*Trigger Warning - rape, incest, sexual assault. Content may be distressing and NSFW*
It has been widely reported that global retailers Amazon, Barnes and Noble and WH Smith have been selling rape, incest and abuse themed e-books.
Amazon, WHSmith Selling Rape And Incest Porn
Amazon is making money from rape and incest fantasies. Does Jeff Bezos have a moral compass?
Earlier this year we wrote about how Australia based Bookworld – formerly known as Borders – had been selling multiple titles eroticising rape and incest. One of our supporters had brought this to our attention after seeing the title "Tina sits on Daddy's face" while perusing the website.
After searching the website more thoroughly, we found hundreds of titles under the heading ‘incest.' While some were psychological books intended to educate people about the issue or promote healing for those affected, many of the titles were classified as "Erotic Fiction" with fantasy stories of child abuse, incest and rape.
Caitlin Roper, our State Coordinator for Western Australia, wrote to the Classifications Branch of the Attorney-General’s department to inquire as to why novels promoting intra-familial child sexual abuse - a serious crime - were available at Bookworld. The department responded by saying Bookworld had agreed to remove the titles. You can view the correspondence here.
At that time, Bookworld also responded directly in a comment on Melinda Tankard Reist's website:
We receive automatic feeds from our suppliers of over 20 million different products. As we have to take their entire feed this can be, at times, difficult to monitor in regards to the content of every single title. As soon as we were notified about this issue from the Classifications board we took steps to delist these titles from our site. Please be assured that we have in no way actively promoted or marketed these books and do not want to sell them on our site.
Eight months later, we find that Bookworld is still listing titles such as "Daddy forces himself on his little teen daughter."
It doesn't appear that Bookworld has taken this issue seriously enough. Bookworld had claimed the titles were "difficult to monitor." Have they tried entering the word "incest" or "rape porn" into their own search bar? If the results look something like this... (click to enlarge)
... then it might be time to follow WH Smith's lead and take down the website.
WH Smith takes website offline after porn e-book scandal
Bookworld has known about this problem for 8 months. Whatever steps they said they would take have not been adequate. Anything less than zero tolerance to eroticising child abuse, incest and rape is unacceptable.
Click here for examples of what titles have appeared on Bookworld's website (content warning)
Following our recent posts about this on Facebook and Twitter, Bookworld published this response on Twitter:
Thanks for bringing these specific titles to our attention. We are as concerned about having these titles on our site as you are. We have been working with our supplier to find a way to permanently remove these books from our site and are about to launch a new partnership with them which will ensure that this happens. As a temporary measure we have been manually delisting them from the site regularly and taking them off sale. We have delisted a range of titles that have been brought to our attention today and will be stepping up our regular searches until the new launch to ensure we don’t have a similar circumstance in the future.
Sounds promising, but also very similar to what was said in February, which again, was eight months ago.
Take Action!
Share this article with friends and networks to let them know why you will not shop at Bookworld.
Let Bookworld know that you will not shop with them while they list titles eroticising incest, rape and abuse.
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