Closer to Home

I am very disturbed right now.  Grace and I just went to pick up Jose from school.  Jose's school is about a ten minute walk from our place.  We don't have a car, and thus we walk him to school and back everyday.  We walk the same path.  This afternoon, I saw something that I've never seen before on this short walk.  Let me also say that we don't live in a bad area of town. 

We picked up Jose and played at his school playground for about an hour with all of the other kids.  Then we started for home. We were about a block away from his school, approaching a main, busy street.  Up ahead of us I saw a young woman standing there, which is a strange place to just stand there for no reason. I thought to myself, why is she standing there? We came up to where she was; I checked her out, and she looked about 27 years old, kinda pretty, really like any average woman you might see on the street.  Dressed normally.

Then as we continued walking, my eyes went directly to the apartment window above the vincinity of where she was standing.  There looking right out the window, making eye contact with me, was a man.  A very big man.  He was wearing a bright blue shirt, like the kind that a surgeon would wear.  He had grey hair with tanned skin.  He looked about sixty.  And he was not smiling. He looked like stone.  He looked like a big, Russian man clothed in a shirt that didn't fit his occupation.  He looked like the kind of man you might imagine would be in the mafia and would have no problem killing somebody.  Odd.  Why was he standing in the window like that?  What was he doing?

Then we kept walking and in the doorway of the apartment was an older woman, just standing there, with her eyes on the younger woman.  This woman was about sixty years old, not attractive.  Neither of these women looked happy. 

All of my observations happened in seconds as obviously I was walking with the kids, and taking all of this in at the same time.  As I passed the second woman, it all clicked:

These women are being prostituted by the man in the window. 

That's why he had the bright shirt on--he wanted to purposely be noticed by whoever walked by.  Then I realized that the younger woman had been wearing a money pouch around her waist-- the money pouch is the 'uniform' that the girls wear on the streets.  Most don't dress like you'd think they might--they dress in regular shirts and jeans--but all have the money pouch.  I would guess that the older woman was working, too, but she also could have been out there keeping her eye on the prize. 

As all of this came into clear focus for me, I was shocked.  I expect to see this type of thing in the red light districts, but not here, and especially not with my two children.  And also, in my limited experience, even in the red light districts, I have never seen a man like this letting whoever walking by know she is mine.

I turned around to make sure I really just saw what I saw, and the younger woman looked straight at me.  I felt bad looking at her, as if she knew that I had just realized what she was doing. I wished I could have yelled to her, "Come with us! Let us help you.  You don't have to do this."  But it was obviously NOT the time to reach out to her. Or to the other woman.  God is a God of timing in this type of ministry, and you don't go and do stupid things on a whim. 

I am so disturbed. 

This is in our own neighborhood.

And what I am supposed to do?

Call the police?

Prostitution
is
LEGAL
in
Germany.

It's actually considered a real profession.

Who's to blame for what the kids and I saw today?

The women?

The man in the window?

The men who will purchase their services who supply the demand for this work?

Or is the German government to blame for allowing this type of slavery to exist as a form of work?

But then again, no,
it's her choice to do this work.

Right?

Disturbing.