By Sheila Pursglove
Legal News
While working as a prosecuting attorney in Ingham County, Allie Phillips volunteered at her local animal control—and noticed Michigan animal protection laws were not taken seriously by the shelter, and that there were virtually no animal cases in the prosecutor’s office.
“That’s when I started deeply researching how animal abuse links to almost every crime, but is deeply linked to domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse,” she says. “Little did I know that when I started down that path in 2000 it would become my legal specialty that would take me around the country and world to teach others.”
Prosecuting animal abuse
Now an attorney with three decades of experience, and a human-animal interaction legal educator and author, Phillips says her animal law specialty is prosecuting animal abuse.
“Animal law is important because violence to animals often results in violence to people. Violence is violence, whether committed against a two-legged or four-legged being,” she says. “Animal abuse is often the first signs of trouble. Taking animal abuse seriously can save people and additional animals from future harm. Animal harm unaddressed in communities results in unsafe communities.
How we care for animals speaks to how we are as a society. Strong animal protection laws result in safer and stronger communities.
“Because animals are sentient beings just like humans, they are entitled to the protections that people have,” Phillips notes. “Animal law is a wide field that goes beyond animal abuse and neglect laws. When we can protect all animals, including wildlife, that enriches our world.”
A graduate of Michigan State University and cum laude alumna of Detroit Mercy Law, Phillips has written more than 50 legal publications, 10 book chapters, four federally-funded monographs, and two books available on Amazon: “Defending The Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets”; and “How Shelter Pets are Brokered for Experimentation: Understanding Pound Seizure.”
The Link
Specializing in the link between animal abuse and family violence, Phillips has conducted hundreds of trainings all across the U.S., as well as in Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Portugal, and Scotland, and has also had thousands of attendees in online trainings across the world.
“There are hundreds of studies that show us that when an offender harms an animal in an interpersonal relationship, it’s a control feature to secure compliance and silence from adult and child victims,” she says. “If I can kill the dog, I can kill you is the message it sends. We have research that even targeting farm animals and livestock is part of this cycle of violence.”
When Phillips first started studying “The Link” in 2000 and teaching prosecutors, law enforcement, and allied professionals in 2002, it was an emerging field very few were talking about.
“Up until a few years ago, I could count on one hand the number of prosecutors who were educated sufficiently on The Link to teach about it,” she says. “In May, I was teaching on this topic at the Conference on Crimes Against Women in Dallas and there were people in the audience who had never heard the information I was sharing.”
Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T)
Phillips created Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T) as a solution to Link crimes—the concept coming to her around 1996-97 while prosecuting a domestic violence case. The victim wanted to drop the charges against her husband—who had already killed one dog—and go home to protect her two dogs and a goat.
When Phillips called the local domestic violence shelter from the judge's chambers to see if she could get her client into shelter, the shelter worker laughed and hung up when she mentioned the client would arrive with two dogs and a goat.
“When I get mad, I find solutions. In that moment, it was like the entire concept for the SAF-T Program downloaded into my brain,” Phillips says. “I didn't know what to do about it because I was a fairly new prosecutor.”
It wasn’t until 2003 when she moved to the Washington, D.C. area to work for the National District Attorneys Association that she started to talk about the need for pet-inclusive domestic violence shelters for women and children.
In 2008, she published the first written guidelines for domestic violence shelters. In 2010, she named the program Sheltering Animals & Families Together and incorporated as a nonprofit in 2018.
Currently, there are about 400 pet-inclusive domestic violence shelters in 49 states and six countries.
“The testimonials I receive back from the shelters is usually ‘Why did we wait so long to do this!’” she says. “While I don’t remember the name of the victim in that domestic violence case, she inspired me to launch the global movement of pet-inclusive domestic violence shelters. Colleagues call me the Godmother of the Pet-Inclusive Shelter Movement! Never could I have imagined back then that countless human and animal lives would be saved as a result.”
