Sex trafficking in the state of South Carolina saw 400 victims in 2022, and arguably significantly more than that due to the underreported nature of the crime.<\/p>\n
Clare Amari of The Greenville News<\/a> crafts an article about one such victim, Paula Argoe, and her plight to free herself from a cycle of addiction, prostitution and homelessness. Integral to her healing is Jasmine Road<\/a>, an organization launched in Greenville by Furman University psychology alumna Beth Cashion Coe Messick ’90. The mission of the two-year residential program is to provide a path to healing and employment for women survivors of sex trafficking, prostitution and addiction.<\/p>\n \u201cIn meeting women like Paula and the others, they\u2019re no different than me,\u201d Messick said, revealing her own struggle as a victim of sexual abuse. \u201cI was able to have the help and the resources to get out of and heal from the things that happened to me. These women don\u2019t have a chance for that, because you can\u2019t do it without somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n Jasmine Road is modeled after the Thistle Farms nonprofit, which was founded in Nashville, Tennessee, by Episcopal priest Becca Stevens more than 20 years ago. The Greenville affiliate was incorporated in 2016 as a result of a partnership between Christ Church Episcopal, Triune Mercy Center and Bon Secours, St. Francis Health System.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jasmine Road was launched by Beth Messick in 2016. The first program of its kind in Greenville, its mission is to provide a path to healing and employment for women survivors of sex trafficking, prostitution and addiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":25043,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,118,6,48],"tags":[126,2041,2040,879,2039],"class_list":["post-25037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-greenville-news","category-in-the-news","category-psychology","tag-addiction","tag-drug-abuse","tag-homelessness","tag-jasmine-road","tag-sex-trafficking"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}