LEWISTON - Maine's first-in-the-nation shield for pets, adding them to protection-from-abuse orders in domestic abuse cases, is becoming commonplace in local courts.

Specific numbers are unknown, said Anne Jordan, the state's public safety commissioner. The 2006 law is still too new.

"We know it's not unusual," Jordan told attendees at a Great Falls Forum lecture Thursday. "It's part of the procedure of every order."

The aim: helping abuse victims. Many abusers threaten to harm pets as a means of control.

"It's their way of saying, 'I'm going to show you what's going to happen to you if you try to leave me,'" said Jordan, who gathered lawyers, judges and academics in 2005 for a discussion on the issue.

Together, they came up with the change in protection-from-abuse orders. Jordan, who had a history of working on cases for animal shelters and rescue groups, wrote the law.

"We're trying to make this one less tool in the toolbox for the abusers," she said.

Another meeting on the issue, including people from 17 states and three Canadian provinces, is planned for June in Portland.

Jordan was unsure what the next step would be for victims and their animals, she said. The problems of spousal and child abuse are not improving, she said.

In 2006, there were 11,681 arrests in Maine for assault. Of them, 5,540 were domestics, she said.

Already this year, the state has had 16 murders. A dozen were domestics, she said.

"We had three babies die in one week," she said.

During her hour-long talk, Jordan described several individual cases.

In one, a man threatened to shoot his wife. When police arrived at the home, the couple's son had fled outdoors with the gun and the family dog.

"Just image the connection that dog must have felt to that boy, to sit there in the cold with him," she said.

She also described the grisly death of a pet cat.

An angry husband held the cat out of the window of a moving car, saying one or the other must go. Then, he repeatedly drove over the cat.

The man was sentenced to three years in prison, Jordan said.

Part of fighting such abuse is being informed, she said. Victims ought to know that a network of foster homes for animals is growing.

Locally, the Greater Androscoggin Humane Society has space set aside for the pets of domestic violence victims.

"It sends the message that we as a society won't stand for this," Jordan said.