Tag Archives: Harry Bull

Cherry Creek Parents- It is time to make a stand

It seems logical that if Scott Siegfried assumes his new role as Superintendent of the Cherry Creek School District, business as usual, as it was under the appalling leadership of Harry Bull, will continue.

Our children will continue to be at risk.

Secrecy, a lack of transparency, and a lack of accountability will continue to be the norm.

Is this really what we want?

If it is, then be preapred.

If this is not what we want, there is something you can do. Go to Say No To Scott Siegfried and sign the petition to have Siegfried removed as Superintendent.

Where Is John Kennedy?

In the wake of the Cherry Creek Sex Assault scandals, there have been some interesting developments.

In the hours before the indictments handed out to Prairie Middle School administrators David Gonzales (Principal of Prairie Middle School), Adrienne McIntosh (Vice Principal), and Chery Somers (Counsellor) for failing to report child abuse, the Cherry Creek Superintendent, Harry Bull, issued a letter to the district, announcing his retirement.

Obviously, any thinking person would be extremely skeptical regarding the timing of Mr. Bull’s announcement, as well they should be. What connection can Mr. Bull have to these events that might have pushed him into retirement? I mean, you just have to wonder, don’t you?

All I can say about this is, good riddance. The man is a disgrace. He has placed his own personal ambitions and agenda over the well-being of children.

Quietly, however, another senior administrator has slipped from the scene.

What has become of Executive Director of Middle School Education, John Kennedy?

John Kennedy (should I call him “Doctor” Kennedy?) was the point person when parents complained about explicit and violent pornography being made available in the Middle School (and other levels) EBSCO data bases.

John Kennedy (really, should I call him “Doctor” Kennedy?) not liking what he heard, threatened the parents and told them not to talk about the issue, or “something will happen that neither you, or I will like”.

John Kennedy is no longer in his position of Executive Director and, depending on who you ask, he has either been “terminated”, “let go”, “is on administrative leave”, or simply, “we don’t know where he is”.

John Kennedy was the point man during a substantial period of time when Brian Vasquez was assaulting the children in Prairie Middle School and during the ongoing cover-up of the initial assault on the 14 year old female student at Prairie Middle School 5 years ago, when the girl was forced to recant her accusation against her molester, Brian Vasquez.

John Kennedy is now gone and we do not lament his disappearance. We are, however, very interested in the circumstances of his disappearance. Why is John Kennedy gone? Where has John Kennedy gone? What are the circumstances around his going?

We have sent CORA requests to Abbe Smith, the Communications Director for the District and have been stonewalled. Why would this be?

The Legacy Of Harry Bull and the Cherry Creek School Board- A Cancer in the District

For months, people have been trying to get the attention of the CCSD School Board and that of Harry Bull regarding their lack of concern regarding the availability of pornography in the school EBSCO and other database resources.

Repeated and continuous attempts have been made to sound the alarm that there is something wrong with adults that do not see a problem with presenting graphic and dehumanizing images, sex toy advertisements, and videos to our school children. With good intent, our failure has been that we have focused on a symptom of the problem and missed the problem itself. It is clear from the recent arrests, of the perpetrators and of their administrative enablers, that the true nature and extent of the problem is beginning to emerge.

All of the so called “Doctors” in the district, who we have given the privilege of educating our children, have failed them. They have created, through some twisted ideology, a system that sexualizes our children and grooms them for the advances and predations of their peers. They have fostered a disease that has spread throughout our community like a cancer and they all bear responsibility for what has occurred.

In many, many school board meetings they were warned that their failure to protect our children would have consequences. Reference was made to the news stories out of the Los Angeles School District and its club of pedophiles. They were told that the rising incidence of sexual assaults against children was a natural consequence of sexualizing these children and of objectifying them in the perverted minds of some twisted adults. They were warned and now, here we are.

The recent arrests of district employees are no doubt the tip of the iceberg and they beg the question, what kind club are they running in this district? Why do teachers and even school board members, such as Dave Willman, have private Instagram and Twitter accounts that they share with children? Why is one Overland School Club being followed by a porn site? These things are completely unacceptable and the district’s failure to see and address these issues indicates something fundamentally corrupt.

No teacher, no district employee, no school board member should EVER have a private account of any kind that they share with children. No school or district club should ever allow a porn site to follow them or be following a porn site. What are you people thinking? Again, what kind of club are you running here?

I am convinced that in the weeks to come, there will be further allegations, perhaps additional charges. There are others that knew what was going on in this district.

In the off-chance that all of you “Doctors” in the district missed it, it is no coincidence that Harry Bull announced his retirement mere hours before the scandal at Prairie Middle School broke in the news. Do you really believe that Principal David Gonzalez, Assistant Principal Adrienne MacIntosh, and counselor Cheryl Somers all knew about Brian Vasquez but, somehow, Mr. Bull did not? If you do believe this, you possess a level of simple mindedness that precludes you being employed as any sort of an Educator.

