Monday, November 15, 2010

PCA America's response to Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com regarding "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure; a Child-Lover's Code of Conduct."


November 12, 2010


Mr. Jeffrey Bezos

Founder, Chairman and CEO

Amazon.com

1200 12th Ave, Suite 1200

Seattle, WA 98144


Dear Mr. Bezos,

I am writing today on behalf of the Board and staff of Prevent Child Abuse America, our 47 state chapters and our Healthy Families America network to express our deep and profound concern that the book "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct" was recently made available on Amazon.com.

Our ability to grow and succeed as a country depends on how well we foster the health and well-being of our children. Healthy child development is the foundation of community development and our country’s overall, long term economic development.

This type of book, while obviously deplorable for its content, is more than just a disturbing piece of propaganda. It promotes the normalization of something that is destructive to children and something that negates the important investments we make in the healthy development of our children. The people who will act upon this book’s content, and the effect of their actions, can lead to significant issues in a wide array of areas including crime, substance abuse, mental health, lost productivity and even our competitiveness in the global economy. As Mission Readiness: Military Leaders for Kids as declared, denying children a healthy childhood can even compromise our national security because it impedes our ability to mobilize a stable, healthy and qualified military for generations to come.

While we appreciate your subsequent removal of the book from the site; the fact that it was even available through Amazon.com indicates an inconsistency in how the corporation approaches standards and guidelines. Many comments are restricted and filtered, but content such as this book was made available. We need to understand what corporate processes are in place to determine what is to be advertised and sold on Amazon.com and how could a culture even exist in the organization that does not continuously and without fail, ensure that all actions and products first do no harm to our nation’s children?

We would be happy to support you in creating criteria and strengthening the controls that should prohibit this type of decision from ever happening again.

Please have someone in your corporation contact me so we may work together to prevent the abuse and neglect of our nation’s children. My direct telephone number is (312) 663-3520, extension 810.

Sincerely,


James M. Hmurovich, President & CEO

Prevent Child Abuse America

3 comments:

Audrey F. said...

Thank you PCA, for stepping forward to stand up for the health and well-being of our children by expressing your concern and worry about the publication and initial availability of a book that to me may indeed be a precursor to an epidemic of sexual crimes against children. Perhaps in addition to changing the way we think about prevention, we need to change our terminology from "Pedophile" to perpetrator of sexual crimes because sexual abuse has absolutely nothing to do with "love".

Simply Amy said...

I was ready to dump my entire Amazon cart, which was filled with $300 worth of Christmas presents, until I read that they'd pulled the "book". It's sad that they even had to think about it to begin with. Free speech has its limitations. I'm all for free speech, even if it's stupid, but I draw the line at normalizing pedophilia. Good for you for speaking out.

Prevent Child Abuse America said...

Thank you both for your encouragement and your support around these issues.