|
CRISIS
Public Perversion: The X-Rated Library Invasion
By Paul Strand
Washington Correspondent
Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act two years ago to force libraries to filter out Internet porn sites.
CBN.com – MULTNOMAH COUNTY, Oregon — The Internet has brought the whole world right inside almost every public library in the country. It has been a tremendous blessing. But it is also brought dangers, like Internet pornography, from the so-called soft-core stuff all the way to the hard-core.
That has made libraries the center of a new battle: uncensored access to information versus parents' right to protect their kids. CBN News traveled to one of
the hottest battlefields in this debate, the Pacific Northwest, to get the story.
You might imagine librarians would be aghast at the idea of kids confronting porn or porn-addicted molesters inside the library walls. But at least a couple of
librarians have sided with the ACLU and porn industry against government efforts to keep X-rated raunch out of public libraries.
The Pacific Northwest is known as a particularly left-leaning part of the country. But what has been going on involving cyber-porn and the libraries here in
Multnomah County, Oregon, and across the river in Clark County, Washington, may even offend the sensibilities of normally liberal Northwesterners.
Congress passed the Children's Internet Protection Act two years ago to force libraries to filter out Internet porn sites.
Lawmakers were shocked into acting because of horror stories they were hearing from moms like Suzanne Brownlow, a Portland-area woman who encountered a disturbing
scene with her children in the kids' section of her local library.
"I could hear some heavy giggling and I knew it wasn't children, and I looked, and there were three men laughing, and I looked to see, 'What are they
doing on that computer?' I mean, this is the children's computer. And they were sitting on the little children's stools, and I looked...it was pornography," Brownlow said.
Other stories were told to CBN News by some women who live in or around Vancouver, Washington, across the Columbia River from Portland.
"There was a little old lady friend that I knew whose granddaughter had been exposed to pornography and people using it right next to her in the
library," said Cindy Benjamin of Battle Ground, Washington.
So Benjamin decided to go to a public meeting to complain about the porn problem. "My 11-year-old daughter wanted to know if she could come along, and I said,
'No, not this time because they're going to be discussing at the board meeting, ya know, stuff that people are seeing on the Internet that's not good.’ And she said, 'Oh, well I
remember not too long ago when we were at the library, I saw a man and he was looking at pictures of naked women. Do you mean like that?'"
Margaret Tweet of Camas, Washington, said, "I was walking into the library on this walkway here that goes around. There were some boys with a pornographic
printout tossing it over this ledge to some girls. I would estimate they were 10 to 12 years old."
She continued, "The girls seemed really embarrassed. They kinda giggled nervously and tossed it back. Well, it landed on the ground here like this at my
feet… face up, and it was hard-core pornography. It was very embarrassing. It was lesbian acts of women...sexual acts of lesbian women. It was very mortifying to me as a mother," she said,
choking up.
So all these moms were really irked when they found out two top library officials from Multnomah County and Vancouver testified this spring in a lawsuit AGAINST
the Children's Internet Protection Act.
The judges in that case ended up striking down the Act, declaring its order for libraries to slap filters on the Internet is unconstitutional. The American Library
Association says there was good reason, because filters both over- and under-filter.
Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s Washington office, said, "When I say under-filter, that means it lets through
objectionable material. So if a parent is depending on a filter, their child is going to be exposed to the objectionable material that they think is being filtered out."
Bruce Ziegman, executive director of the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District ,said, "Now no one would object to filtering illegal material. But there are
no filters available that can only recognize illegal material. So, in order to accomplish it, we would have to install a filter that would filter far more broadly than just filtering out illegal
material."
The Fort Vancouver system does offer parents an option to filter their own kids' Internet access.
Ziegman said, "A parent can come in, set their children up...or themselves...for filtered access, unfiltered access or no access at all. And then we have it
passworded so that that access level is locked in."
Fort Vancouver libraries no longer let unaccompanied children under age 13 have unfiltered access to the Internet. But teenagers can still get a library card on
their own. Tweet said, "This card could give them complete access to the unfiltered Internet, including hard-core or even child pornography."
And in Multnomah County, parents who want filtering for their kids have to ask for it over and over again. Janice Dysinger said, "You have to physically go in
and choose 'yes for the filtered material' each time the child accesses the information, no matter how old they are."
But there is another major reason these women want their libraries to filter out all the porn: because of what adult patrons are doing after viewing the X-rated
material.
Benjamin explained, "There have been reports about people masturbating right there at the terminals right with children right next to them."
Brownlow said, "It attracts predators. Sexual predators will come into the library, around our children. And it concerns us. I mean...that's what a
mother's duty is to protect her children...and..." She began to cry, unable to finish what she had to say.
Benjamin said, "I will not now let my sons, even a 13-year-old, go in and use the men's restroom, because they have incident-reports of men going in
there, and I hate to say the M-word, but, ya know after they've looked at all this pornography and stuff."
Shelley Farny is a mother who is worried about her friends' kids running around in an X-rated world. She remembers the pain when her daughter became a victim
of just soft-core pornography.
"She was molested as a young child by another child who was exposed to what they call 'common pornography,' and also an adult addicted to pornography.
So I have witnessed the devastating and pervasive effects," Farny said. "There is plenty of evidence that shows a link between pornography and sexual assault."
But Sheketoff says these incidents are very rare in public libraries. "We are on the lookout for that, but we have not found it to be an overwhelming
problem," she said.
Still, a Family Research Council study showed, in just the year 2000, 106 reported cases of adults in public libraries exposing kids to porn, and five reported
incidents of adults attempting to molest children in libraries.
The moms are sad and angry about this X-rated invasion of formerly family-friendly libraries. Janice Dysinger even cut up her library card, not just over
cyber-porn in her local library, but also because it had gay newspapers easily accessible to kids, and condom dispensers in the boys' room.
Dysinger said, "I don't go there. This is the first time I've been back here in five years."
Brownlow said, "I mean, who would take their child into a porn shop?"
Sheketoff says the moms are fooling themselves if they think libraries can filter out these problems with filters. And she says the federal government has no
business trying to force filters on local libraries.
"Those citizens in those towns know what's best for their town, and they should be free to make the decisions of how they want their libraries to be
run," Sheketoff said.
But Farny says it doesn't feel like the local people's library, but the ACLU's. "It should be our library. We are the people who fund it. We are
the people who should be able to come and have a comfortable time and a safe time with our families, and know that the people next to us are not going to be violating our rights," she said.
Brownlow agreed, "And we should not be funding this. I mean, it'd be like, I would be funding a porn shop going up in my neighborhood."
The Justice Department has appealed the decision striking down the Children's Internet Protection Act. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely take up that appeal
in its next session.
But in most past cases, the high court has voted against any limits on the Internet.
While the Supreme Court debates whether or not to do anything about internet porn in public libraries, new research has been published which shows pornography may
be as addictive as drugs.
Researcher Mark Kastleman claims viewing porn releases certain chemicals in the body which produce a high-like cocaine and alcohol.
Kastleman also warns internet porn is even more dangerous than printed porn because one can access it so easily and anonymously.
Ninety-five million Americans now visit cyber-porn sites every month, and the number is growing all the time.
.
|
