S04E162 Animal Cruelty's Connection to Domestic Violence & More with Joyce Glass

Animal cruelty is often dismissed as “someone else’s problem,” but it frequently overlaps with violence in the home. Attorney Joyce Glass joins us to discuss the legal and human realities behind cruelty investigations and why they can serve as early warning signs for abuse.

Joyce shares how a dog named Lucy led her into animal protection work and how her advocacy now includes legislation, law enforcement partnerships, and courtroom work. We also discuss policy efforts like banning roadside animal sales and the broader issues tied to them, including fraud, public health risks, and sick animals being sold to families.

We also explore the connection between animal abuse and interpersonal violence. Joyce explains why cross-reporting between animal control and social services matters, what warning signs neighbors should notice, and what goes into building a strong animal cruelty case, from evidence collection to veterinary forensics and proper charging decisions.

If you care about community safety, criminal law, animal welfare, or building better systems through collaboration, this conversation will give you clear next steps and a framework you can share. 

Reach Joyce here:
https://www.jmgpclaw.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joyce-glass-7708b1158/

Ready to level up your law firm marketing? Book a FREE Discovery Call with Marilyn Here: https://lawmarketingzone.com/bookacall

Leadership In Law Podcast with host, Marilyn Jenkins 
Powered by Law Marketing Zone®
https://lawmarketingzone.com
A full-service Digital Marketing Agency helping clients increase Leads, Cases, and Profit by getting their digital marketing right.

Subscribe on your favorite Podcast listening platform!

Like, Share, and Review us!

#leadershipinlawpodcast #leadershipinlaw #lawmarketingzone #marilynjenkins

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:35

From unlocking the exposed world to building up live teams. We produce you with successful firm leaders and industry experts.

Welcome And The Big Picture

SPEAKER_00 0:52

The Leadership in Law Podcast is here to equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to build a successful and fulfilling legal practice.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Welcome to another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. I'm your host, Marilyn Jenkins. Please join me in welcoming my guest, Joyce Glass, to the show today. Joyce is an attorney who has dedicated more than a decade to protecting animals from cruelty and neglect through her pro bone and legal work. Her mission is simple but powerful to improve both animal and human welfare by addressing cruelty at its root. Joyce has worked across New York, Connecticut, and now North Carolina, helping shape legislation, collaborating with law enforcement, and serving as a court-appointed advocate in animal cruelty cases. She has contributed to laws regulating pet dealers, rescue organizations, and even banning the sale of animals in parking lots. In 2023, she co-founded the Fund for Animal Cruelty Treatment of SOFA, the first of its kind organization that partners with prosecutors and law enforcement to ensure animal victims receive care while their cases are being prosecuted. With advanced degrees in law, animal law, and business, Joyce brings both legal expertise and a deep sense of purpose to her work. Today we're exploring the legal, social, and human impact of animal cruelty and why addressing it matters far beyond the animals themselves. I'm excited to have you here, Joyce. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Tell us about your leadership journey.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

I went to law school. I was always an animal lover, though.

Lucy’s Story And A Legal Path

SPEAKER_01 2:33

And of course, the situation with one dog changed my whole career path. And I became involved in a case where the New York State Attorney General's office was trying to shut down a rescue that we had adopted a dog from. And from there, I took on after that I did an animal shelter investigation that took about a year. So turned into a criminal investigation. I met a lot of people in the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office. And from there worked with the district attorney, law enforcement legislators in Suffolk County and then at the state level. We got an animal crimes unit up and running several years ago. Then I moved to Connecticut. I was there for about five years. I was one of the attorney advocates under Desmond's law, which allowed, which allows attorneys to be appointed in animal cruelty cases. And we speak in the interest of justice. So that that allows us to speak not only for the immediate victim, but also prior animal victims and also the human victims. And based upon my work in Connecticut, actually, there's an organization in Connecticut called Desmond's Army. They had been tracking all of the animal cruelty cases since Desmond's Law went into effect in October of 2016. And I actually worked with them and we did a whole data analysis, which was released in December of 2025, analyze and show what the data evidenced from those cases. And we were able to get some really great data points to use for the amendment, an amendment, a possible amendment, and also people now in other jurisdictions that are looking to pass these CAP laws, which is courtroom attorney advocate program laws, they're using that report. And I'm and we're speaking with them to help them along the way. And now I am in North Carolina, and the it's really very refreshing here because stakeholders are really willing to collaborate on these issues. And so I'm part of the North Carolina Animal Cruelty Collaboration, where we are going to at the local level to speak to stakeholders about the importance of collaborating. And then we're willing to sit down with them and at a local level speak to them about properly addressing these cases, right? And that could be anything from data collection or tracking how calls are coming in, how they're being investigated, what other resources they might need.

