By Joe Johnson
A 19-year-old overdose patient at an Athens hospital reportedly tried killing herself after being victimized by a sex trafficker.
Police said they responded Jan. 22 to the hospital upon being informed that a patient claiming to be a sex trafficking victim had attempted suicide by swallowing pills.
She explained to police that after being placed in a DeKalb County foster home at age 16, she was later abducted from there by a man who apparently masqueraded as a DFCS employee.
The man in November took her to live in an Atlanta “drug house” where “some drug addicts realized she was being sex trafficked and called the police.”
The woman told police that she’d been sexually assaulted but did not say she was being trafficked because her captor had threatened to kill her if she told anyone.
She was taken for treatment at Grady Memorial Hospital, which afterwards transported her to the Bigger Vision homeless shelter on North Street in Athens.
The matter is under investigation by the local police department.