I joined them at the table in the restaurant. They were fashionably dressed and wore lots of make-up. One was on the skinny side, the other more chunky, both pretty. They were definitely nervous but were trying hard to look relaxed. Divine and Arlette, 21 and 22 years old respectively.

Their mechanical smiles broke my heart. I sat down and introduced myself. I told them how I wanted them to have the night off. They could order whatever they wanted, enjoy a hot shower, and then have a night of deep rest. The only rule was not to solicit any of the hotel guests. I would be back in the morning to pay them, and after breakfast together, they could go.

I lay in bed that night next to my wife and couldn’t stop thinking about Divine and Arlette, and of the thousands of women within a few miles of us who right at that moment would be enduring some random customer having sex with them. I hate the sex trade with a passion, in no small part because I have a mother, a sister, a wife, a daughter, and each one of them would probably have ended up doing the same thing had they been dealt the same hand in life as Divine and Arlette, and countless others.

Morning came and we met over breakfast. I’d kept the previous night’s conversation short because they would obviously have found it totally weird and been full of distrust. But at least now their guards were somewhat down. I didn’t want to probe too much, and told them they didn’t have to answer any of my questions if they didn’t want to. I said I thought that as little girls they didn’t dream that one day they’d grow up to be prostitutes. Sometimes terrible things happen in life, and you’re forced into difficult choices. But maybe things could change – if they wanted to.

Read the whole thing, because my comments have spoilers!

This part deserves a comment:

I asked them what their dreams were. They said they wanted to run a small business, or maybe go into marketing. I told them we had prayed that God would lead Cossette to the right ladies to help. Of the thousands of prostitutes out there, she’d come across the two of them. Maybe it was a coincidence, or maybe God was in it. I imagined out loud how, if they made good choices from now on, that in ten years – who knows – they could be running a healthy business at the market, happily married with a few kids. Divine’s eyes lit up at the thought. Dared she believe…?

I think it’s an excellent idea to listen to the stories of people who have made mistakes in their lives, to see if they are at the point where they are willing to listen to an alternative and talk about it. I actually worry that he could get into trouble, but I think he did this in a very careful way, with witnesses. Another part I liked is that he sat down and made a financial plan with them to figure out how they were going to move forward.

I think this BBC story is a useful foil. It talks about rape in India, where poor women are devalued.

It says:

One of the men I interviewed, Gaurav, had raped a five-year-old girl. I spent three hours filming his interview as he recounted in explicit detail how he had muffled her screams with his big hand.

He was sitting throughout the interview and had a half-smile playing on his lips throughout – his nervousness in the presence of a camera, perhaps. At one point I asked him to tell me how tall she was. He stood up, and with his eerie half-smile indicated a height around his knees.

When I asked him how he could cross the line from imagining what he wanted to do, to actually doing it – given her height, her eyes, her screams – he looked at me as though I was crazy for even asking the question and said: “She was beggar girl. Her life was of no value.”

No Christian could ever say those things or act like that. Christianity teaches that everyone was made to know God and has value because they are made in God’s image, and for that special purpose. No one is too unimportant to achieve that purpose – everyone has equal value with respect to that purpose. Christians take seriously the obligation not to act towards another person in any way that would dissuade them from that intended relationship with God.