Florida Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
After defending sales of a self-published book on pedophilia, online retail giant Amazon last night reversed course and pulled the book from its Kindle store.
The electronic book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover’s Code of Conduct,” by Philip R. Greaves II, went on sale on Oct. 28 and cost $4.79 to download.
“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,” the author wrote in the product description. “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,” Greaves said in the product description.
The book quickly sparked a massive protest online, with thousands of Twitter users and Amazon customers calling for Amazon to remove the book, and some threatening to boycott the company altogether until it did.
Amazon did not respond to multiple requests for comment from ABCNews.com, but in a statement Wednesday, the company defended the book’s place in its online store.
AUTHOR OF THE BOOK SAID HE IS NOT ENCOURAGING PEDOPHILIA
“Let me assure you that Amazon.com does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts; we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions,” Amazon told the technology blog TechCrunch. “Amazon.com believes it is censorship not to sell certain titles because we believe their message is objectionable.”
But it seems that Amazon has since changed its mind and is no longer selling the book online. Now, when you search for the book in the Amazon store, it still appears in search results, but when you actually click on the icon for the book, you see an error message.
“We’re sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site,” the message said.
When ABCNews.com spoke to the book’s author Wednesday afternoon, Greaves said he had sold just one copy of the book. But according to TechCrunch, sales of the book skyrocketed after news of its controversy spread across the Internet.
Before Amazon pulled the book, it apparently shot to #96 on Amazon’s Top 100 list. (As of this morning, it no longer appears on the bestseller list.)
Greaves, author of the book, said he was aware of the “stinging accusations” online, but argued that his critics are misunderstanding the point of his book.
Author: Book on Pedophilia Not Written From Personal Experience
“They’re accusing me of wanting to hurt children. They’re accusing me of encouraging pedophilia and all these other things. But that’s not why I wrote the book,” the 47-year-old from Pueblo, Colo., said.
“I wrote the book to establish guidelines so that people would behave in a manner that is non-injurious to each other, for one, and, for two, to communicate the fact that these people who are so different in maturation, etc., that when they develop relationships, they use certain principles that regular people, adults, would be well to attend.”
Greaves, who was a nurse’s aide until he retired because of a disability, said he was not encouraging pedophilia through his book, but, pointing to the case of Mary Kay Letourneau, the Washington state teacher who had an affair with her student, said he believed it was possible “to have a loving, sexual relationship with a child.”
While the book was written from the perspective of an adult, he emphasized that he was not speaking from personal experience as a pedophile.
“The only personal perspective it was written from was that I was introduced to sex at the age of 7 by a 10-year-old girl. It was oral sex. And I carried on through that having that kind of sex with children until I was about 15,” he said. “And everybody involved enjoyed it.”
Author Said He Wanted ‘That Kind of Notoriety
When asked why he wrote a “code of conduct” that appears to endorse an illegal, abusive act, he said, “I’m not saying I want them around children; I’m saying if they’re there that’s how I want them to behavior.”
Still, Greaves said he understood why hundreds of people on Amazon alone have posted messages condemning him and his book.
“I can see where they would come to that kind of conclusion and to a certain extent I wanted that kind of notoriety to affect the book. … I wanted it to effect sales,” he said.
When ABCNews.com spoke with Greaves Wednesday, he said he had sold just one copy.
“It hasn’t increased sales; it just has a lot of negative responses coming in,” he said.
Before Amazon removed the book from its store, more than 3,000 customers left comments on Amazon’s site, most protesting the controversial book.
“As a mother of a child who has been molested, shame on Amazon for allowing such garbage to be sold on its site,” wrote “thirtysomething.”
“The author of this book is a predator and should never have been allowed to write or promote this trash that is called a book of information. How many children will be assaulted because of this? Amazon–take it off your site.”