fully understand or have emphathetic responces but they do and perhapps its this fact that makes this disorder so chilling its like a child way before they develop concinse sence of self or understanding of another. wee l can and dose show regrett if he hurts another and he just turned three he might not be able to plot that this behaviour dose that to another sucessfully all times but if he dose hurt someone he moves into carring and trying to repaire at lest socailly and emotionally the hurt he has done.

Generally the indivduels who conduct such crimes are damaged emotionally not organically (someone else above said as much) and have frozen or out of their own rage even if it is smolderring controled rage that is barly detetiable hurts and tortuers others. Its their emotional damage twistedness or warrpedness that motivatess and drives the torturing.

pyronoid schizoidfprenicks as lynn was saying are more likly to hurt themselfs by the voices comande or compulsion than to hurt others. The few that hurt others surly make the papers given the rest classed with this disorder a bad press. A person with this illness gives it away by the manner in which they speek its generally obviouse

whenever someone commits thes types of crimes like this farmer its hard to think of them as sane but they may well be perfectly sane or free from a mental illness as such.

went off on one their but i just get nerviouse and scarred that innocent enough but mentally unwell people get tarred with a bad brush, it just isolates them more becouse people are too afraid to be near them.

strange world at times eh!

I don't have specifics, but I have heard it's been proven that when people are cruel to animals eventually they will harm humans.

Some people are just downright evil. Plain and simple. There are people who do horrible things that have been raised in wonderful homes - and many good people come from horrible homes.

Daisy, I think it is a well known fact that harming animals is a precursor to harming adults. Although I don't think that it is a given that someone harming animals will automatically harm adults.

When I was a young child (oh, my, so very long ago) there was a boy in my neighborhood that hung his cat. He wanted to see how a lasso worked. He went on from there to killing squirrels so he could disect them. He was an odd sort, and eventually got caught by his family.

He ended up being a nice young man, a gentle sort. He started out nasty, tho. Something or someone must have intervened and changed his life around.

I heard or read recently about another murderer that started out by tying the tales of two cats together and watch them kill each other. I don't remember the specifics, but in this case he did go on to murder humans.

All of this to say, the harming of animals is usually a sign that someone does have a mental illness and perhaps, if found when they are young, perhaps they can be helped. The harming of animals should not be ignored.