Answer 2:
Sorry, I re-read your question! If someone has a protected account and you see "Request to follow" then you know you've been approved when you started seeing their tweets in your timeline or you go to their Twitter profile and you can see their tweets. The protected user does have to manually approve those who views their Tweets. I haven't been able to find out if the button changes if they don't approve you. Try it again and see what happens.