State’s First Center For Young Human Trafficking Victims To Open In Columbus

A survivor of human trafficking plans to open the city’s first shelter for youth victims, 10TV’s Glenn McEntyre reported.

Marlene Carson launched Rahab’s Hideaway, a shelter for adult survivors. She also opened a restaurant to give survivors job experience and life skills.

Carson said that the missing piece was a shelter for young victims.

Rahab’s at the Rosemont Center, located in east Columbus, is scheduled to open in the fall as the missing piece, Carson said.

“This is a fully comprehensive therapeutic treatment facility with a school on property, clinic on property, everything’s right here,” Carson said.

Work is under way to renovate cottages to become what Carson said will be Ohio’s only licensed treatment facility for human trafficking victims ages 11 to 18.

Human trafficking victim Anna Borsick said that she wished someone would have offered the services years ago.

Borsick’s road to the streets began when she was 5 years old, when a relative began sexually abusing her, McEntyre reported.

At 13, Borsick ran away from home.

“I was running away from what was going on at home, and then I was introduced to an older man,” Borsick said.

The woman said that the older man said that he would protect her, but instead but used her to run drugs. He then sold her to a pimp who sold her for sex, McEntyre reported.

“We’d leave about 10 p.m. and wouldn’t get home until 6 a.m. or 7 a.m.,” Borsick said. “All night, we were out in the streets. It didn’t matter if it was winter, summer, spring, we would be in thongs, high heels and a bra, mostly.”

Borsick said that she tried to commit suicide when she was 6 months pregnant.

“I was just wasted flesh,” Borsick said. “I was a throwaway, according to the government, and I believed it.”

According to Borsick, the new facility will change the lives of many.

“It’s going to change a lot of girls’ lives, and it’s going to give a lot of girls their dreams and their hopes back,” Borsick said. “Something they got stolen from them.”

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