No surprise Caboolture, Morayfield are cruelty capitals of Queensland

I’m not surprised that Caboolture and Morayfield are the animal abuse capitals of Queensland. When people who live there can’t behave decently towards other humans, what hope is there for the family pet, asks Kylie Lang.

I’M NOT surprised that Caboolture and Morayfield are the animal abuse capitals of Queensland. When people who live there can’t behave decently towards other humans, what hope is there for the family pet?

The towns, roughly an hour’s drive north of Brisbane, might be separated by a river but they are united by a horrific record around domestic violence and child abuse.

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This week’s discovery of a malnourished Staffordshire cross – in the worst condition a vet had ever seen – is symptomatic of the social and moral decay of what used to be a pleasant place devoted to dairy and small crop farming.

Stig the 10-year-old English Staffordshire cross was found abandoned and seriously underweight in Morayfield.

The confluence of ills plaguing the Moreton Bay region is no unhappy coincidence – one problem predicates the other in a domino effect that no state government has been able to stop or purposefully address.

It’s as if the area, whose population more than trebled in the 10 years from 1986 and then doubled again, according to the latest 2016 census, has been deemed too difficult, with the issues created by exploding population growth without commensurate growth in infrastructure and services allowed to fester.

Consider some of the most sickening cases of abuse in Queensland in recent times.

Here are three on animals: Teenage boys brutally attack alpacas at Caboolture State School, killing one with an iron bar and leaving the other so badly wounded it has to be put down. A dog is found in Upper Caboolture with significant puncture wounds to her head and shoulders. A Morayfield family discovers their cat hanging from a tree, shaved and butchered, with one eye removed.

Now here are three on humans: Toddler Mason Jet Lee dies at his Caboolture home from peritonitis, caused by a ruptured small intestine. The 22-month-old boy also suffers serious neglect including being untreated for a broken leg. A five-year-old girl is tortured by her mother and stepfather for more than a year at a Caboolture house. The child is subjected to “cruel and unusual punishments”, including being prevented from using the toilet. A seven-year-old girl is allegedly abducted from a North Lakes shopping centre and indecently assaulted in bushland.

Mason Lee died at his Caboolture home from peritonitis, caused by a ruptured small intestine.

The links between domestic violence and animal cruelty are proven and strong.

Research has repeatedly found that in homes where people are abused, so are their animals. Sadly too, children who witness their pets being abused often continue the cycle of animal abuse and become aggressive and deviant later in life.

In one study of police data by Dr John Clarke, a lecturer in psychology at the University of Sydney, almost two in every three convicted animal abusers had assaulted people and 17 per cent were guilty of sexual abuse.

Concerted efforts must be made to reverse the statistics and keep people and animals safe.

In welcome news, Women’s Legal Service Queensland will get a $500,000 federally funded boost to expand its services for domestic violence victims to Caboolture, and the State Government has committed to building a new refuge in the region.

However, much more needs to be done. Meaningful change requires tackling root causes.

Encouragingly, that crimes are being reported in the first place suggests that the good people of Caboolture and Morayfield want to see this happen.

Kylie Lang is an associate editor at The Courier-Mail

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