It seems painfully obvious that simple common sense is not conferred with a Doctorate in Education.

Mr. Bull, you are a coward. You have attempted to avoid any of the blow-back that is sure to develop over the next several weeks by “skipping town”, so to speak. A better man would have accepted responsibility for his failures and made the determination to stamp out the problem and protect our children. You, unfortunately, are just a rank opportunist. I, certainly, do not thank you for your service to this community.

You have presided over a corruption of our children and their teachers that borders on the criminal.

You have placed the safety of our children as a distant second to your personal ambitions and self-interest.

You have covered up and hidden the most grievous of assaults on our kids.

You have abetted the disgraceful treatment of one of the victims by punishing her for the evil actions of her pedophile tormentor.

You have engaged in a program of disinformation designed to keep the parents of this community in the dark regarding the corruption in this district.

You should be ashamed of yourself but I fear you are not. Why would you be, at every board meeting you have a room full of sycophants all telling you how great you are.

Can any one of you “educators” imagine what you have done to the 14 year-old child that came to you for help regarding the assaults on her by Brain Vasquez, only to find that she was being made responsible and Vasquez made the victim? What kind of a twisted world do you all live in? In my opinion, this child’s civil rights have been violated in a grievous manner and the FBI should be investigating this district for a pattern of such abuses.

Given what I have seen at school board meetings over the past months, you will all no doubt take comfort in knowing that these Prairie Middle School administrators have only been charged with a misdemeanor and not a felony. I am not a lawyer but I cannot understand why they have not been charged as accessories after the fact as well as accessories before the fact, and with obstruction of justice. All 3 of these people knew about the actions of Brian Vasquez 4 years ago and engaged in an active campaign to force the 14 year old victim to recant her story and then they suspended her.

THEY FORCED HER TO HUG THIS MONSTER!

If this isn’t abetting Vasquez’s subsequent assaults and obstructing the course of justice, I don’t know what is.

In her letter to the parents of the Prairie Middle School community, Director of Middle Schools, Tracy Grant, closed by saying, “As always, the safety and security of our students is our highest priority”. What a sad, sad joke.

Ms. Grant will remember that approximately 10 years ago, she was informed that teachers at the Fox Ridge Middle School were displaying pornography to children in the class. This is on record. The safety of our children seems to be far from any priority with this school district.

Finally, it is instructive to remember that Mr. Bull, following the revelations of the Lundy and Vasquez sexual assaults, issued a memorandum on Sept 17, 2017 to all schools that any police investigations or any disciplinary actions against an employee, which are documented in writing, would now be required to be reported to the district HR department.

Obviously, then, prior to the sexual assault cases of Lundy and Vasquez, schools we NOT required to report misconduct issues. Why is this? Could it be, that not having these allegations on record with the district would allow the district plausible deniability, should the offense come to light? Do you need a Phd in Education to figure this one out?

And why does Mr. Bull so carefully couch his words that, in order to report an incident to the district, there must be a police investigation and/or a written reprimand. I would submit that ANY allegation against an employee must be reported to the district, recorded as an incident, investigated at the district level and resolved as substantiated or unsubstantiated. To do anything else provides just another opportunity for the district to deny knowledge and accountability……. and accountability is exactly what has been lacking under the mis-stewardship of Harry Bull.

Mr. Bull also goes to pains to specify that, in regard to a sexual misconduct allegation, they are to be reported only when it involves children outside the workplace. Children within the workplace are, apparently, fair game and these assaults need not be reported. It is all perfectly clear how the district values our children.

Harry Bull and the Cherry Creek Board of Education have been grossly derelict in their duty to our children. It is clear that they consider the district and its schools a personal playground to pursue their own agendas.

Colorado leads the fight to get “EBSCO Porn” out of schools across America

EBSCO: Exploiting our children for profit

EBSCO is a 3 billion dollar corporation that boasts of providing K-12 research databases to over 50,000 schools nationwide. These databases contain some journal articles and newspaper stories but, in general, have been widely criticized as disjointed and random in their search results. The journal articles appear to be a loss leader for the true product: magazines and advertisements. Yes, schools all over the country are streaming advertising at K-12 kids. And a good deal of this advertisement is adult in content, very adult. There are hundreds of sexually graphic ads for “sex toy” shops, complete with links to the online shop venues. There are sexually graphic articles, images and even links to hard core pornography sites. This obscene material is streamed into K-12 school databases by EBSCO’s publishing clients and include adult “pop culture” magazines such as Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Lesbian News, Glamour, Chatelaine, Ebony, Esquire and other magazines and articles that have absolutely no business in a homework database, and believe me, these are not your supermarket, news rack versions.

