I received a private email from Marion Lapointe in which she warns me to be careful when equating animal suffering to human suffering as I may be insulting some human survivors of abuse.

How sad that people who themselves were persecuted, as Marion implies that her family was, could not realize that every cruelty, to any form of animal, is equally as bad as another and that as long as we have the mindset that there are degrees of cruelty depending on the 'animal' involved, abuse of every kind will never end.

This is so reminiscent to my battles about child abuse. There were abusers who actually stated to their victims, as happened to my own cousin, "but you crawled into bed with me and you called me your 'seetheart'...so in his mind, that gave her father the right to rape her from age 3 to 18.

I've had a policeman tell me that the woman I was helping shouldn't have been walking in the downtown area of Hamilton - as he said: "well, she's been raped three times - you think she'd learn." How about the judge who stated when he found a man not guilty of repeatedly raping his seriously retarded daughter: "this man's wife is an invalid and he had to get his needs met somewhere".

These people who excuse the abuse of animals are doing exactly the same as those perpetrators of child abuse: they are steadfastly refusing to see the harm in what they are doing, in order to keep their consciences free from guilt and to allow them to continue. From those outright idiots who ride around with dogs in pickups to those who will continue to insist that we have the right to keep animals in our homes and zoos and aquariums, these people will diminish the needs of others in order to fill their own needs and wants. They want to cuddle and hug their puppy, so of course it's O.K. to keep him in an apartment until they get home from work, and the dog, if lucky, gets a walk around the block. They want to look super macho, so of course their dog loves to ride in the back of the truck in the rain and cold with no shelter. They need to show their children a lion or whale up close, so of course we'll support our local wildlife park or zoo or aquarium. They have to rail against the injustices enacted upon various races and to put human suffering above that of any other creature, so of course it is wrong to try to equate the two.

As a victim of rape and physical and mental abuse, I refuse to agree that my rights and needs should be above those of any other creature. It is precisely because of my abuse that I will go on fighting for the freedom of every living, breathing being. One form of oppression to any life is one too many for humanity to tolerate.