SPEAKER_02 5:07

And is that where you did the ban on selling animals in parking lots? Because I grew up in North Carolina and there was always on Saturday a box of puppies outside the grocery store.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

Yeah. So there was a somebody had done an article

Banning Parking Lot Pet Sales

SPEAKER_01 5:21

about people selling in parking lots. So I have a lot of knowledge about backyard breeders at puppy mills from work that I did in New York. And part of the problem, it's an animal welfare problem, but it's also a consumer fraud issue. And so what happened was I met with the mayor of Mooresville. I explained everything. The town attorney drafted a bill, we revised it, and it got passed. And I just we they were very willing to learn. They were actually very knowledgeable, but they were very willing to learn the other part of it about the consumer fraud. And yeah, so that bill went into effect, I guess about a year ago.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

You mean consumer fraud, like you're assuming you're buying a pure red something, you know, the parents aren't there and you don't know?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Or that they're the they don't know what they're buying because these animals, if they're backyard breeders, they're not these the dogs were not being taken to the vet. So now they could be coming in with zoonotic issues into a home where there's other animals or children, and it becomes a very big issue, not only for the health of the animals and the people, but that now these families, many of them had sick animals where they had to incur vet bills, and some of them did lose their animals. I see. I see. And one dog started all this off.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

One little dog named Lucy. Animals can change your life. That's absolutely true. Yep. You often say that addressing animal cruelty makes communities safer. Can you explain the connection between animal abuse and the interpersonal violence? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Although animal cruelty is certainly important in its own right,

Animal Cruelty As A Gateway Crime

SPEAKER_01 7:04

there is 40 plus years of research to show that animal cruelty is a gateway crime to human violence. In every single case that I have ever worked on in almost 15 years, there's an interpersonal connection. And when I speak to stakeholders, I always point out in I give real-world case examples, and I always point out the human connection because there's always one. So when we are permitted to advocate up in Connecticut at court, we lay out the pattern of behavior. That's the story of what this defendant has done. And oftentimes that includes pointing out past abuses to animals or people. And then we ask the court to impose consequences that act as deterrence to future behavior because we don't, we want to stop the escalation. We want to break that cycle. So now there's a lot of focus, and one of the things that I'm focusing on in North Carolina is to bring the stakeholders in that address the human issues. So those that would be Department of Social Services. I am going to be promoting getting a cross-reporting bills passed at a county level in North Carolina. So cross-reporting is when animal control and whether it's DSS or Department of Children and Family Services, whatever it might be called at the local level, they must cross-report to each other so that if there is an animal in the home, when social services go, they must report to animal control so that they can investigate. And we have some really good statistics from Connecticut because they've had a cross-reporting law for probably about 14 years now. And every year they publish a report as to how many reports they got, what percentage of those reports where they already had a file on the family, and then how many new investigations. And it ranges, of course, every year, but some of the more recent statistics show that it's anywhere between 42 and 48% had prior, a prior history. Oh, wow. With PCF.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it's wow, I could see that. We always hear the serial killers started that way. So obviously it's violence.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yes. So it's really important for there are still a lot of people that don't know about it. That's why education is one of the things that I focus on. And once you educate, that's when you can move on to the collaboration piece and then look for where there might be legislation that needs to be passed or amended. So those are the and those are the three big areas that I focus on.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Education is huge. I lived so in a Central American small town, and they had a bad problem with how they treated their animals. And they started a program in first grade in elementary school, and it made a massive difference in the population and how they treated their animals. It was it absolutely, yeah, it absolutely does.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

We know that with children in particular, their exposure to the treatment of animals, whether it's positive or negative, that's what informs how they treat animals and humans into adulthood. So that's why there are cases now in Connecticut where we were we had advocated for the children who were present during abuse. And some of the abuse we knew lasted for a lengthy period of time. We knew that because some of the animals had healed fractures that were of varying degrees of healing. And so you want the children to do some sort of a therapy program so that they learn the proper way to treat animals. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

I love that. And can you walk us through the what a typical case there? Actually, let's stop. Let's go back. What are the warning signs or patterns that link animal cruelty and to broader forms of violence?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