What child, ever, used Cosmo as a homework resource?

Our group is networked across the country to expose this horrific problem, and we have thus far identified obscene EBSCO content in school linked databases from 15/15 states that we have been able to investigate, including Colorado, Florida, Connecticut, Nebraska, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Nevada, Georgia, Ohio, New Jersey, Minnesota, Kansas, West Virginia, and New Hampshire.

Marketed as a Scholarly Datbase But Links to Hard Core Porn Sites From “Academic Journals”

Members of our groups have recently taken a closer look at some of the academic journals contained in EBSCO’s Explora school databases. We have found live links to a myriad of hard core porn, and violent “BDSM” porn sites embedded into the “academic journals” streaming into EBSCO’s K-12 Explora Secondary School databases.

If that’s not bad enough,  EBSCO search results are disjointed, repetitive and random.  The Emperor truly has no clothes when it comes to EBSCO’s “school products”.

THE OBSCENE FACES OF ESBSCO SCHOOL DATABASES ACROSS THE NATION

 

 What are we teaching our children?

 Pornography has been shown to contain heavy themes of misogyny as well as the glamorization of sexual violence. Children exposed to pornography can be harmed – for more details, see the National Center on Sexual Exploitation which has named EBSCO to its 2017 Dirty Dozen list as a major contributor to the sexual exploitation of women and children (http://endsexualexploitation.org/ebsco/ ). As might be predicted in a country where 50,000 schools are streaming EBSCO porn at their students, the rate of student on student violence has reached alarming proportions  (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sexual-assault-fellow-students-17-000-reports-4-years-ap-n753106 ). Teacher/student sexual assaults have sky-rocketed. Do these predators use EBSCO as a classroom grooming tool? Do they send students to EBSCO, where they are bound to locate sexually graphic content because it is pushed to the top of the search results, perhaps in the hopes that children will become desensitized and accepting of sexual advances?  How else to explain these alarming trends? Every day there is another breaking news story about a teacher who has sexually assaulted a child in their care.

Colorado leads the fight against EBSCO

The prestigious Cherry Creek School District of Colorado recently contacted EBSCO and asked for the ground breaking, “Adams 12 Exclusion Package”. This removes a number of adult, graphic, pop culture magazines which are known to stream obscene content into children’s homework and research databases.

What a fight! It took more than a year. But every school district in the state of Colorado that we have looked at has been identified as infected with EBSCO porn. EBSCO is distributed across the state by the Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC). EBSCO was introduced to Colorado through a collaborative venture between the CLiC and the CDE/State Library, although recent attempts to ask the CDE for help led to a scrambling restructure to remove CLiC from the state education umbrella. What are they hiding?

Coloradans can “thank” Gene Hainer of the CDE State Library, and Jim Duncan, Manager of the CLiC, for introducing the EBSCO atrocity to our state.

 The CLiC has advertised EBSCO databases to our K-12 institutions as a valuable and appropriate school resource while nothing could be further from the truth. When confronted with the reality, the CLiC denied any responsibility, callously claiming they “just sell” the products and ridiculously claim they bear no responsibility should their school customers misuse the products by allowing students to have access.

Every school district in Colorado was notified almost a year ago, and so was the Colorado Association of School Executives (CASE), the Colorado Association of School Boards (CASB), and the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES), but it appears that, with the exception of Adams 12 and the Cherry Creek School District (CCSD), our leaders have just buried their heads in the sand.

Only two districts that we are aware of have responded and that would be Adams12 and the CCSD. Although they have not solved the problem, they have made a transitional gesture of removing many of the adult magazines that are the worst offenders for streaming obscene content. This is a valuable first step but the problem will not be solved until EBSCO subscriptions are canceled. EBSCO has shown itself to be a thoroughly corrupt corporation that appears to be knowingly, and with full deliberation, exploiting millions of school children nationwide for profit. They can never be trusted and they will always find new and creative means of pushing lucrative advertising for the 95 billion dollar sex industry into our schools, targeting a captive audience of children and minor youth as potential new consumers. We have even located articles that encourage young girls to enter the escort and sex work industry. No, EBSCO can never be trusted again.

There truly is no depth too low for EBSCO to sink in its gluttonous pursuit of profit. The EBSCO name has been sullied beyond repair.

Bryson Stephens, grandson of Founder, Elton Stephens and, apparently, a respected member of his community in Birmingham, the headquarters of EBSCO Industries.

Every concerned parent and taxpayer should contact EBSCO 1 (800) 653-2726 to express their outrage and should also contact their local School District to demand that EBSCO subscriptions be canceled. Don’t let them tell you that they “filter” EBSCO – this is a lie. The Cherry Creek School District tried it with us, and they are on record issuing this misinformation to concerned parents, teachers and reporters who called with concerns. But the truth is out: EBSCO database products are proprietary and cannot be touched by external or top site filters.

