Today, I was reading a story about Samuel Little who confessed last year to a 4-decade murder rampage across America in which 93 murders took place and of which 50 have been verified by the FBI who believe that all his confessions are credible.
Little, 79, has been behind bars since 2012 and is serving multiple life sentences. How did he get away with it for so long? Little drifted across the country and although he was arrested dozens of times for serious crimes such as armed robbery and rape, he managed to avoid a murder conviction until 2014.
The reason why he got away with it for so long is because most of his victims were marginalised women, often prostitutes and drug users. Most of them were African-American and many of the deaths were deemed to be overdoses, accidents or as a result of unknown causes.
It appears that little commitment was demonstrated by law enforcement in respect of these numerous marginalised female victims. It is when law enforcement (and society which creates the law enforcement agency) doesn’t care to a sufficient standard that you get these injustices. The laborious manner in which I’m arriving at my conclusion is perhaps tiresome but I couldn’t help be drawn to the similarity between marginalised women, often prostitutes and drug users and feral cats which are simply reluctantly accepted but they are somewhat invisible both to the public and to law enforcement. In practice they have less protection under the law than others.
I wonder how many feral and stray cats are abused and killed without there being any knowledge of it whatsoever. I would suggest that it is much higher than the impression we get in online newspapers which occasionally report abuse of feral and stray cats. I would suggest that these marginalised companion animals are natural receptacles for abuse by disturbed and marginalised people. And for this reason it happens far more often than we can imagine.
It’s a sad state of affairs and although I have referred to America it happens all over the world. America is far from exceptional in this regard. In fact it’ll happen far more often in Asia than in the Western world because law enforcement in those countries is far slacker except for certain exceptions like Singapore.
It is a criticism of society in general that the marginalised and vulnerable have injustices perpetrated against them because the true measure of the quality of society is how it protects and deals with these very animals and humans.
