Sheriffs bust author of pedophile’s ‘how-to’ guide sold on Amazon

by Peter Smith

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida, December 20, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Florida sheriffs working with Colorado law enforcement have nabbed the self-published author of a “how-to” guide for pedophiles – briefly listed on Amazon.com – that explained how they could abuse children sexually and stay under the radar of the law.

Philip Ray Greaves II, 47, the author of “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct,” was arrested in Pueblo, Colorado by local sheriffs at his home on a charge of obscenity.

The Associated Press reports that Florida and Colorado law enforcement were only able to arrest Greaves because he sent a signed copy of his outlandish book to an undercover detective working with the Polk County Sheriff’s office in Florida. Since the address was in Polk County, Sherriff Grady Judd had the jurisdiction he needed to make an arrest.

Greaves faces felony charges for violating a Florida law that forbids the distribution of obscene material showing minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors.

Sherriff Judd told the Associated Press that Greaves had written “a manifesto on how to sexually batter children.”
“You just can’t believe how absolutely disgusting it was,” he said.

Judd’s office reported that besides being a training manual for pedophiles, the book contained two graphic stories depicting an adult engaged in sex acts with children, specifically with a 9-year-old boy and with a 13-year-old boy.

ABC News reports that Greaves insisted he was not speaking from his own experiences or even advocating pedophilia in his mind. He stated that he believed an adult could “have a loving, sexual relationship with a child” – pointing to the case of Mary Kay Letourneau, a troubled 35-year-old woman who began a sexual relationship with a 13-year-old student in 1996 and had two children by him. Letourneau was released from jail in 2004, and a year later she married her male victim, Vili Fualaau, then 21 years old.

Greaves shot to infamy after the blog TechCrunch broke news of the 2010 book’s sale through Amazon.com on October 28. At first, Amazon defended the book, saying it would refuse to pull the product “simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable.”

Hours later, with national outrage spilling over the news, threats of boycott, and thousands of negative comments on its site, Amazon quietly removed the listing without comment; but not before thousands of download sales had moved “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure” from #158,221 on the list of Amazon.com’s best-selling Kindle e-books to #65, according to Gawker.

Although public advocacy groups like Concerned Women for America had called upon the US Justice Department to investigate, there was a lot of inertia on the part of law enforcement to take action.

Judd told the AP that he was outraged that no one in law enforcement seemed to be going after Greaves.

“What’s wrong with a society that has gotten to the point that we can’t arrest child pornographers and child molesters who write a book about how to rape a child?” the Florida sheriff told the AP.

Greaves is currently being held in Pueblo County jail, and will have to be extradited to Florida to face the charges.