Therapy Animals Supporting Kids (TASK)
When she served as Vice President of Public Policy for the American Humane Association, Phillips worked extensively on child protection and animal protection federal and state legislation, with a lot of work on pet protective order legislation.
Always an advocate for never having a child victim go through the investigation/prosecution/ court process alone, Phillips says that while at American Humane she collaborated with the Animal-Assisted Therapy Division.
“I pitched my concept, they loved it,” she says.
The team created Therapy Animals Supporting Kids (TASK) and wrote a Manual for criminal justice professionals—found online and at AlliePhillips.com—that explains how to safely incorporate therapy animals with maltreated children.
“There is confusion in the different working animal titles and we wanted to provide clarity,” Phillips says. “For example, service animals are not to work therapeutically because they are trained to work solely with their handler to perform a service. Whereas therapy animals are trained to work with a handler to provide therapeutic support to others.”
When the TASK Program and her pet-inclusive domestic violence shelter program grew in popularity, and Phillips was frequently called out on trainings, she then became Vice President of Human-Animal Strategic Initiatives. Named a Top Defender of Animals in 2015 by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and honored with the Trail Blazer Award in 2018 from Urban Resource Institute (the largest domestic violence agency in the U.S.), Phillips also co-founded the National Center for Prosecution of Animal Abuse at the National District Attorneys Association where educational information is available.
Helping and Healing
With 10 healing and wellness certifications including Certified Usui Reiki Master-Teacher, Certified Integrated Energy Therapy Master-Instructor, Advanced Crystal Master Teacher, Phillips also is the owner of the Manifested Harmony, created initially to help shelter pets and abused/neglected animals.
Since 2008, she has been training and teaching in the energy healing therapies for people and pets. and teaches how to safely use essential oils with animals. She teaches animal shelter staff, veterinarians and animal rescuers how to stay physically and emotionally balanced while helping animals. She specializes in helping shelter pets feel calm and at ease while they wait adoption, and to help abused/neglected animals overcome trauma.
“I still help animals a lot,” she says. “One area I specialize in is essential oils for pets. I wrote ‘The Oily Pet’ book to help explain how oils can be used safely with cats and dogs. I have taught on this topic at national conferences. And I have seen amazing health and behavioral results in my cats and my pet clients.”
Feline trio
Phillips grew up with a cat and several rabbits.
“I was also the little girl who would find stray animals—sometimes wildlife—and want to bring them home,” she says. “I understand animals. I'm a bit of an animal whisperer. And I especially understand cats. I've always known that they feel pain like we do, and they have emotions like we do.”
The Owosso native shares her mid-Michigan home with three senior felines.
“Since I have two home-based businesses, they are my Chief Feline Officers,” she says with a smile.
Phillips adopted Dobby—at 18 the eldest of her trio—from a shelter when he was 12.
“I love elderly cats,” she says. “Stella, 8 years old, another shelter rescue, is a comedian and very popular on social media. And Rudy, 13 years old, was a rescue from St. Croix.”
The St. Croix story started in 2009 when Phillips was on that U.S. Virgin Island conducting a training on new animal protection laws. Visiting the Animal Welfare Center shelter, she saw many cats and dogs needing mainland transfers and adoptions. At the time, Phillips was Director of the Public Policy Office for the American Humane Association and President of King Street Cats, a cat orphanage in Alexandria, Va. She has helped about 100 cats fly to Virginia to be adopted.
“I flew home with the first cat and then started coordinating the flights of about one cat a month whenever there was a traveler from St. Croix to the Washington, D.C. area.,” she says. “KSC still accepts St. Croix cats, although the St. Croix had their federal funding cancelled so I do not believe there are any flights happening now. My Rudy was one of the cats who flew from St. Croix to Virginia and I picked him up at the airport the day after Christmas 2012.”
