On a drizzling Monday night in Amsterdam last month, I walked along lantern-lit cobble-stone streets and canals in the Red Light district. Although it was a weekday after 9 p.m., the streets were filled with throngs of passersby ogling at the scantily-clad young women who stood in the windows as if they were animals at the zoo. After my initial shock at the women's "come-hither" poses and their heavily painted faces, I began noticing the onlookers. They weren't only leering and lusty young men who stopped to window-shop. Couples strolled hand-in-hand and grandfatherly and grandmotherly figures took in the "sights." Other than the absence of children, all of humanity seemed to be out for a stroll in the city's central Red Light district. Then I realized that my picture of the zoo was inside-out. In fact, it was we on the streets, the people ones strolling by, who were more the animals, feeding fallen appetites for bizarre spectacles and fantasy on the women behind the windows. 
I was accompanied by Toos, who oversees the Scarlet Cord (scroll down to Scharlaken Koord) with her husband, Willem. She tapped on windows and doors, introducing herself with a friendly hello and letting the women know they were welcome at the Scarlet Cord if they ever needed help. The first door we knocked at was opened by a young Hungarian girl who looked younger than 20 and spoke only a little Dutch. Unlike the other women, her freckled face bore little if any make-up, and instead of cheap lingerie, she wore a modest white and silver polka dot two-piece swimsuit. My stomach dropped when she said her name was "Lucy." Perhaps that wasn't her real name, but it didn't matter. My husband and I have chosen that name for our baby, if she is a girl. I felt my own comfortable world crashing into the horrors of the world's flesh trade through this one girl. All the women in the 300-some brothels here could be my daughter!
"How long, O Lord, will we be silent and complicit? Lord, in your mercy, hear our cry..." - excerpt from a prayer of lament for sexual exploitation from NCAP
I'll never know Lucy's story, but I am confident she didn't grow up dreaming of becoming an object in the window. More likely, she's one of many young women who fit a common profile. Perhaps her father was an alcholic or abusive, then her mother became sick and needed hospitalization or medication. With younger siblings at home, and few local job prospects, Lucy enlisted to work abroad as an "exotic dancer" or "nanny". Or maybe she even knew she'd 'work' in a window, but she probably imagined she'd earn piles of money to send back home for her family. She never knew the violence and suffering almost certain to come.
What can we do to help?
Pray for Lucy to be receptive to God's love.
Pray for the ministries of the Scarlet Cord and YWAM's Cleft.
Check out options on the Salvation Army's website.
