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Safe Haven Conundrum: The Use Of Special Bailments To Keep Pets Out Of Violent Households, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

Family violence is a continuing social problem that breeds new complexity at every turn. Just as we seem to get a modicum of control over the sheltering of at-risk mothers and children (among other human victims), we find that family pets—dependent creatures endangered by the same violent behavior that threatens their human caretakers—often are left unprotected or under-protected by both law and society. In most cases, pets are unable to be sheltered with human victims of domestic violence due to shelter restrictions. Restrictions on the sheltering of abuse victims with their pets result in difficult choices for human victims who …