You mean what what are some of the signs

Warning Signs Neighbors Can Spot

SPEAKER_01 10:56

of animal cruelty? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:57

If say I'm a neighbor and I'm not sure, but I think.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Okay. So we have that's a very good question because there are plenty of neighbors that are stakeholders because they're reporters. So there's one case now. This is the last case that I'm the advocate on in Connecticut. And a neighbor reported that a dog was being tied outside. Okay. And she had seen the dog, she had met the dog when they first brought the dog into the home. He was a Christmas present right after the new year. She noticed that the dog was being tied outside. Another neighbor who could see the backyard as well noticed that also. And she did call it in. And when animal control went there, they noticed that the dog, now the neighbor saw the dog being tied outside, but she couldn't see what was what the situation, the whole situation of the dog, meaning the dog had a muzzle duct taped on his face. So this is in Connecticut in the winter. He was on a short tether. He had no food, no water, no shelter. There was no fence around the property, no way to defend himself. And what happened was that dog was brought to the vet. He had a body condition score of one out of nine. And he had bruising on his lower abdomen where there had been some sort of abuse. And as it turned out, one of the defendants, there were two defendants, one of them had a had nine felony convictions for domestic violence. Nine. So there were two children in that home, uh toddler and a teenager. And that defendant actually chose to challenge whether or not he violated his probation with those charges. And there was a nine-month violation of probation hearing. He was ruled to have violated, and he's now back in jail for four years. But the court noted that he had a history going back to 2003 of multiple felony convictions, and nine of them were for domestic violence. So some of it, so the signs we always say don't ignore the barking dog, or in this case, the tethered dog, because someone is not treating an animal that way, and then everything else in their life is perfect. Right. There was another, yeah, there was another case in Connecticut where a neighbor called in because a dog, they noticed that a dog was in an it was a neighbor next door. A dog was in a crate out in the front yard. So animal control went there. And the story that the homeowner told was that the dog had a bath and the dog was put outside to dry off. What actually was happening in that house was the person who actually became the defendant, he had killed at least two dogs. He was charged with two felonies. And the all of the other dogs that were in the home were removed. But he had pending charges in Vermont for assaulting an elderly woman and lowering a 13-year-old on Snapchat. He had 21 charges, but those were the two most serious. So there's the there's so many examples of where somebody may see something. And that's why I always encourage people to call it in and report it so that a welfare check can be done because you never know what else is going on.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

That's incredible. I don't think many of us have thought of it that way, but yeah, you don't do just one thing bad. Yeah. The pattern. You're instrumental to getting all of these departments to work together so that you can just discover more than just animal cruelty. And is that everyone seems to be open to that? You said it's working well in Mooresville. And are you working across other counties as well?

SPEAKER_01 14:37

Yeah, North Carolina has been really amazing. There is an need, but usually where the initial impediment is to get the stakeholders to sit around the table and talk to each other. And that has not been an impediment here. Everyone is willing to have a conversation. And if I contact and say, hey, can, you know, would you be open to me coming and speaking? And I have been able to get into many counties. When we just April 15th, actually, we just did, we invited 11 counties of stakeholders and we had a really good turnout. And a couple of them have asked us to come and speak more at a local level just to get that conversation started and provide some education. And then from there say, okay, what is going on at the local level? How many cases are being prosecuted? I and I there's a metric that I always use. It's from Onondaga County, New York. And the reason I use them is because they had an attorney advocate program that existed from I think 2012. And they used to do training. And so within Onondaga County is Syracuse, the city of Syracuse, right? So you had the issues that you would have in a city, but they had rural components as well. They were in a population of 500,000 prosecuting 12 to 15 cases a month. So I always use that as a metric because I tell any county, nobody is an anomaly when it comes to this, one way or another, positive or negative, unless you have an amazing animal cruelty task force that is addressing the cases. So you've used that as a metric to see. Like if people say, okay, there's no dog fighting like in my county, that's that's not possible, right? Maybe it's not being reported or investigated, but then there's a then you see that there is an opportunity to educate at all levels and see where there might be some weaknesses and the strength as well.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

I love that. And do you find that that that it's eye-opening to some people that if you go, if you look and find an animal cruelty case, there's probably a domestic violence or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Yeah, yes. There are people that have been doing amazing work in law enforcement for a long time or social services who are leaders in their field, but they just haven't been educated on this issue. They stay in their lane. Not so you're they stay in their lane just because there hasn't been, it hasn't come to them that where there's an opportunity to be educated. But then I think once you are educated on this or you work on one case. So we've I've had several instances where law enforcement or very seasoned detectives have worked on one animal cruelty case and it really changed how they viewed the whole issue.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Again, education. Yes. Can you walk us through what a typical animal cruelty case looks like from the investigation to the resolution? Isn't just the calling in and the uh neighbor calling in, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Yeah. So say a neighbor calls in. I always look at stakeholders very linearly. So the it will start with very key stakeholders like animal control and law enforcement. And