If they could have filtered the obscene material, Adams 12 and the Cherry Creek School District would not have created an Exclusion Package. The fact that EBSCO cannot be filtered has been confirmed by A12, the CCSD, the Arapahoe Library District, and EBSCO upper management in private communications. EBSCO even publicly admitted to having “problems” with its school databases in an interview with WBRC Birmingham (http://www.wbrc.com/story/35775174/could-your-kids-find-pornographic-articles-on-school-computers ) and they promised to be working on internal filtering, which we have yet to see. In fact, our most recent information is that EBSCO is planning to dump even more responsibility onto their school customers by asking them to manually, “cherry pick” objectionable articles from K-12 products. Does EBSCO think that more taxpayer money should be squandered to hire a full time cherry-picker to stay on top of the porn streaming into its K-12 databases?

When we spoke with EBSCO management, we were told that the content of the K-12 databases was protected by contractual arrangement with their publishing clients. EBSCO values its publishing clients far more than they value their school customers. These “non-censorship” contracts, that permit streaming of porn and sex toy ads, must be very lucrative to EBSCO. After more than a year of nationwide pressure, and even being named to the Dirty Dozen list, EBSCO adamantly refuses to filter its K-12 products. EBSCO is dedicated to the protection of its publishers and advertisers and appears firmly committed to granting them free ranging, unfettered access to a captive audience that ranges into the hundreds of millions of school children across the U.S., Canada, and other countries.

What’s in it for the schools? 

Maybe the million dollar question is this: Why would our schools want to be complicit in EBSCO’s advertising of porn to kids? In Colorado, schools were notified a year ago, and only 2 that we know of have responded, even partially. Are they ashamed to admit there’s a problem? Afraid of legal liability if children have been harmed by exposure to porn through school databases? Are they getting kickbacks? All of the above?

Surely, EBSCO is generous with compensation to its school and library customers. EBSCO hands out grants, incentives, money for trips and awards. Some libraries even receive the $100,000 “solar grant” award each year. EBSCO is linked with the ALA and this country is now waking up to the fact that our “library community” has morphed into something that most adults wouldn’t recognize anymore. In fact, the Director of Intellectual Freedom, Jamie LaRue, was quoted as stating he would be “happy to go pick up [the Dirty Dozen] award” from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2017/07/EBSCO_online_databases_filter_inappropriate_material.html ). He likes EBSCO. 

The pressure is mounting

With Colorado beginning to backpedal, now is the time for other states around the country to take a stand. We have confirmed EBSCO porn in 15/ 15 states that we have investigated and we have good reason to believe that it is present in every state across the country. Parents need to understand that the problem is not limited to public schools. We have found EBSCO Porn in private and parochial schools, and homeschooled children do not avoid the assault if they are using public libraries, which peddle EBSCO as “homework” databases, often driving traffic to them with promotions and ads that target minors.

The Arapahoe Library District of Colorado was featured by Mass Resistance (http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen3/17a/CO-middle-school-x-rated/ebsco-database.html  and http://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen3/17d/MR-CO-confronting-porn-agenda/index.html ) twice during this past year. In Colorado, we are beginning to also turn our attention to several other public libraries in the hopes that we can convince them to clean up or, better yet, cancel their EBSCO sponsorships.

There can be no justification for the egregious assault on the health and safety of our children by EBSCO. Schools and libraries should take the high ground and get rid of EBSCO lest they become morally and legally complicit.

It’s been a struggle but the momentum is building. We will not back down and we encourage others across the country to get involved.

Complacency is a Disease

 

Recently, the Cherry Creek School District has been rocked by 2 sexual assault stories. One of these occurred last May and was kept from the community until the second one was reported in late-August.

The fist incident involved a security guard (Brodderick Jerrod Lundie) at Grandview High School and the second involved a Social Studies teacher (Brian Vasquez) at Prairie Middle School.

Superintendent Harry Bull stated that the reason for his failure to report the first incident to the community was the protection of the victim and the fact that there was only the one incident. I have no idea how he divined no other incidents, maybe he relied on the good word of the perpetrator, Jerrod Lundie.

The second incident, involving Social Studies teacher Brian Vasquez of Prairie Middle School, appears to have been reported in  a timely manner. But, this pervert lured and molested children over a 4 1/2 year period, with the first incident being, apparently, in January of 2013. He has been charged with 31 different counts involving some form of sexual assault.

Now, first of all, Vasquez was a teacher for a long time, he came from other schools before he began his 7-year stretch with Prairie. Vasquez did not awake on some morning in January 2013 and decide this was the fine day that he was going to become a pervert. What was his background at these other schools? What was his prior history with Prairie? Is that another secret?

