The lowest of the low

Gord Henderson, Windsor Star (Ontario), July 15, 2003

Forget the Shrine circus controversy. If you're truly concerned about the protection of animals, you'll rouse your member of Parliament from his or her summer slumber and demand stiffen penalties for the monsters who torture domestic pets.

One of the most troubling stories to appear in The Star in some time was the report Saturday that a 21-year-old Vancouver resident, Matthew Kaczorowski, had been released after spending four months in jail awaiting sentencing for the videotaped torture and killing of a cat.

Kaczorowski, found guilty of animal cruelty and mischief, was handed the maximum six-month term but was given credit for the time he'd spent behind bars and released immediately on probation. Justice Brian Young told the court he would have handed down a longer jail sentence if permitted.

Given the sick, twisted acts that Kaczorowski and two friends committed at a Toronto home in May 2001, the sentence demonstrates the law's inability to keep pace with the descent into sadistic depravity of some elements of society.

Captured on a 17-minute video, Kaczorowski and his pals, Jesse Power and Anthony Wennekers, are seen putting the cat's head in a makeshift noose and then stabbing its body and neck repeatedly. According to the news reports, cries of pain could be heard as the cat's head and neck were sliced open before it died. The men used knives and dental tools to disembowel and skin the cat alive before beheading it.

This was, by any standard, a monstrous, almost unspeakable act of cruelty against a tiny, defenceless creature. It makes me ill as a human being, let alone a cat owner, just thinking about it. And yet the sentence is a mere trifle, the kind of term judges used to dish out to petty transgressors.

As the Crown prosecutor, Robin Flumerfelt, told reporters, "The courts can only do so much, only Parliament can change things now. Until they do we're going to be stuck with a six-month maximum." Even Kaczorowski's own lawyer, Daniel Brodsky, described the torture of the cat as being "to animal cruelty what (Paul) Bernardo was to murder."

Could it be any more obvious? This was a plea from everyone involved with this nauseating case for the public to light a fire under our parliamentarians to bring the maximum penalties for animal cruelty into the real world.

Here's one case where we can't blame soft judges and a chicken-livered justice system. Their hands are tied by a maximum sentence that doesn't begin to reflect the grisly nature of the crime. Skinning alive and disembowelling a warm-blooded animal for personal amusement? Anything less than a penitentiary term with provisions for psychiatric treatment (and perhaps a lobotomy) would fail to reflect society's abhorrence. Judges must be given the power to throw the book at such individuals.

This community has spent the past several weeks in a passionate debate over city council banning, allegedly out of safety concerns, elephants, lions, tigers and other animal acts from the annual Shrine Circus. That decision, which I still feel was ridiculous, caused attendance to plummet and wrecked Shriner fundraising efforts. It bitterly divided area residents.

But here's an animal rights issue on which everyone can unite. There are no pros and cons. Just disgust that such a reprehensible act could carry such a trivial penalty. Phone, write or e-mail your MP and demand action when Parliament resumes in the fall.

Tell them to get on the case before another collection of the sick and twisted, and you know there'll be more, begins exploring the depths of depravity with sharp instruments.

Please note: while we agree with Henderson's condemnation of the cat torturer's, Freedom for Animals also feels that banning the (ab)use of animals in circuses is also important. (And we do not advocate lobotomizing criminals.)