How Cases Move Through Court

SPEAKER_01 17:46

if it's if the protocol is in place, then if the animal is removed, they're taken right to a veterinarian. And the veterinarians ideally would be knowledgeable as to how to examine the animal. So that would mean blood work, taking x-rays to see if there's any healed fractures or if the animal was made to swallow anything, pictures and video. Because if we don't have those at the beginning, we're they're often lost.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

So then if the defendant does not surrender the animal and the aid, the impounding agency believes that the animal has been abused, you can bring a civil forfeiture action. And that would be brought by the municipality, you bring it to the civil court and you say this animal, typically the statute will say that the you have to show that the animal was neglected or cruelly treated. And you bring in the evidence that you would still use in the criminal case, the same, and animal control will testify, and then you there's a ruling from the court. So if that animal then is if the ownership is vested in the municipality, then the animal can move on and be adopted out or vetted properly. Then if there are charges, so that civil forfeiture is for the ownership of the animal, the criminal action is for the abuse itself. And so then what would happen is you bring it to the court and you interact with the prosecutor to ensure that the charges are proper under the statute for what the facts support. So that's often a huge education moment and sometimes a hurdle. What we found in Connecticut when we did the report was that when attorney advocates were appointed, the felony charges that resulted were in 27% of the cases was because the attorney advocates had argued and were able to make the case for a felony charge. Whereas if the attorney advocates were not appointed, it was about 4%. But of course, the facts are supporting that. So you want those charges to be proper under the law for several reasons. Not only because you want it to be charged properly, and then the consequences that follow are based on that, but also because sometimes the animal cruelty charges become the lesser included charges. So you want it to be. So say if there are 10 victims, then there's 10 charges, like most animal cruelty statutes will say for every offense. So if you're if you go in and it's one charge and there's 10 victims, that's not proper. That makes sense. And then you're so then once you get to that stage, then it goes through the courts and goes through the court system like normal, and then hopefully there's a good resolution. And then after the animal victim, sometimes they need further support, they need training, they need vet care. And there are advocates that work on that as well. And then there's follow-up if, say, the defendant is not allowed to have animals or they have to go on an animal abuser registry, if that law exists in that jurisdiction, then there is the enforcement portion portion, which is a whole separate effort.

SPEAKER_02 22:06

Yeah. I think we've all watched Animal Cops Houston this up and seen them have to go and take back horses and stuff like that. Agree. Yeah. Well, you recently co-authored or co-authored a report that was featured in by national organizations. What were the key findings and why were they important?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

So the key findings from that report, which again was the data from that was collected by Desmond's Army for since

What Desmond’s Law Data Shows

SPEAKER_01 22:30

the case since the law went into effect, what some of the key findings were the attorney advocates, the value of attorney advocates, like I mentioned before. We also found, so under the law in Connecticut, you can be appointed in an animal cruelty case if the victims are dogs or cats. But what we found was 40% of the animal victims were not dogs or cats. They were horses, pigs, hamsters, frogs. So that gave really good support for that law to now for an amendment to be proposed that attorney advocates can be appointed for any type of animal. Because that 40% that's not captured, those defendants are just as likely to escalate. People as the defendants that abuse dogs or cats. So that was one key finding. Another one was we defined violent crime to be death, disfigurement, prolonged torture, loss of limb, loss of eyesight, things that would be a felony level. And what we found was that when those definitions were met, over 68% of those cases were charged as misdemeanors instead of felonies. Right. So that was a huge weakness. We also found that in almost 80% of the crimes that met the violent crime definition, domestic violence was present. We did see as well that the overall cases, there were 533 cases that were analyzed. The percentage that where domestic violence was present at the same time as the cruelty charges was relatively low at 16%. But we knew that number was low, and we actually accounted for that in a footnote in the report because the information that we didn't have was the prior behavior of the defendant. So the case that I pointed out, the two cases that I pointed out in Connecticut, those would not have been captured in our data because they were from a prior time. But the statistic, though those statistics are still very important.

