The city of Berlin has prompted outrage from locals after offering a graphic picture book on prostitution to children via its official website. The book, titled Rosie Needs Money (Rosi sucht Geld), is advertised as a resource for youth aged 6 to 12 years old.
According to Equal Opportunities Officer Kerstin Drobick, the book is a “helpful tool” for explaining prostitution to children of families residing in a red-light district of Berlin, located in Kurfürstenkiez, known as Kurfürstenstraße.
Rosie Needs Money is written from the perspective of a child named Maryam, whose family relocated to Germany from Syria.
Maryam narrates as she and her equally-young schoolmate, Martin, look for Rosie, a woman from Bulgaria who is in the sex trade. Maryam says that her mother told her that Rosie is often “looking for money” in the street. Rosie is described as having many friends who are also migrant women from Bulgaria, Romania, Russia, and Lithuania.
The book also explains that Rosie gives condoms to the men which they “put over their penises for sex.” This is done to prevent pregnancy and as “protection against disease,” a statement that is accompanied by a disturbing child-like drawing of a smiling penis with a pink condom on it.
Martin then appears to reference pornography, saying: “It’s different from mom and dad. Mom makes love to dad, but Rosie’s men don’t make love, they make sex like on TV.”
Bizarrely, the book concludes with quotes from children and young people who live in areas where street prostitution takes place. Most of the sentiment is overwhelmingly negative, and presented as examples of attitudes towards prostitution in youth which require discussion.
Speaking to Reduxx, Elly Arrow, a German advocate for the abolition of the sex industry, calls the whole book “schizophrenic,” noting that the children quoted in the book clearly don’t want to see the industry normalized.
“The brochure is unbelievably irresponsible. It is right to teach kids to not disrespect women in street prostitution but the brochure makes it out that these women could become a child’s friends! Due to a language barrier and the presence of sex buyers and pimps this is implausible and dangerous. Kids in the latter part of the brochure even state the whole situation makes them afraid but the brochure tries to actively remove that fear,” Arrow told Reduxx.
Source: GERMANY: Pro-Prostitution Picture Book Offered To Children By Government Officials – Reduxx
How lovely. I hope it has a nice part about Rosie’s caring pimp daddy who supplies her heroin and methamphetamines so she can make more money to celebrate her life with her many friends…
Isn’t it denigrating, racist and discriminating towards females from those countries? I see a danger that it programmes kids to associate women from the named geographic areas to be prone to that way of making money. And I find it misogynist as it refers to a woman doing that for money. How about addressing that other genders also do such things for money?