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The SPCA says cruelty against animals is becoming more violent as the organisation has released its annual list of shame with the worst animal abuse cases documented.
The Royal New Zealand SPCA says its latest List of Shame is the most appalling yet.
"Sickening", "chilling" and "deeply disturbing" are amongst the terms chosen by the SPCA to describe the 52 acts of cruelty detailed in its latest list.
"This is the seventh year running that we've issued a list of some of the worst examples from amongst thousands of cases of cruelty, violence and callous neglect towards animals, taken from across New Zealand," says SPCA national chief executive Robyn Kippenberger.
The list was compiled between last October and September this year.
"This is, in many ways, our most appalling list yet," she says.
"Amongst the list's most disturbing aspects is the spike in violence towards animals recorded during the holiday season and summer months, with 28 cases of serious cruelty included from that period.
"Yet, despite the sickening brutality and sadism revealed, this year's list also provides cause for hope, with a number of notable examples of tougher sentencing, which suggest that at least some of New Zealand's judges are starting to take animal cruelty seriously."
Kippenberger describes the sentence imposed on 19-year- old Dunedin man, Jeffrey Hurring, as standing out from others on the list.
Hurring received the longest custodial term - 12 months, subsequently reduced to 10 - ever handed down for animal cruelty in New Zealand, after pleading guilty to the brutal killing of Diesel, a Jack Russell terrier.
She also cites the cases of South Auckland man, Wayne Williams, who received a four month term for beating his fiancé's dog with a metal pole and then strangling it to death.
And of Waiuku 18-year-old, Kurt Sharp, sentenced to two years' imprisonment for a mixture of burglary offences and the killing of a goat, by dragging it behind a car for two kilometres.
"It's vital that the courts keep sending a strong message to the community that animal cruelty will not be tolerated and that serious offences will result in jail sentences."
However, some sentences continue to be "absurdly" light, Kippenberger says.
Another disturbing trend was the large proportion of acts of violence against animals committed by young men in their teens and early twenties.
A 14-year-old Tauranga youth was sentenced to 10 weeks in a juvenile facility for hanging a cat from a street sign, she said.
"Further examples include the holidaying teenagers who blew a sheep's jaw apart and slit open its stomach... three teenagers, from the Bay of Plenty who poured petrol on a seagull and set it on fire and a group of young fishermen, who cornered a deer, placed a rope around its neck and then held the panicked animal under water until it drowned."
Kippenberger says the cases should force the public to confront the "pervasive cruelty" apparent in communities.
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