Second, for 4 1/2 years, Vasquez molested children. It is inconceivable that he did this for such an extended period and no one, not one person, ever raised any concerns about his interactions with children. Not one child said anything to a teacher or counselor?  No parent came forward to report things they heard from their child? No teacher observed and reported anything that looked odd? No anonymous voice on the district’s Care Line? Nothing? Hard to believe. More secrecy?

Now, this is egregious behavior. I don’t think Harry Bull was hired to make a secret of things that should have been reported to the community. He deprived parents of the right, and the opportunity, to discuss this matter with their kids and put it into some sort of a framework and context. This creep, the perpetrator in the first incident, was well-liked, the “cool” security guard and kids need to know that these types of people always find their way to where there is a concentration of kids and they are very adept at worming their way into the kid’s circle.

In addition, speaking with their kids might well have revealed whether any other instances involving this guard were known about by the kids. Maybe that was the problem Bull was trying to avoid.

But Bull, putting politics before safety, chose secrecy over transparency; the dark over the light. This is the usual modus operandi of the Cherry Creek School district, as they have consistently refused to let parents know of the vast display of pornography awaiting their children in the district provided data base resources.

Now, this is all very bad stuff but most disturbing, most disturbing of all, is the incomprehensible complacency of the school community; where were the parents that should have been out in force at the school board meeting last night, screaming their outrage? Where were the villagers with their torches and pitchforks, demanding the head of Harry Bull? No where! Not one at the meeting. No public comment about the incidents, no public comment about the secrecy, not one peep.

We were there. We made very pointed comments and we don’t even have a child in these schools. The fact that Harry Bull would hide the information that parents are entitled to is a community outrage that requires public comment. It erodes trust between Bull and the community he was hired to serve. It is in secrecy that dark things develop. A light needs to shine in these dark corners, preventing rot from developing. There was no light last night.

Where were the parents? Where was the community outrage, not only for the actions themselves, but for the secrecy engaged in by Bull and the Board of Education? A deafening and resounding silence. How very disappointing.

When the issue was a 15 minute change to the school start times, there was a packed house of parents, distraught at the effect this would have on their families. There were hours devoted to the studies, the science of sleep, the concerns of parents. Standing room only.

Sex assault on our children, secrecy about the reporting? Nothing!

Even the Aurora Sentinel, generally an ideologue of the left, evidenced more indignation than the parents of the affected schools. Were they too engaged in another bilious episode of Bachelor in Paradise? Unable to tear themselves away from Survivor Season 150? Or the riveting spectacle of the Voice or America’s Got Talent? Where were you people? What is wrong with you? These are your children and you can’t summon the energy and 2 hours of your time to speak out on their behalf? Is it too much to ask that you protect them? It is disgraceful.

It is heartbreaking.

There is an old adage that people get the government they deserve. That was clearly on display last night at the Cherry Creek BOE meeting, as was the reason.

Complacency is a disease, like cancer. It slowly rots a community and leaves it vulnerable to self-serving elected officials. If you do not demand they serve you, the community, then they will most certainly serve themselves.

Hypocrisy of the Anti-Censor Censors

Recently, an article was published in the Huffington Post regarding school and library databases and the issue with pornography being embedded throughout them. You can read the story here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/are-school-libraries-unintentionally-providing-middle_us_597f2541e4b0c69ef705298d

The HuffPost does not seem to allow readers to post comments to this article but it was picked up and reprinted by the NewsProject here:

http://www.newsproject.net/education/are-school-libraries-unintentionally-providing-middle-schoolers-access-to-porn/#comment-20764

NewsProject does allow commants and since the author of the article, Christopher J. Ferguson,  was incorrect in his analysis, it required clarification and correct. As a result, we posted our response in NewsProject.

Unfortunately, it seems that the champions of the anti-censor movement have absolutely no problem with censorship that they deem appropriate and, like so much of the progressive liberal intelligentsia these days, it is just another case of do what I say, not what I do. Our post was deleted. Hypocrisy reigns in the halls of the anti-censorship drones.

So, to correct the record, here is what we posted.

As one of the parents that discovered this material in the Cherry Creek School district library catalog, I would like to respond to some of your comments.

First, it is important to understand that EBSCO advertises, markets, and sells these databases as being differentiated and customized for different grade levels. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We discovered this material in our daughter’s middle school library catalogue last September (2016) and, early on, we had discussions with executives from EBSCO, including CEO Tim Collins. We were told that the only differentiator between any of the “school products”, including the college level offering, is lexile level.

Lexile level is a measure of vocabulary complexity and, as facetiously stated by an EBSCO account executive, there just ain’t many big words in porn. He admitted that because of the simple lexile filtering, some of this material might well be in elementary school products. Consequently, and as we discovered, filtering the middle school databases on a lexile of 8th grade, and a category of human biology, yields results like “Orgasms for All”.

