I have a concern about the exposure of children to porn in the Auburn Public Library due to a personal experience with my children this week. We should bring awareness and changes to avoid such travesty to ever happen again to any child.

It is very important to emphasize that I was with my children in the little kids section when this occurred. I looked up and a computer from the adult section was facing right in our direction, and I could see this hard core porn movie being played. I immediately blocked my little children’s view and told them we needed to go. Unfortunately, my oldest, days shy of his 9th birthday, did witness some of the gruesome show before I could take them away.

I was shocked and felt greatly violated: how could this happen in a public library?

When I did complain to the librarian, she immediately confronted the man who referred to his right of freedom to pursue such activity. Because it wasn’t child pornography, the librarian explained to me, there was nothing they could do.

I was even more shocked: what about our children’s rights not to be exposed to harmful material? What about the general understanding that one person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom starts? We cannot eat, sleep or walk around the library without shoes, but you can watch porn?

Yes, I understand people’s rights to access of such material, but in a public library?

If a child was exposed to lewdness in the library, everybody would be up in arms, right? But if it was on a screen, it’s OK?

If you want to opt out of the filter and do this, at least the library should position computers in such a way that this would never happen.

As a parent and as a citizen I am outraged, and I am not the only one. This is hideous. Our children’s safety (physical and emotional) should be a concern to all. It is outrageous that there is not a real plan of action to protect our children in what it is assumed to be a safe place such as the public library. It is like secondhand smoke … and it does affect others, not just the user.

Let us be more careful, have more concern. Let’s do something about it.

– Maria Carmen Frandsen