“Richard Head” writes “From NewsMax:
“The next time the taxpayer-supported members of the American Library Association rail against anti-porn filters on taxpayer-supplied Internet service, consider the little Philadelphia girl who went to her library to learn and instead got a vicious lesson from a pedophile rapist who loves library porn.”
Full Story“
Other articles at Philly.com, Inquirer , and PhillyNews.
rec center
So was there Internet computers at the rec center where his previous attack took place? If not, then there’s probably no connection between what he saw on the computers and his behavior. Clearly, he’s a menace whether he had access to a library computer or not.
Libraries and porn…
I’ve worked for my library for a lotta years now and have watched the system go from simple dumb terminals to thins with high speed Internet access. I don’t know how it is at other libraries, but even before we got our Internet computers, we had pedophiles and perverts. I had to chase a couple out of the building and call the police more than once because they were stalking our patrons/pages/employees/all the above. Perverts in the library are nothing new and the best you can do is keep an eye on the worthless scum.
My worst nightmare is someone molesting or assaulting our pages. I’ve got a couple pages, one who’s been with me for years, who are very attractive young ladies. If anything happened to them, I don’t know what I’d do. So porn on the Net be damned, you know most of your pervs and pedos. Keep an eye on them.
Re:Libraries and porn…
Agreeing with GWD. “Porn” is different things to different people. We find Cosmo, Seventeen, men’s body building and art books, and any other number of titles and copied images in the men’s bathroom on a regular basis, no doubt used for recreational purposes. We had a serial wanker last summer, fueling his activity with photocopied pages from a woman’s magazine. We found a rod from a card catalog smeared with poop in the bathroom. We have had an assault against a child in our library, and it was well before anyone had heard of a public access workstation. Creeps are creeps and will find any motivation to carry out their criminal (and simply messy) perversions. The assault against this girl happened in a library that took care to make sure things like this didn’t happen. Obviously, the accused had figured out the system, and was very calculated in committing his crime. When caught, he pointed to dirty pictures. This guy is just a sick bastard and would have committed this crime (any maybe has before) regardless of whether or not he had accessed obscene material in the library.
Wrong wing hysteria
This article is fairly typical of the hysteric.
First off: not all pedophiles are child molesters and not all child molesters are pedophiles.
Secondly: there is no such thing as “library porn”. Unless maybe you count the stuff available through the links at Jessamyn’s site. Categorizing pornography by a title that does not fit it is like complaining about hand-gun crime as if it were somehow separate from the category of All Crime; it is an effort to put the phenomenon into an inappropriate category to make it easier to attack it. It is a straw man tactic, in other words.
Thirdly, laying the blame for McCutcheon’s actions on the penal or justice system is clearly a display of neofascism and an attempt to divert responsibility from McCutcheon to the government. This is not a political correctness action, it is to insinuate that “all people are double plus ungood crime thinkers or want to be,” and Big Brother must protect them from themselves.
Fourthy, the quote from the Daily News is an infammatory negative affective connotation. How “adept” do you have to be to run the mousie across the pad and click a link, and then type in a few letters for a keyword search? The entire purpose of a GUI is to simplify computer use to broaden the client base for the IT industries. Which means any five year old should be “adept” at running the mousie and click, click, click. This statement is meant to unethically influence the opinions of those unfamiliar with computers and surfing, and to whip up a groundswell of hysteria among the ultra-conservative, we-must-protect-the-children groups.
The only valid point in the article is the paragraph that details how the library fell down on the job. Not only should a library have to tell all the other branches in its area when someone has been barred, but there should be a policy of barring porn addicted patrons who engage in misconduct (such as masturbating at the terminal — one strike and you’re out — to leaving material up on monitor – three strikes and you’re out). There’s something useful for the ALA to do. The SRRT should get together with the ACLU and maybe PFAW and a few other groups, even ultra-conservative groups, and hammer put a nation-wide policy that constitutes a reasonable time, place, or manner restriction.
Now, as for McCutcheon, he is clearly a sexual predator and serial child molester. Which means that he is in fact, a pedophile. It is fairly obvious that he isn’t going to stop either his behaviour nor accept responsibility for his porn addiction. The addiction and pedophilia are not criminal, but his child molestation certainly is. Here’s my not so humble opinion on how to deal with McCutcheon and people like him: Slip a needle into his vein, dose him with something lethal, kick the corpse into a hole in the ground, throw dirt on top.
Re:Libraries and porn…
In fact, he’d already committed a similar crime earlier, and been in jail for it. He’s a repeat offender. This is obviously a case of someone quite mentally disturbed, not driven mad by pictures.
Re:Wrong wing hysteria
It’s not the porno its the behavior that goes with it. That can be identified if people are alert and good at documenting bad behavior. Then things can be addressed before it gets out of hand.
