Jasmine Road’s Beth Messick helps women get off the streets

How do you stop the revolving door of homelessness, drug addiction, prostitution and incarceration among women? Beth Cashion Coe Messick ’90, a Furman University psychology alumna, may have a solution.

She began reaching out to exploited women who found themselves repeating the behaviors that kept them “frozen in their circumstances.” Oddly, they chose to stay there despite local resources such as Shepherd’s Gate and Safe Harbor.

Messick realized a safe place to live was the key to women’s recovery following court-ordered rehab. In 2018, Jasmine Road, a partnership of Christ Church Episcopal, Triune Mercy Center and Bon Secours St. Francis Health System, opened its doors to five Greenville women. The two-year residential program for adult women survivors of human trafficking, prostitution and addiction is the first in the state.

“Every day, I get to love women back to life, to walk beside them while they heal and to watch them become the beautiful people that God created them to be,” Messick said. Read more in an article appearing in The Greenville News.