PROGRAM HISTORY

Through several years of research and personal interviews with convicted violent offenders, Cheri Brown Thompson, attorney at law and founder of the Healing Species, discovered that all of the violent offenders had two things in common:

1. They were abused as children.
2. They first "acted out" abuse on the only creatures more vulnerable than they, animals.

As a law student, Cheri Brown Thompson discovered the relationship between animal cruelty and human violence. This realization led to the founding principles of the Healing Species. Thompson gave up practicing law in 1999, and now serves with no pay as the Executive Director of the Healing Species.

Today, Healing Species is growing nationally with expansion projects in five other states, including Arizona and Colorado. As of October 2006, the newly formed Healing Species Puget Sound chapter has officially begun teaching the program at schools in the Puget Sound region of Washington State.