Libraries sued for giving kids access to online porn

A group of concerned parents is suing the Colorado Library Consortium and a data company for allegedly distributing pornography to unsuspecting students.

“This case is about two things: protecting children and calling out corporate deceit,” said Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Matt Heffron in a statement to CBN News.

The lawsuit targets EBSCO, a nationwide corporation that provides educational databases to school children. It also takes aim at the Colorado Library Consortium, an organization that works with EBSCO.

“EBSCO gets schools to purchase databases by falsely promising the databases are age-appropriate and specifically tailored for elementary, middle, and high school children,” said Heffron.

The Thomas More Society is representing “Pornography is Not Education,” a group of parents who were outraged when they realized their children had access to pornography through their school research databases.

One of those parents is Drew Paterson. He told the Denver Post what it was like for he and his wife to discover that their daughter’s school account was linked to graphic, unfiltered pornography.

“It was just appalling. And the thought our middle school daughter could be exposed to that was just appalling,” he said.

Other parents said that benign search terms like “robotics,” “girl’s stories,” “boy stories,” and “grade 7 biology,” brought up links to graphic porn.

That happened two years ago. Today, Paterson is helping lead concerned parents in their fight against EBSCO and the Colorado Library Consortium.

He doubts the company and consortium were unaware that they were distributing porn.

“It’s difficult to believe they didn’t know,” he said.

EBSCO spokeswoman Kathleen McEvoy denied the allegations.

“To be clear, EBSCO does not include pornographic titles in its databases, embed pornographic content in its databases, or receive revenue for advertising for any organization,” McEvoy said. “We are appalled by the tenor of the allegations related to our intent and the inaccuracies of statements clearly made in absence of factual information.”