Escaping the Devil's Bedroom

A Monday in Amsterdam

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.

"Treasures out of Darkness"

A couple weeks ago I spoke with Harmony Dust (left in photo, click to enlarge), founder of Treasures, an L.A. ministry that reaches women in the sex industry. Harmony had a tumultuous childhood. She was sexually abused by two women at age 5 and an older boy at 7, and then raped repeatedly by an ex-boyfriend as a teen. "I had a really low sense of self-worth and my identity was strongly intertwined with my sexuality," she told me.

While Harmony was in college, she started dancing at the Century Lounge, a strip club near the L.A. airport. She was desperate for money to support her abusive boyfriend, his baby and the baby’s mother. At the club, men propositioned her every night, but Harmony created firm boundaries for herself–she’d never let an customer touch her, although many tried (Glamour Magazine, January 2007). "I was so unhappy. The pain was suffocating," she said. Other dancers caved in to pressure to sleep with regular customers, managers or club owners.

In a ballet class at Santa Monica College, Harmony became friends with Tanya, a young woman with a sparkling personality. Although she initially lied when Tanya asked about her job, the next week Harmony decided to be honest. Tanya’s reaction stunned her: "She didn’t judge me...She blew every preconceived notion of what I thought Christians were out of the water."

Tanya invited Harmony to her church, Oasis Christian Center. When Harmony finally visited and took her first step inside of a church, she loved it. She quickly became a regular at Oasis on Sundays, then on Mondays and Wednesdays for Bible studies. "There was a lot of instability in my life and I was looking for a home, an anchor," she said.

Six months later Harmony was still going to Oasis and dancing at the Century Lounge. On Wednesday nights, she’d go to church, then head straight to work. But, "I began to understand my value and purpose," she said. And Tanya allowed time for the Holy Spirit to work. "She never said, ‘Now that you’re going to church, you gotta change,’" Harmony told me.

Harmony said good-bye to the Century Lounge the night she realized that God was asking her to leave. She also severed ties with her boyfriend and sought healing. Eventually she married a godly man from Oasis and graduated from UCLA with a Masters in Social Work.

In 2000, Harmony followed a dream to reach women still trapped in the sex industry and headed back to the Century Lounge. Now, once a month she leads groups of young Christian women to clubs across L.A., visiting more than 100 each year. They distribute gift bags and messages that testify to God’s power to create "treasures out of darkness" (Isa. 45:3). Many women in clubs have responded.

Read more about Treasures

Tatooed for Jesus

Edna, 44, is a former schoolteacher and a homeschooling mom in Texas. Recently she told me about her visits to local strip clubs. For the last five years, she's been frequenting different clubs with teams of women who hope to reach the girls there for Jesus.

Edna noticed that many girls who dance in the clubs sport tatoos. As she made small talk with them in the dressing rooms, she realized that the tatoos could open doors to talking about Jesus. Although Edna already had a small cherub tatooed to her upperback, she wanted one with a clear message about how Jesus had changed her life.

After praying about it for a year, Edna was ready for the second tatoo. On her lower back, a flowery script spelled "Forgiven." She couldn't wait to go into a club, approach a girl and tell her, "I like your tatoo. Let me show you mine."

But the next time Edna visited a club, she almost completely forgot about her tatoo. When she finally remembered and showed it to one girl, Edna told me, "she got this really blank look on her face, Like, 'What does that mean?'  I thought it was a blank look, but she was blown away.

"That girl called me weeks later and said, 'That tatoo on your back was a sign because I was raised in the church and I know what that means.' That same girl stopped dancing in the strip club."

I've never been in a strip club and I don't have any tatoos, so how could I relate to these girls? I asked Edna, "Would the right outfit help?"

"If God wants you in there, He’s picking you, know matter what," she told me. Once a grandmotherly woman accompanied her team into the clubs, which the girls loved.

"I think a lot of girls like me because I'm the mom who goes in and talks to them when their own mom doesn’t," Edna said. All of the girls she's talked to have suffered from absentee mothers. 

Do you pass any strip clubs on your daily commute? Say a prayer for the girls inside, that God sends someone to incarnate Christ's love to them. And whisper a prayer for Edna and her ministry.