Louise ended her relationship with a man after less than a year. His revenge was horrific

Warning: This story contains graphic content.

The relationship Louise* had with a man she met through working in the horse racing industry was relatively brief, and never felt substantial. It was “very on-and-off, not overly serious, very hot and cold”, says the 28-year-old.

“It got a bit weird towards the end,” she says. “He would throw almost tantrums, throw himself on the ground and carry on – I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t like this’.”

He also felt slighted that her adored Staffordshire cross, Indie, didn’t like him during the months they were together. “I said, ‘What are you talking about? She likes everyone’, but he said, ‘No, she growls at me’,” Louise says.

Louise, who cannot be identified for safety reasons, believed ending the relationship had not caused lasting problems. A couple of months later the man messaged her insisting he needed to see her at her home.

“I was very adamant. ‘You’re not coming over, I’m not even home, for starters’ … There were heaps of messages back and forth of him going, ‘Nope, I’m coming’.” It was later revealed that he probably already knew Louise was not home because he was tracking her electronically.

When she returned home about 9pm with her brother, who was also her housemate, the pair could not find Indie inside or in the dark yard. Louise noticed blood, but thought Indie and the other dog in the home had caught a bird.

She had work at 3am so her brother suggested she leave him to search and get some sleep.

Louise’s brother woke her about midnight to say he had found Indie in a garden bed at the very bottom of the property. The other dog’s crying had led him to her.

“She was lying there almost perfectly,” Louise says. “She’d been stabbed 12 times.

“When the sun came up, you could see there was blood everywhere, up on the fences, all over the pavement. My dog was lying so perfectly with this massive hole in the back of her neck.”

Police initially believed burglars had killed Indie with a kitchen knife to silence her. But after Louise took her for an autopsy and listened to a CCTV recording from a neighbour’s house the case was recognised as family violence and her ex-partner as the suspect.

Only now, after a four-year court ordeal that led to her former partner serving jail time, can Louise speak to a journalist about what happened. She wants to raise awareness about this devastating form of violence.

Harming animals is known as a serious warning sign among researchers and in Australia’s family violence sector, but few refuges enable women and children to take pets with them. Awareness and momentum is now building around pet abuse and harm as a form of coercive control.

Ged Kearney, the assistant minister for social services and the prevention of family violence, shared her own experience at the August launch in Canberra of a road map to better protect people and animals from family violence, by not-for-profit Lucy’s Project. Kearney revealed a former partner had killed her cat.

Before Indie’s death, it hadn’t crossed Louise’s mind that such things happened: “I didn’t even know that [pet abuse to harm partners or an ex] was a thing.”

Killing or harming pets is documented as often a precursor to escalating violence, as happened in the murder of NSW mother Molly Ticehurst. The 28-year-old childcare worker’s dachshund puppy was killed by Daniel Billings, the man later convicted of Ticehurst’s murder.

Detective Acting Sergeant Maddison Steadfast, the Melbourne family violence investigator who took over Louise’s case, says some offenders harm or kill the pets of their partners or ex-partners “purely as a way for them to exert power, control or even jealousy”.

“In this incident, I can only speculate this was a matter of control,” Steadfast says.

Louise’s ex-partner was jailed for five months on appeal and was recently released.

Monique Dam, the chief executive of Lucy’s Project, says Australia lacks data collection on the incidence of violence against pets in family violence settings. Improving its collection is among urgent changes required to better protect them and their owners, who often stay in danger rather than flee without pets.

Lucy’s Project has advocated for 13 years for better recognition of the intersection between animal abuse and family violence. “For so long it has been overlooked,” Dam says. “We need systems to change to improve safety and wellbeing for people and animals … across Australia.”

The organisation ran a roundtable of 100 researchers, family violence, animal welfare and veterinary practitioners, policymakers and survivors to create the road map, which will be launched in Victoria on October 19.

Victoria and NSW have amended family violence laws to include the abuse of pets, but the road map calls for a “one welfare” approach, pairing safety and wellbeing needs of people and animals. The Australian Institute of Family Studies will on Monday release a report about the impacts of family violence animal abuses on children.

Elena Campbell, a researcher and the institute’s head of child and family safety, describes pet harm or threatened harm as “a particularly insidious form of coercive control”.

“We know adults using violence will deliberately target what’s valuable and what’s important to their partner or the children,” she says.

‘No matter how long you’ve been exposed to this sort of thing, it never stops being shocking.’

Dr Belinda Oppenheimer, vet and advocate against family violence pet abuse

Campbell’s previous research with RMIT University found some older children decide to continue living with an abuser to protect their pets, “even though they are at huge risk”.

“It’s a good thing we are becoming more aware of something that has always existed,” she says.

A purpose-built refuge, a second arm of the 10-year-old Mary’s House Services, will soon open on Sydney’s lower north shore. It will comprise self-contained units funded by donations, and accommodate women, children and pets to stay together after escaping violence.

Mary’s House Services chief executive Yvette Vignando says pet suitability should be included in government tenders for family violence shelter provision.

“No one’s mapped how many refuges there are [which are suitable for pets], but I know our caseworkers struggle daily to find places [for women with animals],” she says.

Dr Belinda Oppenheimer, a Gippsland vet and policy adviser for the Australian Veterinary Association, says the association is developing a policy statement on family violence pet abuse.

“No matter how long you’ve been exposed to this sort of thing, it never stops being shocking,” she says.

Though 70 per cent of households with children have pets, Oppenheimer says statistics about animals in domestic and family violence settings are usually not part of the data collected. That makes it difficult to quantify the need for better, interdisciplinary support.

The violence may involve physical harm such as “punching, kicking, hitting, stabbing and also psychological abuse of animals; locking them up, not letting them see their family, or sexual abuse”.

“The big two [psychological tactics] are neglect – disallowing people to provide food and shelter and access to vet care for the animal – and threatening to give away or sell the pet,” Oppenheimer says. She urges vets to be aware and ask questions that may help people seek support.

Louise wants other victim-survivors to know that, while such a devastating attack can break apart an owner’s life, it is possible to heal, albeit slowly. She says the trauma of Indie’s death caused her to lose weeks’ worth of memory, and she is still working with a therapist to try to recover it.

“I would just say [to others]: ‘Don’t let it become your life, the aftermath.’ It became my whole personality for a very long time,” she says. “At some point, you need to bring back the pieces of you. You might not be who you once were.

“I feel like I am in a much better place now, and I don’t let it control who I want to be any more.”

*Not her real name

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.

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