Library Porn?
Library Porn? I love these misleading articles that imply the library tells users to access porn. Last time I checked, a library user has to find the porn for themselves, which would mean the user is a deviant in the first place.
The real lesson here should be that a library is a public place, and like other public places cannot guarantee the safety of children. I would like to see statistics on assaults like this that show where and when they occured. I bet the number that happen in libraries are relatively small compared to other locations. What happened to this little girl is an absolute tragedy that should not happen anywhere.
Re:Libraries and porn…
You are so right about the pedophiles hanging around even without internet-accessible computers. Before working in my current library, I managed a book store for a few years, and the same pedophile-types would go from one bookstore to another in our area. We would call each other to warn staff to keep an eye out for them, since it was common for them to hit more than one store on the same day. They wouldn’t necessarily attack children, but they’d do stuff like expose themselves to children, etc….
Re:Library Porn?
All. The following is our opinion:
Some say library porn is not a problem. Some say libraries don’t tell users to access porn. Some say the First Amendment prevents the use of filters. Some say censorship is an evil that should be avoided at all costs and filters are a form of censorship. Some say the public library is a limited public forum so anything goes. Some say a library has no culpability for the attack on the 8 year old.
We urge the attorneys and family for the 8 year old victim to contact us for the real facts and for real theories of liability.
The facts are not as everyone thinks. Everyone is under the impression that the ALA’s arguments against filtering should be carefully considered, and, given the fine line of constitutionality, the library is not culpable.
Not any more. The facts have changed. The libraries might now be directly culpable. It’s just a matter of time before new theories of liability are tested in court, and this case may be the perfect setting, sad to say.
The new facts are these: The US Supreme Court in US v. ALA has carefully considered and rejected all ALA arguments in June 2003. And even the dissent admits there is no censorship where the filters can be easily disabled. There is no need to discuss these issues anymore. Don’t let the ALA divert the argument to confuse you. Case closed, the ALA lost.
Now we have a case where a library refuses to filter claiming the very things they already lost in US v. ALA. The ALA’s reaction to that case was to call it racist and tell all libraries not to filter unless forced to at the end of a long string of delaying tactics. This may show they knowingly, purposefully, and intentionally continue to refuse to filter.
As a direct and proximate result, a child has been seriously injured for life. A $6/month filter might have prevented it. A simple solution would have prevented great harm. The libraries know it and they continue to provide unfiltered access or only partially filtered access. Punitive damages might be awarded where a pennies a day solution was intentionally refused by libraries instructed to continue to prevent filtering despite US v. ALA.
And think about this. Members of a library board of trustees are trustees for their beneficiaries, the citizens. Not trustees for the ALA. The trustees may be in violation of their fiduciary duties.
If they are, and if their actions or inactions are reckless, and it appears they may be where a repeat library porn criminal strikes again so they had warning, the individual trustees may be personally liable under the law.
Librarys not only ensure porn is available, they often push it on patrons. For example, see http://www.hclib.org/teens/ and the links thereunder. Then there’s the case where a 6 year old was accessing online porn, a custodian told him to stop, then library management punished the custodian. Of course porn books appear on lists promulgated by the ALA for children at various ages. Librarys sometimes even admit the porn they are providing goes “beyond the confines” of their mission, practices, and book collection policies. Again, this is in violation of US v. ALA.
And how about what all those librarians know to be the truth but are afraid to speak out for fear of ridicule or worse. We’ll bet some attorneys would love to have a few of those librarians for witnesses. Soon the silent librarians will stop being silent about what it’s like to work in a virtual porn shop. They will start being witnesses in legal cases. Already 12 librarians sued for sexual harassment in a Minneapolis library caused by people using unfiltered computers and the case settled for over a half million dollars.
The problem of crime in public libraries caused by porn is huge and is hidden by the ALA as much as possible. For example, near us, a public librarian told one of us she was instructed not to call the police for any reason arising out of the use of the computers. David Burt has written a fine report of the prevalence of crime in public libraries. That report can be found on our web site, as can a factual basis for all the other statements of opinion being made here.
To learn more about these issues and the shocking statements made by the ALA, please see http://www.plan2succeed.org.
Plan2succeed.org is a citizens group trying to get our public library to listen not to our small group but to all the town’s citizens as a whole, say by a ballot question, but our library refuses citizen input, preferring instead to follow the ALA, proudly, in bold, red letters. Well, after almost 3 years of trying the soft approach, we will be bringing suit as soon as we scare up the money. Anyone want to help?
We look forward to helping people realize citizens should run the libraries, not a union of Washington DC librarians who think it’s age discrimination to keep children from seeing porn.
http://www.plan2succeed.org