Prison sentence for animal cruelty? Here is the number of cases in Hungary

Photo: facebook.com/kutyatar

How many people end up in prison because of animal cruelty? Beheading a goat and torturing a dog were enough reasons to get someone imprisoned in Hungary, but people who commit animal cruelty usually get away with it and receive less severe punishment.

According to Blikk, until 30^th September, three people have received a custodial sentence for cruelty to animals. As the data they received from the Hungarian National Office for the Judiciary shows, the number of people who received such punishment is the same as it was last year.

On the other hand, this year, seven people ended up in prison due to committing cruelty to animals plus some other crime, while last year, this number was nine. This means that in total, twenty-two people received severe punishment for committing cruelty to animals in the last two years.

In 2018, five, in 2017, seven, and in 2016, only four people were punished with a custodial sentence for animal cruelty only, while combined with another crime, these numbers were seven, twenty-three, and twenty-one.

The extremely cruel and repetitive cases are the ones that usually result in imprisonment. For example, a goat was beheaded one and a half weeks ago in Kaposvár. The goat named Rozi lived in the ‘Kutyatár’ Nature and Animal Protection Association in Kaposvár. It was cruelly executed – the perpetrator cut off and took the goat’s head with him.

Later, it turned out that this was not the first time the perpetrator committed cruelty to animals. Two years ago, Ádám Ny. also murdered his own dog. Moreover, he was sentenced a month ago for scourging his girlfriend. Sentencing him was initiated as leaving him free would result in him committing more crimes, said the prosecution.

A couple of days ago, charges were pressed against a man for brutally abusing animals. After his dog strangled the neighbour’s chicken, the man hit its head with an axe several times. He did not stop there, however. He then tied the dog to his motorcycle with a chain and dragged it to the nearby lake. Luckily, the dog is still alive; it was treated and adopted later. Even though in Hungary, it is not so common to punish animal cruelty by imprisonment, due to the man’s inhuman treatment of the dog, the Prosecutor’s Office of Kalocsa proposed imprisonment and disqualification against him.