Once a child selects this, as you term it, “click-bait” and opens the article, they can then expand their search into other areas of sexuality and sexual behavior, by clicking on the convenient links the publisher provides; bondage, sadomasochism, rape, sex-toys (with very graphic illustrations), and, as you have mentioned, the joys of “fisting”. Fisting, as the term might suggest, is the insertion of a person’s fist and forearm into the anus or vagina of their tormented partner. Is this really appropriate for middle school children?

Importantly, as I have described above, a child does not have to search around for this information. It is presented with giddy abandon through innocuous search terms such as “stories about boys”, or “animal stories”. I leave to your imagination what is found in the search results for “animal stories”.

Rather than being “maddeningly short” on details, the stories in both massresistance.org and endsexualexploitation.org (NCOSE) are very long on the details, providing explicit screen shots of the material readily available within EBSCO. Again, why is this material being made available to minor children, in a product that EBSCO markets and sells as being age and grade level appropriate? Clearly, there is some severe misrepresentation in EBSCO’s promotional material.

As you have pointed out, there are links to material such as “Spicy Videos to Share with your Partner” and there are other videos. One video we found displayed 2 men having anal sex. Hey, kids, have a look at this!

This is categorically pornography and should not be made available to minor children. Links within some of the EBSCO articles also lead to the Adult Video Network, where, again, extremely graphic, sometimes violent, always exploitative, videos are being presented to children. Samples are available, so, no, they are not being hidden behind any paywall. I am just not certain why this seems OK to some people. It is not!

The fact that the American Library Association (ALA) says that few parents have complained is disingenuous. We have heard the same thing from our school district (Cherry Creek School District) and from our local public library (Arapahoe Library District). Yes, both admit that they have done nothing, and will do nothing, to actually inform parents of the potential danger. If they truly feel that this is not an issue, let them inform their constituent stakeholders of what is available, then we will see if parents lack concern about this. I know where I would place my money.

But they won’t inform parents. They know what would happen.

As to filtering, both EBSCO and our school district have admitted that the material, including the videos and other graphic depictions cannot be filtered out of a database. You are clearly misinformed as to how school filters work. They are top-site filters and cannot filter out the material resident in the EBSCO databases.

There is no distinction between accessing this material from home, from the child’s school, or from your local public library. You can access this from anywhere and most disturbing (as if all of the above is not disturbing enough), is that now, the schools and EBSCO are collaborating on providing children with phone apps so that this material can be accessed in the school yard. Talk about customer service!

Parents may well have filtering at home but that protection ends the minute their child leaves the home and directly accesses the school or library EBSCO databases. Parents also assume that if the school provides the resource, it has been vetted and that it is safe. It is a reasonable, albeit false, assumption.

As you have suggested, we, as parents, have approached both the school district and EBSCO about removing this material and have fought a 10 month battle trying to gain any meaningful action. EBSCO, as we have been told by executives, maintains non-censorship contracts with its publishing clients. That means that they cannot and will not filter out any of a publisher’s material.

In fact, it is contrary to EBSCO’s financial interests to do so, since they are likely paid according to the volume of distribution; similar to a newspaper being able to structure its advertising rates according to distribution.

To be fair, EBSCO has made some changes to its product, now allowing customers to “cherry pick” articles and content that they do not want displayed. However, this is only after 10 months of battling with the Cherry Creek School District and EBSCO, and only in baby-step increments along the way. EBSCO also is not advising their customers of this option, so the schools are unaware that this functionality is even available. So, it is for appearances only. Of any real substance, little has been done.

It is curious that you raise the issue of the LGBT community and I wonder where you received your talking points? Our school executives raised the same issue months ago. At no time, no time, during our 10 month battle to have this material removed, have we, the parents, ever mentioned the LGBT community. However, in a written response from 6 school executives, we were told that the material we encountered was vital to the district’s “commitment to inclusive excellence”. What, exactly, does this mean?

Have you, and our school district, identified an LGBT segment of the middle school community that are avid consumers of pornography and claim their consumption of it is some basic human right, or that it is in pursuit of some educational goal? What has pornography being made available to children got to do with LGBT issues? You either feel that porn should be made available to children, or you do not. Are there other segments of school children that are being under-served in this regard? Please, spare me this ludicrous misdirection!

We are not in favor of banning books. We are not in favor of censorship. We are in favor of making only age-appropriate material available to children. That is a parent’s duty; to protect their children from harmful and damaging material and behaviors until they are of an age where they can properly, and in a healthy way, process the information they are receiving.

Scientific research shows that the human brain is not fully developed until about 28 years of age. Consequently, decision making, processing, is not fully developed until at least that age. It is just not appropriate to make this type of material available to children before they can fully understand and process the information. Before this age, it can be confusing and damaging to a developing child. This is also clear from research. Yet you, the Cherry Creek School District, the ALA, and our Arapahoe County Library seem to know better. You place some misguided ideology regarding censorship ahead of the safety and health of our children and you should all be ashamed of yourselves.

