Saratoga News

K.I.D.S. aren't the vandals

By Teri Jones

I object to the March 11 DeCinzo cartoon portraying parents concerned with protecting their children from Internet sexual predators as knife wielding "library vandals." It is not "vandalism" to protect a child from extreme sexual violence.

Recently, the San Jose Mercury News printed an article describing how a child was being lured by a repeat sexual offender using email and chat rooms. Thankfully, an alert parent found out what his Junior was doing online before tragedy occurred. That predator is in custody awaiting trial. He's not the only one out there--just the one they caught.

The "San Jose Orchid Club" was recently busted. They enjoyed kidnapping 10- to12-year-old girls and molesting them online while inviting Internet viewers to call in "requests" as to what else they wanted to see. A recent episode of Disney highlighted the Internet-predator problem in order to alert parents to their children's danger. It's too bad Mr. DeCinzo has misunderstood just who is being violent and who's being victimized for "pleasure."

Children's Internet terminals at the Saratoga Community Library haven't even got warning signs urging children not to give out personal information--such as phone numbers or when they're home alone--to "cyber friends."

Prior to 1995's public Internet, librarians kept sexually explicit books and films from the children's section. Adults interested in explicit pedophilia didn't expect the public to pay for their hobby in a public library. Mr. DeCinzo didn't call it "vandalism" or draw the librarians choosing not to buy child-pornographic "literature" as knife-wielding "poetry slashers." K.I.D.S. asks the librarians to continue their former practice of keeping "adults only" extreme sex and violent content material for "adults only"--it is, after all, the law. Giving an underage minor sexually explicit materials violates California penal code. It's a crime. There is no public duty to use our scarce tax dollars to supply illegal X-rated pornography to children at the library.

If your children print out those pornographic materials on the library Internet, they will be suspended from school for violating the school's anti-sexual harassment policy. Shouldn't all our publicly funded institutions have the same policy to protect children from sexual harassment?

I hope Mr. DeCinzo doesn't continue to call protecting kids from predators at the library, or anywhere else, "vandalism." Since it is obvious Mr. DeCinzo doesn't know who a "vandal" really is, I include the definition: "vandal: one who willfully or ignorantly destroys or disfigures, especially that which is beautiful or artistic"(Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, p. 2019). It's the sexual predators attacking our children who are the vandals.

In no way does not giving explicit sex and violent materials to children "destroy" or "disfigure" such materials. Pity. Child porn will continue to exist even if it isn't offered at taxpayer expense in the Internet section of the Saratoga Library. Vice will survive without a tax subsidy.

So does Mr. DeCinzo's cartoon mean he thinks subjecting children to extreme explicit sex and violence, even to "enjoying" their own private sessions with practitioners of such "arts" as assault, rape and murder, [is] "beautiful" or "artistic"? Or is his cartoon saying he thinks extreme explicit sex and violence are "beautiful" and "artistic"? I hope neither.

When a child he knows disappears, then he will care; but it will be too late, won't it?

Teri Jones is a Saratoga resident.

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