Ignorance Is Bliss: The Women of the Streets

The other night, I had dinner with some urbanite friends (for non-Cedarvillians... other students who have/are taking Intro to Urban Ministry here at CU). The instructions for the dinner were simple - reflect on a video we had watched in class that day about prostituation and trafficking of young girls in our nation's capital, Washington D.C. To provide the most basic background and clear up many inaccurate assumptions made by many Americans, I will tell you that most prostitutes are not women hitting the streets on their own accord to make a pretty penny after hours. Even if a woman's journey begins this way, she will quickly become prey to the streets. She will become the property of a pimp. Pimps do not stay holed up in their houses and wait for their girls to come home; many prowl the streets in order to keep one eye on their girls and the other on new "prospects for the business." If you drive down the track (a term referring to a block known specifically for prostitution) in downtown Washington, D.C. during the early morning hours (by the way, the D.C. track is located only six blocks from the White House), you will see the women working. Sporting short skirts and high heels, you can watch them approach a car and often get inside a few moments later. "Dirty prostitutes," you might think. Think again. There are rules for this game, and the women do not make them.

If you stay just a little longer and look just a little closer, you will realize that much more is taking place on this block than meets the eye. The parked cars along the street are all occupied, either by pimps watching their girls or by Johns "window shopping" for their next buy. You may notice that the women choose to walk on the street rather than the sidewalk. This is one of the rules of the game; if a pimp is close by, the women are not permitted to walk on the sidewalk. They are forced into the street, giving them nowhere to hide if an danger (or a police car) happens upon them. If you look a little closer at the women, you will notice girls hidden among them. Girls, a few as young as eleven or twelve years old, don sparkly pants and heavy makeup and "work." Would you say that they work the streets by choice? No. They started off wanting someone to love them and protect them, and a pimp manipulated them into their current circumstance. So let me ask you; what do you think of these women now?

Back to the dinner table. The question on our minds was, "How can the church help?" An obvious precursory question was, "Why isn't the church helping already?" Is it because we have become too afraid that "those sinners" will "pull us down to their level"? Since we have the Holy Spirit (the ultimate victor) guiding our choices, this argument becomes invalid. What about "We just didn't know"? I would sincerely like to question Why not?? Why is the church not readily involved in rescuing these women? Why are we not leading the charge in saving these girls from a life of exploitation and abuse? At the risk of either rambling and losing your attention, or asking too many questions and making you feel guilty, I'll move on. But realize that this issue (and others like it) are not just going to go away. And when we face the God of the Heavens on judgment day, I would be ashamed to say, "I'm sorry, Lord. I just didn't know."