The Supreme Court of the United States has made it clear that filtering material harmful to children is not an unreasonable infringement on 1st Amendment rights but you all clearly know better. Clearly, the rights of publishers of pornographic material trump the rights of children, in your mind.

Within some of these databases, we have found that children can be lured down paths to material that promotes a rape culture, promotes violence against women, glamorizes the sex-trade industry and, allows access to “sign-up” sheets for those interested in a career in the wonder-world of being an escort. Are you kidding me? This is a clear abetting of sex trafficking, yet you want to protect it.

Finally, our position is not that some material “slips through”. Our position is that EBSCO, and its publishers, are in the business of promoting and fostering an active consumerism in children, aimed at increasing the profits of the pornography and related products industries into the future. It is clearly a very calculated and callous maneuver, designed to foster early childhood acceptance of all of the joys that can be made available to children if they just click on the link. It is disgusting and indefensible.

Again, our reply to the article was deleted. What a bunch of hypocrites!

We have encountered this same type of hypocrisy in dealing with Superintendent Harry Bull and Asst Superintendent Scott Seigfried. While accusing us of being mere censors, they refuse to notify the parent community of the material in the EBSCO databases that pose a danger to their children. This is censorship, pure and simple.

Our local Smoky Hill Library, through the Arapahoe Library District has taken the same position; we are censors but they will take no steps to warn parents that pornographic material can be accessed by children.

Clearly, they are all fine with censorship, as long as it is their form of censorship. The irony is stupefying, as is their position.

Think Your Local Library is Safe- Think Again

Parents should be aware that, while the focus, here, is on the egregious behavior of the Cherry Creek School Board, your local libraries are doing the exact same thing, and more.

On a recent trip to the Smoky Hill Library, part of the Arapahoe Library District, we visited the children’s section of the library and logged in to one of the available computers. These computers, reserved for small children, had the same problematic data base resources as the schools, and more!

We have made the Library District aware of the issue and they have shown little concern. Now, I know that, if pressed, the Library would offer the exact same rationale as the schools; that they are anti-censorship, that the kids need access to research material, etc. These people are all cut from the same cloth; they march in lock-step to a tune only they can hear; the rest of us understanding that, as adults, our primary job is to protect our children.

However, what is the exact need for children, aged 0-10 for “research” data bases? And exactly why do they feel kids of any age need to be able to access pornography.

Parents, keep your kids out of these libraries (and they all have it) until they clean it up. This is not your Aunt Bea librarian. These are people with an agenda and it is not protecting children

Want A Job, Kid?

As if it couldn’t get any worse, another data base resource used by the schools, GALE, has links to an escort site called Zaragosa. Here, children are bedazzled with stories by escorts about how fun and lucrative a job as an escort can be.

Stay in luxury hotels, meet rich men, stay on their yachts, live the life of leisure. And kids, you can apply right there on the site.

This atrocity was brought to the attention of the Cherry Creek School Board in the April meeting, yet nothing has been done to remove GALE. Is GALE a good corporate citizen? Is GALE really providing any educational value to school kids, I doubt it.

This month, the Cherry Creek School Board sent out a self-serving newsletter defending the use if these types of data bases.

This document is so full of conflicting statements, faulty logic, rationalization, and self-justification that it would take PAGES for me to fully discuss them. Let’s just look to the highlights.

I will paraphrase

1. STATEMENT- The internet is full of bias but EBSCO and other databases are not.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In a recent test we performed on Gale, around the issue of Sex Education, there were 15 articles in favor of radical Planned Parenthood based Comprehensive Sex Ed and 5 abstinence based articles. Of the 5 abstinence articles, 4 of the links were disabled, only one active. Of the 15 for CSE, all 15 links were operative.

We found similar patterns of censorship elsewhere in Gale and the other databases. So, I guess your view of objectivity and censorship depends only on your version of the truth. How egalitarian.

2. STATEMENT- The data bases are vetted.

Since Jim Duncan of CliC and Tim Collins, CEO Of EBSCO, both admit that EBSCO contains pornography and, according to EBSCO, it is problematic, how well could these data bases have been vetted?

You either fully vetted these products, missing the fact that huge volumes of pornography will be available to children, in which case it was an incompetent job. Or, you fully vetted these products, knew the pornography was there, and decided to put it in front of our children anyway.

Pick your poison.

3. STATEMENT- Denise Wendl states that the products are “grade level appropriate”.

Unless you are saying that pornography is age appropriate for kids as young as elementary school, then this statement is just out of touch with the reality.

