Criminal or Savior? Animal Hoarding 101

Cat lady. Abuser. Animal hoarder. Criminal. Pet collector. Sanctuary owner. Nut case. Self-neglecter. Animal lover.

They are referred to by many names. But for the adult protective services workers, humane law enforcement officers, and other professionals who are asked to deal with them, one term may sum them up: difficult cases.

“Animal hoarders” is a term that was coined in 1997 by the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium (HARC) in Massachusetts. HARC, part of the Tufts Center for Animals and Public Policy, is headed by veterinarian and professor Gary Patronek, Ph.D. and includes other Massachusetts professionals from the fields of psychiatry, sociology, social work, psychology, and the humane society. The group is conducting a national surveillance project to collect case studies, interviewing animal hoarders, analyzing media reports, and otherwise seeking to expand awareness and understanding of this phenomena.

HARC defines hoarders in a way that excludes “simply owning or caring for more than the typical number of pets and is not about legitimate sheltering or rescue.” Its current working definition of a hoarder is someone who:

• accumulates a large number of animals;
• fails to provide minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, and veterinary care;
• fails to act on the deteriorating condition of the animals (including disease, starvation, and even death), or the environment (severely overcrowded and unsanitary conditions);
• fails to act on or recognize the negative impact of the collection on their own health and well-being.

In its initial research, HARC has outlined some common “themes” in hoarder cases. These include:

• Hoarders typically believe that they are their animals’ saviors; that without them, the animals would be dead.
• Hoarders may have grown up in chaotic or abusive households where animals represented the only stability.
• The animals “may be the exclusive resource from which [the hoarder] derives a sense of trust, control, and self-esteem. The animal hoarder may regard the animals as being devoted family members, with whom there are no conflicts, only constant pleasurable interactions, providing continuous gratification.”
• Hoarders therefore may have or develop a strong control need. “[G]iving up anything [they own] can be associated with tremendous fear, apprehension, and even a grief-like reaction.”
• Hoarders may be unable to perceive the actual condition of their animals. “Hoarders often firmly believe they are providing quality care and have special empathy with the animals,” HARC says. In one interview, Patronek even suggested hoarders may suffer from a “focal delusional disorder” that makes them incapable of acknowledging their animals’ health problems.
• “Hoarders often view the world as a very hostile place for both animals and people, and may have almost delusional levels of paranoia about officials...understand that a uniform represents the most extreme threat they could imagine.”

HARC also found in its initial research that more than 3/4 of hoarders are female; nearly half are 60 or older; most are unmarried; half live alone and half of the households include other members (including dependent elders and children); and dead or sick animals were found in 80% of reported cases.

Understanding the Problem

In 60% of the cases HARC studied, the hoarder denied that either the animals or the hoarder were suffering from health problems. Most strongly resist removing and sometimes even treating any of the animals, often holding that without their care, the animals would be killed by a shelter (which, in fact, often happens to these animals when they’re removed, due to their poor health).

Public attitudes and legal constraints also confuse the picture. In a 2002 analysis of media coverage of hoarding, HARC researchers found five common emotional themes in the coverage: drama, revulsion, sympathy, indignation, and humor. They said that the media often focuses more on the hoarder’s personality than on “the horrific condition of the animals”:

The emphasis in articles on the disgusting or horrifying state of hoarders’ homes and lifestyles overshadowed reports of animal suffering. The use of superlatives to describe animal suffering was less common than their use to describe squalor and uncivilized behavior.

“Instead of mental disorder or criminal behavior,” the researchers said, the media often described hoarders as suffering “from a blind spot that prevented them from seeing the ill effects of their basically good intentions.” “Many articles characterized the impulse to ‘save’ animals as a matter of having ‘too much love’ or ‘compassion’.”

More evidence for this thesis comes from a December 2002 Florida case trying 65-year-old Colleen Freeman for 70 counts of animal abuse after 48 of her Chihuahuas died in a fire, and 24 more were found in an adjacent trailer. Rescuers said the trailer was piled nearly to the ceiling with trash and papers, and the dead animals were found in cages filled with their own waste and with no food bowls in evidence. Some of the dogs were unable to stand because their nails had curled beneath their paw pads.

Nevertheless, a follow-up article, written by the same reporter who wrote about the initial testimony, began, “Devastated after losing most of her prized Chihuahuas in an April kennel fire, Colleen Freeman cried softly after a jury acquitted her of 70 charges of animal abuse Thursday -- relieved, she said, that a months-long nightmare was over.” Neither story quoted any statement from Freeman that indicated how she felt about her animals. Instead, the articles focused only on her lawyer’s charges that the rescue workers had lied and that the case was unproven because “prosecutors had only offered evidence abut the condition of the kennel and mobile home after the fire, and not the conditions in which the dogs actually had been kept.” The article saying Freeman was “devastated” by her dogs’ deaths did note, however, that the defense had called no witnesses and presented no evidence to attest to Freeman’s treatment of (or feelings about) her animals.

Because media reports often focus on the hoarders’ statements or presumed beliefs, the HARC researchers posit, “articles deemphasizing animal neglect may not elicit enough horror in readers to lead them to regard hoarding as a serious problem or prompt them to take action to prevent or better manage it.”

