A Trauma-Survivor’s Testimony
Let's start with this fact: The United States is one of the most active sex trafficking countries in the world, and many of the victims are children. (Source)
I’ve had people from the other side of this debate lecture me about how it’s a parent’s responsibility to police what their kids are reading, but they say that from a position of privilege. There are plenty of kids in our communities who don’t have the luxury of that kind of parental supervision, and since those are the kids who are the most targeted by predators, sexualizing and desensitizing them seems like a pretty bad idea. Back when I was a single working mom, I used to drop my daughter off at the Young Adult section of the Downtown library all the time. I would not do that now.
Besides all the graphic and really disturbing sex scenes in some of these YA books (that kids as young as 12 can check out), there’s a character in one of these books who writes poems about suicide that make it sound like an attractive option. There are lots of descriptions of exactly how to score and get high on some very dangerous illegal drugs, as well as how wonderful and heavenly those drugs make you feel. And for kids who are turning to the library as a means of escape from a painful living situation, you can imagine how harmful books like these can be.
I don't want to believe that the authors of these books have devious purposes in mind. I read that one of them had a daughter who struggled with addiction and writes books like this in an attempt to prevent what happened to her daughter from happening to other kids. If this is the case, it seems as though she's unwittingly contributing to some really bad outcomes. Suicides, addictions, pregnancies, and overdoses among young people have shot through the roof in recent years.
I’ve had some sexual trauma in my past. Nothing nearly as horrific as the stuff I’ve read in some of these kids’ books, but when I was a kid, books were my refuge, my safe place. I lived in them. Not to mention that addiction runs in both sides of my family. Kids are impressionable, and I wonder where I’d be now if I’d stumbled across some of these books back then, or if I’d even be here at all.
Besides all the very well-documented harm that sexualizing a child too early can cause, our county, particularly our poor communities, suffer when our libraries don’t do what we rely on them to do.
I know what I’m talking about here. I was once someone who very much needed a safe place (that didn’t cost me any money) to explore other worlds both when I was a child and with my kids once I became a mom.
If the kids’ sections of our libraries become places that are unsafe for our kids to explore, something PRECIOUS is being taken away from people who rely on it.
So, why should you care? Maybe you don’t use the library. Maybe you don’t have kids who use the library. Well, I’m here to tell you that this is EVERYBODY’S issue. Some kids don’t have anyone else to speak up for them.