Healing Species was founded in Orangeburg, SC in 1999 when attorney Cheri Brown Thompson created the Violence Prevention/Intervention through Compassion Education™ curriculum, the first ever animal-assisted Violence-Prevention curriculum to be endorsed by a state board of education, in response to the discoveries she made during her legal studies in criminal law. Focusing her studies on “depraved heart” criminals, Cheri became greatly troubled by the link between violence toward animals and violent crime in society - finding that 99% of convicted violent offenders were abused as children and, in turn, inflicted abuse on animals before committing violence against humans. The relationship between previous abuse, animal cruelty, and perpetuated human violence led to a founding principle of Healing Species, which is to touch and help heal the heart of a child, invoking empathy - the missing emotion in many violent offenders.