Parents Sue Library Group Over Graphic Online Porn In Schools

thenewamerican.com

A group of Colorado parents has sued a state library group for allegedly allowing the distribution of pornography to school children. The parents claim that the Colorado Library Consortium is facilitating the access of unfiltered online pornography through the library group’s relationship with EBSCO, a nationwide corporation that provides educational databases to schools. EBSCO is also named in the lawsuit, filed on behalf of the parents by the Thomas More Society, a faith-based legal advocacy group.

The parents’ group, calling itself Pornography is Not Education, says that the EBSCO databases used by the library consortium “contain erotic and BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadomasochism) stories that could be located through innocent searches by kids and their parents,” reported the Denver Post...

Matt Heffron, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, said that the suit his group has filed on behalf of the parents group “is about two things: protecting children and calling out corporate deceit.” Explained Heffron: “EBSCO gets schools to purchase databases by falsely promising the databases are age-appropriate and specifically tailored for elementary, middle, and high school children.”

While EBSCO and the library consortium insist that the databases are safe, the parents charge that they are actually riddled with graphic pornography that is easily accessible to children. Furthermore, the lawsuit charges, both EBSCO and the Colorado Library Consortium are aware of the problem...

According to the lawsuit, among the pornography discovered on the EBSCO school databases used by the Colorado Library Consortium:

– A “summer reading list” for children that included many pornographic “bondage, discipline, sadomasochism” (BDSM) stories, which students could locate using the search term “romance.”

– An EBSCO database marketed to school children that contained a full-text e-book entitled Pornography in America: A Reference Handbook. That e-book included live links to a company hosting video pornography and promoting the pornography industry.

– Hyperlinks to websites themed on “lust,” “bondage,” “sex toys,” and other inappropriate subjects accessed using such search terms such as “robotics,” “girl’s stories,” “boy stories,” “grade 7 biology,” and “respiration.”

– More than 100 instances of advertising for a specific large-scale “sex toy” store.