Legal News
While working as a prosecuting attorney in Ingham County, Allie Phillips volunteered at her local animal control—and noticed Michigan animal protection laws were not taken seriously by the shelter, and that there were virtually no animal cases in the prosecutor’s office.
“That’s when I started deeply researching how animal abuse links to almost every crime, but is deeply linked to domestic violence, child abuse, elder abuse,” she says. “Little did I know that when I started down that path in 2000 it would become my legal specialty that would take me around the country and world to teach others.”
Prosecuting animal abuse
Now an attorney with three decades of experience, and a human-animal interaction legal educator and author, Phillips says her animal law specialty is prosecuting animal abuse.
“Animal law is important because violence to animals often results in violence to people. Violence is violence, whether committed against a two-legged or four-legged being,” she says. “Animal abuse is often the first signs of trouble. Taking animal abuse seriously can save people and additional animals from future harm. Animal harm unaddressed in communities results in unsafe communities.
How we care for animals speaks to how we are as a society. Strong animal protection laws result in safer and stronger communities.
“Because animals are sentient beings just like humans, they are entitled to the protections that people have,” Phillips notes. “Animal law is a wide field that goes beyond animal abuse and neglect laws. When we can protect all animals, including wildlife, that enriches our world.”
A graduate of Michigan State University and cum laude alumna of Detroit Mercy Law, Phillips has written more than 50 legal publications, 10 book chapters, four federally-funded monographs, and two books available on Amazon: “Defending The Defenseless: A Guide to Protecting and Advocating for Pets”; and “How Shelter Pets are Brokered for Experimentation: Understanding Pound Seizure.”
The Link
Specializing in the link between animal abuse and family violence, Phillips has conducted hundreds of trainings all across the U.S., as well as in Australia, Canada, Netherlands, Portugal, and Scotland, and has also had thousands of attendees in online trainings across the world.
“There are hundreds of studies that show us that when an offender harms an animal in an interpersonal relationship, it’s a control feature to secure compliance and silence from adult and child victims,” she says. “If I can kill the dog, I can kill you is the message it sends. We have research that even targeting farm animals and livestock is part of this cycle of violence.”
When Phillips first started studying “The Link” in 2000 and teaching prosecutors, law enforcement, and allied professionals in 2002, it was an emerging field very few were talking about.
“Up until a few years ago, I could count on one hand the number of prosecutors who were educated sufficiently on The Link to teach about it,” she says. “In May, I was teaching on this topic at the Conference on Crimes Against Women in Dallas and there were people in the audience who had never heard the information I was sharing.”
Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T)
Phillips created Sheltering Animals & Families Together (SAF-T) as a solution to Link crimes—the concept coming to her around 1996-97 while prosecuting a domestic violence case. The victim wanted to drop the charges against her husband—who had already killed one dog—and go home to protect her two dogs and a goat.
When Phillips called the local domestic violence shelter from the judge's chambers to see if she could get her client into shelter, the shelter worker laughed and hung up when she mentioned the client would arrive with two dogs and a goat.
“When I get mad, I find solutions. In that moment, it was like the entire concept for the SAF-T Program downloaded into my brain,” Phillips says. “I didn't know what to do about it because I was a fairly new prosecutor.”
It wasn’t until 2003 when she moved to the Washington, D.C. area to work for the National District Attorneys Association that she started to talk about the need for pet-inclusive domestic violence shelters for women and children.
In 2008, she published the first written guidelines for domestic violence shelters. In 2010, she named the program Sheltering Animals & Families Together and incorporated as a nonprofit in 2018.
Currently, there are about 400 pet-inclusive domestic violence shelters in 49 states and six countries.
“The testimonials I receive back from the shelters is usually ‘Why did we wait so long to do this!’” she says. “While I don’t remember the name of the victim in that domestic violence case, she inspired me to launch the global movement of pet-inclusive domestic violence shelters. Colleagues call me the Godmother of the Pet-Inclusive Shelter Movement! Never could I have imagined back then that countless human and animal lives would be saved as a result.”
