SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Good News: Steve Crow – his porn empire shrivels

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Media Release: 11 July 2009 (updated)

No. 1 Story http://business.scoop.co.nz/2009/07/13/update-on-steve-crow-and-porn-empire-collapse/

“I’m quite happy for you to call me a pornographer [and] a sleazeball, whatever you want to call me. But keep it factual.” Steve Crow (Quoted in NZ Listener 2004).

FOUR of Steve Crow’s porn companies of which he was sole director have gone belly up. Critics of his hard-core putrid porn promotion will be crowing loudly, but creditors, including about 30 New Zealand companies, will not be. The shrivelling of his now anaemic porno empire has left him impotent he claims to recompense any of his many unsecured creditors who are owed at least $714,000. In addition his companies owe at least $323,753 to the IRD. The debt will probably increase once the final liquidator’s reports are completed.

Crow says ‘I don’t have any obligation to recompense creditors of the liquidated companies” (Dominion Post 8/07/09). On TV One’s Close Up “Porn Industry Going Bust?” – he tried to downplay the debts, saying that most of the money was owed to creditors outside New Zealand who were still acting benevolently towards him. Surrounded by busty porn stars and with his new girfriend Rachel Whitewell at his side, his message was – its business or bust!

Lloyd J. Hayward of accountants Meltzer Mason Heath is the liquidator appointed for all of his three failed companies.

The first company, Vixen Direct Ltd, an importer and distributor of hard-core porno sleaze, had its name changed by Crow on 1 May 2009 to Z4K74D Ltd (Co. No. 514464), just before the liquidator was appointed on 27 May 2009. [Read more…]

What’s behind Boobs on Bikes? By political activist John Minto

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Article from the Stuff News Archive (2009): Political activist John Minto wrote ……..

Boobs on Bikes

John Minto: 2014 Candidate -Mana Party

[Photo Source: http://yournz.org/tag/john-minto/]

Most people seem to think the Boobs on Bikes parade is tasteless and tacky but nothing to get steamed up about. Just harmless fun and a bit of titillation to warm up a cold winter perhaps.

Certainly we have plenty of people hung up about sex and nudity but the protest at the parade was not a bunch of prudes averting their eyes at the sight of silicon-implanted breasts. Instead it was a warning cry about the deep damage being done by the hard-core porn industry with Boobs on Bikes organiser Steve Crow at the heart of the problem.

[Note: The next Boobs on Bikes event has been announced as scheduled for 7 October 2015, – rescheduled says Crow – from August 2014, “To coincide with the shift in dates for the Erotica Lifestyles Expo“].

I’ve seen material pictured and quoted from some of Steve Crow’s publications which is quite depraved. For example men speaking about women in a way no reasonable people would speak about their neighbour’s dog.

Denise Ritchie of the [registered charity CC30599] group Stop Demand [Foundation] (the demand side of the sex-for-sale industry) points out that sex-related crimes against women and children do not take place in a vacuum but rather are underpinned by the hard-core porn industry. This is where for example videos of simulated rape, incest and all manner of sexual violation against women and children are produced and sold commercially.

I don’t have to buy his filth if I don’t want to but if Crow’s activities are making our community a less safe place for me and my family, and other women and children in particular then I have a right and a duty to object.

This is serious money. So is there a connection between Steve Crow’s promotion of hard-core porn and sexual violence against women? I have no doubt there is a strong, direct link. There can be no doubt that the abusive behaviour of some people is stimulated by this Crow-type pornography.

Denise Ritchie points out that two months ago a 60 year old Wanganui man was convicted for performing sexual acts on his severely handicapped wife after watching a pornographic video with two other men, one of whom he invited to “join in”. It would be only the deliberately naïve who refuse to see a connection in this case and more widely. I have no doubt that the glorification of rape on a pornographic video will reduce the seriousness of such behaviour in the minds of enough men so as to increase the risk to women generally.

To quote Ritchie once more, “our Chief Censor [Mr Bill Hastings at that time], our pornography investigators and global research are unanimous in reporting that hard core pornography, which makes up the bulk of Steve Crow’s commercial interests and profits, is increasingly cruel, misogynistic and degrading of women.” We should all be very concerned at the messages this material is sending to men.

Forget about the boobs on bikes. These are the entertaining sideshow to a porn industry which is making the country less safe for all of us.

Stephen Peter Crow promoting Erotica                             Lifestyles Expo

Steve Crow: ‘Long-standing identification’ with Boobs on Bikes parade. (Photo: Stuff News 27/04/11)

According to Stop Demand, a 2006 Treasury report estimated that sexual violence in 2003/2004 cost the New Zealand economy no less than $1.2 billion. $827 million of this is the loss of quality of life for victims, across an estimated 16,500 sex offences.

Source: What’s behind Boobs on Bikes by John Minto. Published 09/03/2009

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/blogs/frontline/1880536/What-s-behind-Boobs-on-Bikes

Note 1: Stop Demand Foundation is a registered charity (CC30599) that was registered with the Charities Commission on 30/06/2008. Its website is www.stopdemand.org  A message to men on its website states:

“Sexual violence, exploitation and denigration of women and children is overwhelmingly a men’s issue. We need men’s proactive support to stop it.”

