a man sentenced to two years in prison for violence against his dog in Seine-Saint-Denis

The Bobigny court on Monday September 30 sentenced a man to two years in prison with a committal warrant for mistreating his dog. A sentence that goes in the right direction, for the association’s lawyer Stéphane Lamart.

A “remarkable” sentence. A man was sentenced Monday September 30 to two years in prison with a warrant for having committed serious violence on a Malinois dog in Pavillons-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) last April. He was therefore taken to prison, a rare occurrence in cases of animal abuse.

The conviction “is remarkable to the extent that very often for similar facts, we do not necessarily have prison sentences or firm prison sentences”, explains Christophe Gérard, lawyer for the animal defense association Stéphane Lamart, at BFM Paris Île-de-France Wednesday October 2.

“We very often have suspended sentences but a firm prison sentence and a two-year sentence is remarkable, which the public prosecutor underlined,” he adds.

A change in mentalities

According to the lawyer, this heavy sentence is a sign that mentalities are changing on the issue of family abuse. “Our societies are more and more sensitive to animal pain, to mistreatment, to this phenomenon of everyday violence. We see that the courts, year after year, take abuse more into consideration,” analyzes Christophe Gérard .

“The magistrates are gaining expertise on these problems, realizing that there is real animal pain and that we can no longer ignore this situation,” he concludes.

Last April, Mabrouk, a Malinois dog, was found in the condemned man’s apartment. “An apartment stained with blood, a ripped open transport crate, a dog lying on the ground, disfigured by blows, and left for dead in a bathroom,” writes on Facebook the Animal Protection Action association, which had taken in the animal. The latter survived his injuries.

The association specifies that “the howls of pain of the animal, whose ordeal we can easily imagine and the blood present on the landing, had led the neighbors to alert the police”. Its owner was then placed in police custody. According to the association, he “had no less than 17 convictions, including at least one for having already killed a dog”.

In addition to two years in prison, the man was sentenced to a fine of 1,000 euros and a permanent ban on keeping an animal.