Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Mom works to change dog bite law
Paoli woman’s 8-year-old son was attacked by neighbor’s dog last year
Following a brutal dog attack on her son, a Paoli mom is trying to get the laws in the state changed to prevent more children from getting hurt.
Last week, Sarah Hermans launched a change.org petition to make it easier for a dog to be declared dangerous after it attacks a person.
Hermans’ interest in the topic began Aug. 12 of last year when her 8-year-old son was at a neighbor’s house and the pit bull there attacked him, biting him in the face multiple times.
“We ended up meeting at Paoli Hospital and that’s where I saw the damage,” Hermans recalled.
In her change.org petition, Hermans wrote that “… the attack ... left a portion of his upper lip hanging, split open and torn from his face. His lower lip was split straight through and shredded by the dog’s teeth. His nose and cheek were punctured. The dog’s teeth just missed the labial artery and left it exposed. Had it been severed, this attack could have been far more serious.”
Hermans went on to say that her son required general anesthesia and hours of cosmetic surgery. He still has facial scars and deformed lips. He required over 100 stitches.
The owners of the dog were issued a citation for having a dog that “inflicts severe harm to a human being without
provocation on public or private property.”
At the end of a January 2017 hearing in Judge Analisa Sondergaard’s district court in Chesterbrook, there was a “not guilty” disposition for the dog’s owners. Hermans, in her petition, went on to say the attack was deemed to have been unprovoked by her son. But despite the unprovoked nature of the attack, “getting a dog declared as dangerous requires proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the dog has a ‘vicious propensity’ in addition to proving the attack was unprovoked and caused severe injury,” she wrote.
“How could a dog that does that to a child’s face not be found dangerous?” Hermans said in a recent interview. “There’s something wrong with the system.”
The current law has what Hermans calls a loophole under the vicious propensity standard, one that dog owners can and have used to exploit it, she said.
And Hermans was made to feel like a victim a second time when, in the trial, she and her family had to sit and listen to what amounted to character witnesses for the dog who defended his good disposition.
If the ‘vicious propensity’ weren’t part of the law, Hermans said, it could be easier to have a dog declared dangerous. Another problem with the law, Hermans cited, is that the dog owner is the one who goes on trial. This could illicit sympathy because a guilty verdict could make the owner look bad with a conviction on record.
Hermans said she understands that people love their dogs, but what bothers her about the case is that it appears that pets are coming first and people are being pushed back. “There comes a time when children should have precedence over animals,” Hermans said.
She’s spoken to area legislators about the law and is hopeful for a change. When a dog is declared to be dangerous, its owners would be required to have restrictions placed on the animal such as wearing a muzzle when in public or having a warning sign posted on the property.
“I know we can’t change the outcome of this but my goal is to not let this happen to anyone else again,” Hermans said. “It’s really painful. And I don’t think the people, even the people who own the dog – I don’t think it was their intent to be painful but unintentionally it caused a whole lot of pain and it was almost as traumatic as the ... actual bite. You are ... watching people say, ‘Oh no, this dog is great. This dog is fine.’”
Herman’s petition, which has gathered more than 200 signatures in the past week, can be found at www.safedoglaw.com.