To find out about the governance of Stop Demand go to: http://www.stopdemand.org/wawcs0153449/WHO-WE-ARE.html

Note 2: Stephen (Steve) Peter Crow has 33 criminal convictions for distributing objectionable material. Source: Sunday-Star Times 26 October 2003.

See: The People Vs. Steve Crow,” by John Landrigan, North & South (Issue 207, June, pages 82-90). “Besides the porn baby [controversy], collectively he, his ex-business partner Fiona Gibb and Vixen Direct [Ltd] faced 135 criminal charges last year. Crow pleaded guilty to 33 of the lesser charges – for the distribution of objectionable material … he still faces seven regulatory infringements to a law he does not agree with.”

Note: 3

Mr Crow had criminal convictions for distributing objectionable material and the inquiry was treated as an employment issue.

Police are told not to associate with people with a criminal history.

See full article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10392287

Landmark Court Decision on Misuse of Internet in Workplace. Dismissal by Company of Employee Upheld.

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Media Release 11 October 2008

The Society is delighted that the Employment Court in Wellington has recently issued a robust landmark decision that defends the rights of employers to enforce any company rules they have prohibiting their employees from accessing, downloading, uploading, saving, requesting, transmitting, storing or purposely viewing sexual, pornographic, obscene, racist, profane or other offensive and inappropriate material, using the workplace internet or intranet. The Court’s decision overturns a determination of the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) issued last year that was extensively covered in the media and featured in July 2007 on John Campbell’s TV3 Nightline programme.

“Employers have always had a right to dismiss employees who breach company policies relating to conduct in the workplace,” says Society Executive Director David Lane. “However, this Court decision, Arthur D Riley & Co Limited v Jessica Sharon Wood (WC 18/08; WRC 25/07) issued by Judge CM Shaw on 8 October 2008, underlines in case law, for the first time I am aware of, the rights of employers to tie their company policies to their own community/workplace standards in relation to objectonable/pornographic or offensive content, without relying on the liberal and flaky definition of what constitutes offensive and obscene content issued regularly by the Chief Censor’s Office – the so-called enlightened  ‘objective view’. Of course companies must set out fair and reasonable procedures that allow an employer to effectively deal with breaches of conduct in the use of the internet, clearly define inappropriate content and notify and warn employees of the consequences of all misconduct.”

Employment Court Judge Coral M Shaw has overturned an earlier determination that was issued by the Employment Relations Authority (ERA) that upheld a wrongful dismissal claim by a Wellington woman Miss Jessica Sharon Wood against her employer Arthur D Riley & Co Lts (ADR). The substantial financial compensation awarded her by the ERA, made against ADR, has now been negated by the Employment Court which has ruled that all of it (paid in full by ADR into the Court, pending appeal result) – 75% of her lost wages from 18 September 2006 to January 2007 and $9,000 damages for humiliation – must be returned with interest to the plaintiff (ADR). The Court has reversed the decision of the ERA by now reserving costs in favour of the plaintiff, which has 28 days from the date of the Court’s decision, 8 October, to submit its claims against Miss Wood.

The Society Director David Lane praises Mr Garth Mickell, Director of a private electricity and water metering business, Arthur D Riley & Co Ltd (ADR), the plaintiff, for challenging the appallingly incompetent and flawed decision issued last year by Mr Denis Asher of the ERA.

In an email dated 10 October Mickell wrote to the Society:

“First thank you for your support, and advise. Attached for your reference is the employment court determination. We are thankful that commonsense has prevailed, and there is now the ability of places of work to be able to determine their level of  morality and ethics, without influence from central government.”

To reiterate: employers now have a right, recognised by the Employment Court, to enforce company policy relating to what they consider constitutes objectionable/pornographic or offensive content without having to get an “objective” determination from the Chief Censor’s Office. Employers can also determine what constitutes “serious misconduct” relating to such material without having to have the liberal Chief Censor’s Office effectively negate the fair and reasonable community standards they seek to uphold in the workplace.

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Praise for Censor’s Ban on “Cradle of Filth” T-shirt

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SPCS Press Release 1 July 2008

John Mills, President of the Society for Promotion of Community Standards Inc, (SPCS) has hailed as “bold, morally courageous and legally sound”, the classification decision issued to him today by the Chief Censor’s Office, that permanently bans a T-shirt he argued was “grossly objectionable due to its obscene content” and “completely vilifies the central figure of Christianity”. The Censor’s Office agreed with Mr Mills, an elder at the Kapiti Christian Centre, that the T-shirt, worn and flaunted in a large public gathering on the Kapiti Coast and a part-image (censored) of which was published in the Kapiti Observer newspaper, should be classified “objectionable”.

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Detrimental impact of hardcore pornography on young people

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LIVES CHANGED: The accessability of hardcore pornography is having a detrimental impact on the lives of young people in remote Australian towns and is seen as central to a sexual assault in Maningrida, east of Darwin.

AAP Friday, 21 December 2007

Posted: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4332725a12.html

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