Action 3 News - Omaha, Nebraska News, Weather, and Sports | Porn at the Public Library
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Council Bluffs, IA - Porn in the public library has one mother furious. Now she's taking action to take on the smut. The mom called us wanting to know why her daughter was exposed to online sex sites at a public place. We got answers.
You don't expect to find porn at a public library. In fact, in 1998 Omaha libraries put filters to block computer porn, so we went digging to find out why it's different across the river.
"She's like, Mom the man next to me is looking at porn," says Patty Lyons regarding her teenage daughter. Dirty downloads plastered across a computer for a young teen to see. The person behind the porn? A man playing some type of graphic sex game.
"It was basically two women exposing themselves, asking the man if they wanted to see them perform acts basically," the mother says.
And that's not the zinger, the guy was on a library computer. That's right, a trip to the Council Bluffs library landed Patty Lyon's daughter next to a man surfing porn. Turns out in Council Bluffs, there aren't protective filters. Some of those filters end up blocking out health and other useful sites, so the library board voted no. While the board shot down filters, they did add these protective hoods to basically keep you from looking over at the person next to you and see what they're typing.
We took a look for ourselves and found out you do have to be looking to actually see it. As for looking up a law that bans public porn? Aside from child porn, here's nothing that prohibits x-rated images in a library. Suggesting that kids coming here to the library to expand their minds,may be getting more than what they bargained for.
The other big issue on why the board turned it down, even if you have filters it's federal law to remove them anytime an adult asks. As for getting a separate teen area, the library's working to secure a grant for one, but the young kids do have their own spot.
Reported by Molli Graham, mgraham@action3news.com
