Recently there was a lot of blow-up and anger at Amazon.com over the sales of “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure,” an electronic book written and published by Phillip R. Greaves (various news).
The book itself was unimaginable in the eyes of anyone who cares about the welfare of children and seeking their protection from child predators, especially those who work tirelessly daily to locate and protect child victims. One only needs to read the product description to know the book is crossing a very narrow gray line between freedom of speech and the violation of children’s rights;
This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certain rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter [sic] sentences should they ever be caught.
Reading that description sends shivers down my spine, especially the line which includes, “…safer for those juveniles…”, a book to instruct pedophiles on how to act will not make it safer for children, but give predators and traffickers more insight on how to cover-up their crimes.
What was most shocking was the books that the book literally gives instructions on how to rape and molest children; an essential how to guide for any pedophile or child sex trafficker’s dream come true. The books attempt was to make pedophile situations “safer”…which is an utter nonsense…child porn, abuse, and molestation harms children regardless of how it is conducted. Therefore listing rules for pedophiles to follow is just insane as the only rules are ones that protect children and all adults should just follow the rule that children should never be placed in any situation of sexualization or engage in sexual activity. My opinion on the matter is that the book is simply one that influences pedophiles and assists them in covering up their crimes and thus while free speech may seem like its being violated, that the fact that children’s safety is clearly at risk with this publication then children’s rights triumph.
Amazon has already received hundreds of angry comments on the book asking that it be taken down immediately. Their origional response was that they felt to remove the book from the would equal censorship. Amazon.com did stop selling the book thanks to a great deal of public outcry, but the debate continued (NBC). However the whole situation had many questioning the lines between free speech and a violation of children’s rights. I have addressed similar moral dilemmas in the past such as, Virtual Child Porn.
When it comes to issues of children’s rights there is no debate as to the fact that children should not be abused either physically or sexually. Therefore when the debates do arise, they are mostly on the fact that we seem to be doing little as an international community to stop the continuous and often blatant human rights violations against children. Other debates rage on in regards to funding, legislation, and other related issues which seem to sit more at a political level than a human level.
The issue of child porn and pedophilia are sensitive ones, in the case of child porn (this includes just the action of one photo being taken) for its victims are never allowed to escape their abusers, as their abuse continues indefinitely, once circulated. While the persecution of pedophiles and the efforts of law enforcement have increased, so has the difficulty to catch these offenders and find their innocent victims.
Sadly while this case appears to be closed with Amazon.com, there are others now under scrutiny and more to come.
