• minnix@lemux.minnix.dev
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    3 months ago

    Someone else, whose identity was not known when the case was presented to a grand jury, poured an accelerant on the cat and set it on fire, the indictment against Williams says. The animal running away on fire was also recorded on video.

    Didn’t Jeffrey Dahmer start out by torturing and killing cats?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Not unusual for young kids to lack empathy, up to the point of tormenting and even killing animals.

      The vast majority grow up, develop a degree of additional conscience and maturity, and don’t go on to become cannibal serial killers.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
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        3 months ago

        That is not correct.

        https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7246522/

        Writing in 1964, Mead found that across a range of cultures, extraordinary abuse of animals (e.g., torture, killing) by children may precede more violent acts by that individual as an adult [48]. She argued that an act of cruelty towards an animal by a child could “prove a diagnostic sign, and that such children, diagnosed early, could be helped instead of being allowed to embark on a long career of episodic violence and murder (p. 22). Her writings influenced the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to add animal cruelty to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders–III R (DSM-III R) in 1987. In the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5) animal cruelty was retained as a symptom of conduct disorder [49,50].

        Additional studies in the 60′s also documented the Link between violence towards animals in childhood and aggressive behavior towards humans in adulthood [51,52].