Therapy Animals Supporting Kids (TASK)
When she served as Vice President of Public Policy for the American Humane Association, Phillips worked extensively on child protection and animal protection federal and state legislation, with a lot of work on pet protective order legislation.
Always an advocate for never having a child victim go through the investigation/prosecution/ court process alone, Phillips says that while at American Humane she collaborated with the Animal-Assisted Therapy Division.
“I pitched my concept, they loved it,” she says.
The team created Therapy Animals Supporting Kids (TASK) and wrote a Manual for criminal justice professionals—found online and at AlliePhillips.com—that explains how to safely incorporate therapy animals with maltreated children.
“There is confusion in the different working animal titles and we wanted to provide clarity,” Phillips says. “For example, service animals are not to work therapeutically because they are trained to work solely with their handler to perform a service. Whereas therapy animals are trained to work with a handler to provide therapeutic support to others.”
When the TASK Program and her pet-inclusive domestic violence shelter program grew in popularity, and Phillips was frequently called out on trainings, she then became Vice President of Human-Animal Strategic Initiatives. Named a Top Defender of Animals in 2015 by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and honored with the Trail Blazer Award in 2018 from Urban Resource Institute (the largest domestic violence agency in the U.S.), Phillips also co-founded the National Center for Prosecution of Animal Abuse at the National District Attorneys Association where educational information is available.
Helping and Healing
With 10 healing and wellness certifications including Certified Usui Reiki Master-Teacher, Certified Integrated Energy Therapy Master-Instructor, Advanced Crystal Master Teacher, Phillips also is the owner of the Manifested Harmony, created initially to help shelter pets and abused/neglected animals.
Since 2008, she has been training and teaching in the energy healing therapies for people and pets. and teaches how to safely use essential oils with animals. She teaches animal shelter staff, veterinarians and animal rescuers how to stay physically and emotionally balanced while helping animals. She specializes in helping shelter pets feel calm and at ease while they wait adoption, and to help abused/neglected animals overcome trauma.
“I still help animals a lot,” she says. “One area I specialize in is essential oils for pets. I wrote ‘The Oily Pet’ book to help explain how oils can be used safely with cats and dogs. I have taught on this topic at national conferences. And I have seen amazing health and behavioral results in my cats and my pet clients.”
Feline trio
Phillips grew up with a cat and several rabbits.
“I was also the little girl who would find stray animals—sometimes wildlife—and want to bring them home,” she says. “I understand animals. I'm a bit of an animal whisperer. And I especially understand cats. I've always known that they feel pain like we do, and they have emotions like we do.”
The Owosso native shares her mid-Michigan home with three senior felines.
“Since I have two home-based businesses, they are my Chief Feline Officers,” she says with a smile.
Phillips adopted Dobby—at 18 the eldest of her trio—from a shelter when he was 12.
“I love elderly cats,” she says. “Stella, 8 years old, another shelter rescue, is a comedian and very popular on social media. And Rudy, 13 years old, was a rescue from St. Croix.”
The St. Croix story started in 2009 when Phillips was on that U.S. Virgin Island conducting a training on new animal protection laws. Visiting the Animal Welfare Center shelter, she saw many cats and dogs needing mainland transfers and adoptions. At the time, Phillips was Director of the Public Policy Office for the American Humane Association and President of King Street Cats, a cat orphanage in Alexandria, Va. She has helped about 100 cats fly to Virginia to be adopted.
“I flew home with the first cat and then started coordinating the flights of about one cat a month whenever there was a traveler from St. Croix to the Washington, D.C. area.,” she says. “KSC still accepts St. Croix cats, although the St. Croix had their federal funding cancelled so I do not believe there are any flights happening now. My Rudy was one of the cats who flew from St. Croix to Virginia and I picked him up at the airport the day after Christmas 2012.”
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