In a discussion with an EBSCO executive, we were told that ‘the only segmentation by grade level is on lexile and (as the executive then went on to facetiously state) porn does not contain a lot of big words, so it is quite possible that some of this is in our elementary school products’.

In addition, why would a search on Human Biology filtered for a lexile of Gr 7/8 return Orgasms for All? Is this something that we should be presenting 12 and 13 year olds?

4. STATEMENT- “Some of the respect for the content has to come from teaching students and parents that things are going to show up once in a while. But they’re going to show up on the general web, even more so”.

Let me make the very simple and somewhat obvious observation that objectionable material cannot just “show up” if it is not in the content. It will not just “show up” if you purchase products that do not contain objectionable material.

The fact is, and remains, that these data base resources are full of pornography and rather than deal responsibly with the issue, the Cherry Creek School Board is fully content to continue to expose children to the real risk of encountering disturbing depictions and images.

The board is content to continue to do business with EBSCO, a company that has been added to the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Dirty Dozen list as a major contributor to the sexual exploitation of women and children.

It is long past the time for the district to do the right thing, sever all ties with any company that provides pornography to children,

The Curious Case of the Misplaced Priorities

Nobody likes to be lectured to but sometimes it necessary.

Case in point: The last Cherry Creek School Board meeting.

The primary item of the evening, if you can believe it, was an over 2 hour presentation of the study, the analysis, the rationale, and the time frame for implementing a 15 minute change to the school starting times. There were speakers during the public comment session that, quite literally, had tears in their eyes as they argured passionately either for, or against, the change in the starting times.

This is not to diminish the importance of the issue; particularly to teenagers.

Anyone that has teenage children knows how important sleep is to them. Making the decision to delay the high school start time was, therefore, a laudable one; made in the interests of student health and safety.

However, I have to ask; where is that same level of concern for health and safety when it comes to the issue of making pornography available to  kids? Where is the parent concern over what, arguably, is an issue that, in importance to the health of children, leaves sleep times in the dust?

I wonder, could we, like the start times meeting, have an expert attend a school board meeting and deliver a discussion of the effects of violent and dehumanizing pornography on developing minds. How do these images and messages shape a young person’s view of the world and of their relationships? What expectations are created? What fantasies that will never be fulfilled?

I am pretty certain what they would say. They would describe the high incidence of failed relationships, the problems holding jobs, the incident of partner violence; all of which they learned from exposure to pornography.

Do you really want your son growing up to think that a leather mask and a gag, while being whipped into submission is route to happiness?

Do parents really want their daughters growing up to think that they merely exist as an object of casual use by men?

The effects are well documented in adults: desensitization, unreal partner expectations, damage to relationship building, bonding issues, divorce, mysogenistic views of women, poor body image; addiction to pornography; the list goes on and on.

And these are the effects on adult brains. What can we expect from in the undeveloped, mushy grey matter that is still forming as a child’s brain? Is there a connection to the current rape crisis in our colleges? Is there a connection to the rapidly rising incidence of STDs and AIDS among young people; those in the 18-25 year cohort? I have my guess. What’s your’s?

This should be of a huge concern to parents. These kids are our future. Is this the future you want for them?

Why does this not concern parents?

We have 2 daughters. We want them to grow to be confident, independent women; secure in themselves and in their relationships with men and to view those relationships as mutually supportive, to the benefit of both partners to the arrangement.

What does the Cherry Creek School District want for the children in their care? Well, they want them to have sleep. We know this from the action they have taken.

It seems that they also want them to have pornography. We know this from the lack of action they have taken. Why would they ever want this? God help them.

 

EBSCO Industries Identified As A Major Contibutor to Sexual Exploitation- CCSD to Follow?

Today, the National Council on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) added EBSCO Industries to its annual Dirty Dozen list of companies that they have identified as significant contributors to the sexual exploitation of women and children.

This is a major announcement, linking EBSCO to the significant international problem of sexual exploitation, in all its forms: prostitution, child pornography, pornography, sex trafficking, rape, and other forms of sexual exploitation.

Will the Cherry Creek School District continue to do business with this business? Are they proud of this “business” relationship? Will they continue to defend this company as a valued provider of “sensitive and controversial material” and material important to the District’s goal of “inclusive excellence”? By what measure, exactly, do they measure the “value” of the offensive and dehumanizing material that is being made available to our children?

To be fair, EBSCO is by no means the only online data base provider. There are others, such as Pro-Quest and Cengage, that do exactly the same thing. Let us hope they will take note of the impending fallout on EBSCO and proactively take steps to root out pornography from any of their products that they make available to school children.

All of these are currently being used by the the Cherry Creek School District. Are they insane? Or just corrupt.

National Council on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) References:

The Case for Naming EBSCO Information Services to the 2017 Dirty Dozen List

VIDEO: How Kids Are Being Exposed to Porn in Schools

Pornography in our Schools! A New Culprit