This public ambivalence about the problem extends to professional responses. Hoarders typically refuse to allow visitors into their homes, and judges frequently refuse to take allegations of animal cruelty seriously enough to issue the warrants necessary for officials to enter the premises and document the animals’ conditions or the presence of other code violations. Protective services workers may intervene because the hoarders’ home conditions may suggest self-neglect, or there may be an allegation of abuse or neglect of a human dependent. Law enforcement and public health workers may be involved because of allegations of health code or public safety violations. However, even when these agencies are able to partner with a humane society to remove the animals, no agency is charged with or able to work with a hoarder long-term to ensure she or he does not recreate the original problem, and recidivism rates approach 100%.

Although California and a few other states require animal abusers to receive psychological treatment if they receive probation, HARC notes that “because the problem of animal hoarding is a very new area of study, it is unlikely that you will find mental health services that specialize in intervention with animal hoarders.” Obviously, the hoarder would also have to be convicted of the abuse before such counseling could be mandated. No state criminalizes hoarding per se.

Interventions

Because of limitations in the law, agencies’ inability to do long-term intervention, and a lack of knowledge of the problem, HARC has developed intervention recommendations for those most likely to end up trying to resolve the problem: family and friends. In “Animal Hoarding: Recommendations for Interventions by Family and Friends,” HARC offers “guidelines based on outreach practices associated with crisis management for at-risk persons resistant to assistance and care which we believe to be applicable to many hoarding situations.”

These guidelines are built on the idea that “maintaining or developing favorable social interaction may be a key, initial step toward an improved way of life for the animal hoarder, who has likely become isolated, unchallenged by social norms or contrasting values, and extremely fearful or resistant to change.... [A]s you engage in a steadfast, consistent, and positive manner of sensitive communication and demonstration of genuine concern, the animal hoarder may develop greater tolerances for social interaction in general. In this way, there can be greater potential for your role to provide the animal hoarder with the motivation and support that facilitates the process of change.”

HARC recommends that interveners listen attentively to the hoarder and “[f]ocus on the values, wants, and needs that the animal hoarder may express or imply,” rather than on what the intervener feels is most important. “Be receptive to learning what may be specific and critical to motivating or inhibiting the person’s behavioral response to alter the status quo.” “In order to facilitate access, convey simply that you are concerned about the well-being and safety of both the animal hoarder and the pets.”

As the alliance develops, it may become possible for the intervener to offer specific assistance such as getting containers to store pet food, obtaining and helping move garbage cans, putting up shelving and organizing where the pet supplies go, re-screening windows, or installing smoke detectors. Once these sorts of assistance are accepted, it may gradually be possible to address more threatening issues such as getting animals treated and sterilized.

The guidelines close by noting that interveners need “to be continually aware of the contributing physical, mental, and emotional factors that may adversely affect the animal hoarder’s response,” and to “[m]aintain realistic expectations regarding...the animal hoarder’s capabilities to change attitudes and behaviors of long standing.”

Professionals’ Involvement

Because these cases are so difficult to resolve, professionals have been known to literally tell hoarders to go away: police in at least four different states chose to respond to one woman who kept 115 dogs in a school bus by simply telling her to move elsewhere.

However, there is a growing awareness that there is often a link between animal cruelty and family violence, including elder abuse. The Humane Society of the United States had a partnership with the National Center on Elder Abuse to create resources on this linkage; the results include:

• “Making the Connection: Helping Vulnerable Adults and Their Pets,” a brochure which is available through the Humane Society’s First Strike Campaign (www.hsus.org/firststrike);
• Cross-training of adult protective services workers, animal care and control officers, law enforcement officials, and veterinary medicine professionals in at least six states; and
• Production of articles such as, “Making the Connection Between Animal Cruelty and Abuse and Neglect of Vulnerable Adults,” published in the Winter 2002 edition of The Latham Letter (www.latham.org).

The growing awareness of this linkage is beginning to show up in concrete ways, as well. The Broward (Florida) Sheriff’s Office has a two year old Special Victims and Family Crimes Section that handles reports of all types of family crimes. “The unit’s 17 investigators are cross-trained to spot different forms of abuse and neglect and often work as a team to investigate the cases, which can begin as a report of one type of crime and lead to others,” the Miami Herald reported in December 2002. California enacted two laws in 2002 that would require administrators or employees of humane societies and animal control agencies to report suspected cases of vulnerable adult abuse, and permits employees of APS agencies to report animal cruelty they come across in their work.

Coming from a social work perspective, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has secured a grant to run a pilot project in which a social worker, Jane Nathanson, tries to develop long-term relationships with animal hoarders in an effort to change their behavior. Although she admits such hoarders are extremely difficult to change, she likens progress to the excitement one feels when a hungry feral cat actually approaches to take offered food. “I find that working with reclusive, resisting, hurting people has a similar dimension to it. When they are able to allow you into their world, you feel you’ve been given a privilege and a gift.” When questioned her about characterization of her work as being given a gift, she laughs. “Is it a privilege to walk knee-high into feces? It’s all in the way you look at it!”