Response to Carol Schmidt's May 3, 2024 letter to the Peninsula Pulse
Dear Carol,
I saw your letter describing out-state political activities at https://doorcountypulse.com/letter-to-the-editor-jailing-librarians/. You oppose how the bar to obscenity prosecutions for librarians is being challenged and removed in other states. The proposals come in response to incidents of pornographic materials being furnished to children.
Assembly Bill 308, https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/reg/asm/bill/ab308, co-sponsored by Andre Jacque, is now dead. Along with its counterpart, Senate Bill 305, the bill would have repealed Wisconsin’s protection against prosecution for librarians interacting with children under the age of 18, described in https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/944/iv/21/8.
In your letter, you consider the books themselves, while I tend to think of the books in relation to the social environment of the library. Assembly Bill 308 and similar bills in other states make more sense when the social context is considered:
One review states that 10 percent of the sexual offenders against children were described as "Other School Employee", which includes school librarians: https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf#page=32
It isn't just children who get targeted; librarians also target their co-workers. In 2017, several female librarians went public about how they were sexually harassed by a male librarian: https://bookriot.com/sexual-harassment-library/
In response to their outcry, the female librarians were sued and treated in a negative manner.
A survey of public librarians received hundreds of responses indicating sexual mistreatment. The blue-colored graphs indicate the different types of co-worker mistreatment by their co-workers: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01930826.2024.2330860#page=11
Likewise, 298 of academic librarians who responded to a different survey reported having been sexually assaulted:
https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/view/25012/32889
An article about this study states:
“Our study found that most academic librarians get sexually harassed at work,” said co-author Jennifer Knievel, a professor in CU Boulder’s University Libraries. “About half of that harassment comes from colleagues, and the other half comes from patrons.”
The scale of the problem indicates deficiencies in the professional system for training and credentialing librarians. Bad librarians ought to be excluded from the profession, simply for sexual misconduct, even if they did not commit a crime. When behavior which pushes the line is normalized, that makes it easier for predators to appear normal. An example of unprofessional behavior comes from some male librarians who made an adult calendar showing themselves "in various states of undress": https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-new-sexy-librarian
This past March, a public library director from Altoona, which is nearly the size of Sturgeon Bay, was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a child over a number of years, from ages four to eleven. His previous employment included the Brown County Library:
https://www.newsbreak.com/altoona-wi/3372886465834-wilken-accuser-says-abuse-went-on-for-years
They have gotten rid of him and will be hiring a new library director:
There are other newspaper reports documenting similar crimes by librarians across the country. There are also articles about males being arrested and prosecuted for disturbing behaviors at libraries, such as this one about a nephew to Milwaukee’s mayor, from the Waukesha Freeman on May 3, 2023:
Trial opens for teen accused in library carjacking, sex assault
The outcome of this trial was a partial conviction with a sentence of 12 years in prison and 8 years of extended supervision. The sexual assault charge resulted in a mistrial and the charge was subsequently dropped by the state.
Quoting from the article:
“She says at one point, what does this incredible 87-year-old woman do? She starts to pray. She says — I’m paraphrasing but — ‘dear Lord, don’t let this happen. ‘Dear Lord don’t let this happen.’ She remembers in that moment how angry he got at that point, how angry he got as she started to pray.
“And he says and I am paraphrasing his words, but he says, ‘I am the devil. ...’ She says things like , ‘Sir, young man ... what would your mother and father think if they knew you were behaving this way?’ He says, ‘I don’t have a mother. I don’t have a father. Nobody loves me. I’m the devil.’”
What, or who, do people experiencing strong feelings turn to? Inasmuch as this testimony is relatable to others, it shows the depth of the overall social problem. How can there be safe, public libraries when some people are lost, and some have decided to side with the devil? The expression that “nothing good comes from banning books” anticipates well-functioning adult social environments, not the ones which actually exist, full of all sorts of vulnerable or broken librarians and patrons.
Part of reducing the problems at libraries is to prevent children from being conditioned to associate libraries with sexual gratification. Such associations, formed early on, could worsen the patron-perpetrated sexual harassment problem once they come of age.
Were a bill like Assembly Bill 308 were to someday become state law, that would help librarians think twice before stocking children’s materials with things they shouldn’t.
Posts about libraries: