Andrew Sears, executive director of TechMission — a faith-based coalition dedicated to raising levels of computer literacy among urban youth — claimed that the operator of ClubPink.com is redirecting traffic from sites that feature famous names like Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr. in their domains.
Sears, who explained that three different groups are targeted by the unscrupulous practice — children, churchgoers and blacks — said that kids are hit the hardest because all three categories often apply to them.
The World Intellectual Property Organization lists ClubPink as belonging to Philippines-based Mercedita Kyamko, who previously had been stopped by the organization from using SpikeLee.com and RobertDowneyJr.com.
In response to Kyamko’s actions, TechMission has launched SafeFamilies.org to educate parents and clergy about Internet pornography.
Bruce Wall Ministries, the organization that helped launch TechMission in 2000, is considering a national campaign to block pornographic website operators like Kyamko from using the names of civil rights leaders, according to Karen Wall, executive director of Bruce Wall Ministries and wife of the founder.
“Kids told me they had accidentally seen things,” Wall said. “At first I thought what do you mean, accidentally? And then I went to the computer myself and I saw. There are some memories that can't be erased. Using a community's heroes or something as benign as a children's website to draw kids in, to scar them and to introduce them to things most adults don't want to see, that is perverse and sick.”
The site displays graphic photos of heterosexual and homosexual sex, oral sex and bondage.
In the meantime, various black clergy have already begun spreading the word. Bill Mooney-McCoy, director of the TechMission Safe Families Initiative has taken his message to Los Angeles, where he plans to educate youth workers in faith-based organizations, while Harold Sparrow, director of the Black Ministerial Alliance, had strong words for site operators like Kyamko.
“People who lead you to pornography in this way — these are predators,” Sparrow said.
