**UPDATE 10/29/16 – Walmart has removed the child nudity books from their website. In just the first day of our email campaign to their executives, 2,000 emails were sent.
Washington, DC – The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has written Doug McMillon, President and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., expressing grave concerns about Wal-Mart’s sale of photo books depicting nude children and other exploitive materials both in Wal-Mart stores and on Walmart.com.
“Wal-Mart now sells a wide array of sexually explicit material including some with child nudity, as well as sexually exploitive magazines and books providing instruction on how to traffic women into the commercial sex trade,” said Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “We are shocked to discover Walmart.com sells Jock Sturges’ photography books—which display naked young girls, boys, and adolescents with frequent exhibition of the pubic regions. Such material provides toxic sexual excitement for pedophiles and others who are sexually aroused by minors.”
“We discovered these books while doing research on Walmart’s sale of Cosmopolitan magazine,” Hawkins continued. “We were encouraged that in 2015 Wal-Mart renewed its pledge to ensure Cosmopolitan magazine would be covered by blinders to prevent viewing by children. Unfortunately, since then, we have received complaints from across the country that Cosmopolitan is still for sale uncovered in Wal-Mart checkout lanes, often at eye level of children. While the material in this magazine is not hardcore pornography, it is nonetheless sexually explicit, degrading, fuels pornified culture, and is harmful to minors. We are very disappointed that Wal-Mart has not fulfilled its promise to provide safe, family-friendly, checkout aisles by shielding the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine.”
“Walmart.com is also selling books that provide instructions on how to sexually traffic persons into prostitution. Books such as Pimpology and The Pimp’s Bible provide detailed tactics for aspiring pimps on how to coerce females into the commercial sex trade through ‘psychological warfare.’ Wal-Mart wouldn’t carry books with step-by-step instructions on rape or lynching, so why is it carrying books with instructions on ‘turning out’ women into the highly exploitive and abusive commercial sex trade?”
“In light of Wal-Mart’s failure to implement and enforce its own standards, and due to the highly sexually explicit and exploitive nature of other materials it sells, we are calling on Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., to remove Cosmopolitan from its distribution in stores worldwide, to remove Jock Sturges publications and sex trafficking/pimping how-to manuals from its online store, and to undertake a comprehensive review of Walmart.com for removal of any other sexually explicit and objectifying material,” Hawkins concluded.
The public is encouraged to sign this petition asking Walmart to remove these sexually exploitive materials.
You can read the full letter by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation to Wal-Mart here. To learn more about Cosmopolitan magazine and why it’s on our 2016 Dirty Dozen list visit: https://endsexualexploitation.org/cosmo/
