The recent firing of a California librarian provides a dramatic example of how political correctness can turn both morality and common sense on its head. What did Brenda Biesterfeld do that cost her her job? When she saw a patron at the public library where she worked in Lindsay viewing illegal child pornography on a library computer, she did what any good citizen should do—she reported it to the police. They arrested him, and found more child porn on his home computer as well. But Biesterfeld’s reward for her good deed was a termination notice.
The Lindsay City Council and Tulare County Board of Supervisors are both looking into the incident, and the pro-family legal advocacy group Liberty Counsel has intervened on Biesterfeld’s behalf. One hopes that Biesterfeld will get her job back—and that her porn-defending supervisors Judi Hill and Brian Lewis will lose theirs.
In fact, maybe it’s time to make public librarians “mandatory reporters” of child sexual abuse—including child pornography—just so that they know where their responsibility lies.
(See also Family Research Council’s pamphlet “Dealing With Pornography: A Practical Guide For Protecting Your Family and Your Community”)
Comments (2)
While I would have done the same and reported the pervert it's vital to point out that the charge that Brenda Biesterfeld wasn't given a permanent job BECAUSE of this is purely speculation and not proven fact.
March 20, 2008 11:09 AM | Comment Permalink
Given that her probationary period was just about to end, and the lack of any reason her supervisors would want to punish her for reporting child porn, I suspect this is just coincidential. She may be using her temporary status as a public hero in an attempt to keep her job.
Assuming she isn't telling an outright lie, of course - this explanation sounds plausable, because she said that there is some type of unofficial library policy of ignoring obvious pedophiles. There is just no reason for this - librarians are famous for their dedication to the free speech and privacy of their clients, but even they have their limits. Why would they want to cover up crimes, particually when its obvious that doing so will sooner or later fail.
Even the county supervisors, those that responded to questioning, appeared quite supportive of her - one saying she 'did the right thing' and one saying that he doesn't want the library to get into the dangerous political ground of porn in general but sees no reason child-porn shouldn't be reported to police.
The only person who could have acted improperly is Judi Hill, the person immediatly above the ex-librarian in the heirachy - but all we have on her is hearsay, the unsubstantiated claims of a woman who, not to be too harsh, is probably quite bitter about having just lost her job. And for Hill to have said the things she said - that child porn is commonplace and best ignored - she would have had to be... very unusual. How many people would say that.
So, three explanations sound plausable to me:
1. Biesterfeld is a liar. She lost her job, and now seeks to turn herself into the persecuted hero, victim of the Establishment of child-hating librarians.
2. Hill is exceptionally tolerant of child porn, and lacks the foresight to know that news will leak of this eventually.
3. Something was confused in the phone call.
The third seems likely, because of one key phrase reported from that call: "This is more common than you think."
Child pornography is not common, and even the most idiotic of pedophiles should know not to check it in a public library with an easily-seen screen, so incidents of child porn in libraries should be extremally rare. Thus this claim makes no sense. But it does make perfect sense if Hill believed the report to describe *adult* pornography - something to which the libraries probable response is to just stop people using the computers if they do it more than once, rather then reporting to the police. This was a phone call from a librarian who was probably in a bit of a panic, half her attention on the call, half trying to peer over the counter at a distant monitor around the user's head, and whatever is left worrying. It would have been very easy for a misunderstanding to give Hill the impression that this was adult pornography, not child, and thus issue the appropriate response to that.
March 21, 2008 9:33 AM | Comment Permalink