Victim's Advocate Says Amazon.com Profits from Child Molesters
by Rusty Pugh
December 30, 2003
(AgapePress) - A group whose purpose is to protect children from neglect and abuse wants people to know, even though it's technically not illegal, that Amazon.com is continuing to profit from customers who sexually abuse children.
Jim Hughes, director of Survivors and Victims Empowered (SAVE), says the Internet-based retailer of books and other products known as Amazon.com has a well-documented history of catering to pedophiles through books sales and links to the North American Man-Boy Love Association.
NAMBLA is a homosexual organization that advocates the abolishment of age-of-consent laws and all other legal restrictions that prevent adult men and young boys from becoming sexual partners. According to Hughes, the group -- while morally far out of bounds -- walks a fine line of legality which stops short of "technically advocating illegal sexual activity," purportedly engaging in political advocacy, education, and building understanding and support for man/boy sexual relationships.
"What it's saying is that the activity shouldn't be illegal," Hughes says, "and it's a fine difference, but it is a difference as a matter of law and it's a difference as to whether or not they can be prosecuted."
Hughes explains that at one time Amazon.com made the NAMBLA bulletin available to the website's visitors. The director of SAVE suspects that the reason the company stopped carrying the bulletin is because it was offered as a membership benefit.
"The way you got the NAMBLA bulletin was by joining the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which is something as recently as September and October that you could do through the Amazon.com website," Hughes says.
While neither what Amazon nor NAMBLA is doing can technically be called a crime, Hughes feels the Amazon-NAMBLA financial connection is reason enough for Christians to boycott the company. The victims' advocate says it is unthinkable that anyone would want to shop on a website that caters to people who are predatory child molesters.