SPEAKER_02 24:32

I agree. Very interesting. And I know that you also work with veterinarians and you're going to be speaking at an upcoming conference.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

So veterinarians are key stakeholders. They can be key key stakeholders in a few ways. Maybe one of the most important ways is to be the reporters. So we do know statistically

Veterinarians As Reporters And Experts

SPEAKER_01 24:52

that an abuse victim is more likely. So this is a human abuse victim who also has animal cruelty in their home, is more likely to report to their veterinarian than to animal control and law enforcement. And when I speak to veterinarians, I said this makes perfect sense because when you go to your veterinarian's office, it's familiar, it's safe. It's typically a happy environment where so that if you are experiencing trauma, it's very scary to go to any type of agency and have to speak to them. So it's really important that veterinarians and their staff can see the signs of cruelty so that they can be reporters. There have been several cases that I've worked on where the veterinarians were reporters and there were hoarding cases, but they reported on one animal, but there were other animals in the home. They may have been in hoarding situations, other animals that were suffering. In one case, there was in the hoarding situation, this was a very small home. There, when they went in with the search warrant, there were 43 animals living in the home, which were dogs, cats, a rooster, and a few hens. But in addition, the defendant's husband lived there and he relied on her for care. He was 80 years old. So by reporting that one animal, all of the other animal victims and the human victim were able to be helped. So vets can be reporters, but they also can be the ones that are working on the cases as forensic vets to gather much needed information that would be used in a criminal case. The case that I was referring to before, where the dog was tethered outside, that vet wound up being one of the witnesses called by the prosecution because she had written a letter and her letter concluded that the animal had been abused. And sometimes veterinarians don't realize they're they are an expert and they can testify as such. And the courts put a lot of emphasis on what the veterinarians say because they're professionals and they're reporting exactly what they're seeing.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

So they are very much key stakeholders. And you're speaking at an event to further educate veteran veterinarians.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Yeah, I'm speaking at the International Veterinary Forensic Sciences Association conference in Banff in about two weeks. And the segment that I'm speaking on is veterinarians as key stakeholders in animal cruelty cases.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

That's an amazing, it's amazing work. So for somebody that's listening who wants to make a difference, whether as a professional or a concerned citizen, what's the most important first step that they should take?

SPEAKER_01 27:31

I think if you are a stakeholder in any municipality, make sure that you are connecting with other stakeholders and ask everybody to come and sit down for a coffee and talk about what is being done in your municipality. If you are a community member,

How Citizens Can Help Locally

SPEAKER_01 27:47

you can go to any of the town meetings or go to animal control and say, can I be a volunteer? And especially when it comes to the cruelty cases, what happens is when the animals are brought into the shelter, many times those animals might be held in a different part of the shelter if there's still evidence. But then the other animals still need help. Community members can help in that way. And there are several books that are out now. One was just published by a woman that has worked at DCF in Connecticut for 34 years. And she just wrote a book called The Courage to Tell. And it's about, it's a children's book about animal cruelty. Um, I actually bought a couple of extra copies. I'm going to be taking it to some meetings, but community members can buy books like that too and offer to have it in the schools or their local libraries.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

I love that. So I think the bottom line is if you see something, say something. There's a bigger picture. There's a bigger picture behind behind an abused animal. Absolutely. Well, I know this has been a this has been a great conversation. I know my listeners are may want to connect with you, learn more, see how they can get involved. Where's the best place for them to do that?

SPEAKER_01 29:01

The best place is my LinkedIn page. It's my name, Joyce Glass. That's where I post projects that I'm working on or some up-to-date information. So that would be the best. Great.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

We'll have a link to that and your website in the show notes. Joyce, this has been a, again, a great conversation. I appreciate your time today and thank you for being on the show. Thank you for having me. That's a wrap on today's episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Before you go, I want to make sure that you know about something that could be a real game changer for your firm. If you've been doing the work, showing up, serving clients, but your marketing still isn't producing the caseload you know you deserve. That's exactly the problem Law Marketing Zone was built to solve. My team and I work exclusively with law firms, and we don't do cookie

Law Firm Marketing Offer And Wrap

SPEAKER_02 29:43

cutter. We build a strategy around your practice, your market, and your goals. More high-quality leads, better cases, less stress, and more profit. Head over to LawmarketingZone.com/slash book a call and book your free case growth session today. The link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next episode.

SPEAKER_00 30:02

Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Leadership in Law Podcast. Remember, you're not alone on this journey. There's a whole community of law firm owners out there facing similar challenges and striving for the state to test. Head over to our website at LawMarketingTemo.com. From there, connect with other listeners, access valuable resources, and stay up the date on the latest episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave us to review on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, keep leading with vision and keep growing your firm.