Florida officials filed an obscenity charge Monday against the author of a self-published how-to guide for pedophiles that was yanked from Amazon.com last month after it generated online outrage.Colorado authorities arrested Philip Ray Greaves II at his home in Pueblo, Colo., on a Florida warrant that charges him with violating Florida's obscenity law.
Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said his office was able to arrest Greaves on Florida charges because Greaves sold and mailed his book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct," directly to undercover Polk deputies. Judd says Greaves even signed the book.
"He very proudly sold us his personal copy," Judd told the Associated Press. "I was outraged by the content. It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children ... You just can't believe how absolutely disgusting it was."
This is the same guy who Amazon momentarily defended and then almost immediately dropped. I'm really not pleased to be in the position of defending this guy, but I think it's really important to point out that nobody is actually accusing Greaves of actually touching a child. There are support groups for pedophiles who are attracted to children but don't want to act on their impulses because they know they're wrong; should the cops just storm those meetings and then throw all the attendees in jail forever? Of course, Florida has a long history of jailing people for obscenity.
