Megan’s Story, Part II: A Mother’s Battle
[From the YouTube description]
A mother shares her heartbreaking journey of fighting against explicit materials being made available to her daughter in public school. Her daughter fell into a years-long addiction to pornography, fueled by the content she could easily access at school. As her struggles with addiction deepened, so did her depression and anxiety, leading to an overwhelming battle for her mental and emotional well-being.
Now, this mother is pleading with librarians, educators, and policymakers: Protect children from explicit and adult content especially in schools. Let parents guide their kids through difficult conversations about maturity, relationships, and boundaries. Schools should be safe places for learning, not a source of harm.
Below are selected excerpts from the video.
“An avid reader, Megan became addicted to explicit content in books after recommendations from teachers, librarians, and peers starting in middle school.” …
It’s really hard when you are trusting these valuable adults at the school to craft your child’s mind and you come to find out that they are teaching them how to explore more avenues towards the sexual content.
Megan: Because the books and stories and writing is so descriptive and explicit and not appropriate, my mother obviously caught me.
Mom: But I could never keep up. … The content—I could never download that into me enough to filter it to help her. So I rely on those librarians sharing with my kids books that they find valuable. …
The librarian is my godsend or the demon in our home. And I need to know and trust that that person is willing to take that tender mind and filter. Yes, I’ll do my part at home, because I’m the one who spends day in and day out in understanding how that child is.
So I need to have those guys be advocates for us. But you go take that tender soul and you give them materials that will literally wreck them…
I’ve seen it destroy her friends. I’ve seen it affect our family’s life.
We fought for years trying to get her to be honest, because she was hiding that content. Because an adult who’s trusted to her said, “Yes, you can read this.” And then I’m over here saying, “I’m sorry sweetheart, your brain’s not ready for this. I can see what it will do to you.” …
And you tell me that you did a great job as a librarian. You tell me that she wasn’t affected by the materials that were given to her in a trusted situation. …
Time after time, I took the book away, read through it, and said, “Sweetheart, see, you can see, right here, this will change your perspective of healthy relationships.”
[Q: Can these books help children facing sexual abuse?]
So the argument is that … if the child comes across this information in a book, it might be able to help them if they’re going through that current circumstance.
The main objective is you want to help a child, or help somebody who’s gone through abuse, you give them the resources for advocacy and you give them a therapist and a counselor. You don’t give them a librarian who says, “Hey, this is a great romance novel. Oh you know what, at [page] 210, it gets a little spicy.” Never!
Sexual content is sexual content, whether it’s rape, whether it’s whatever. The thing is, you can’t play a therapist. … You don’t know whose hands you’re giving that to. You’re asking a librarian to fine-tune this and understand each one of the [individuals] that they send that book off with. That’s baloney!
The librarian needs to have a therapy license, they need to be a psychologist, they need to be all these things. They’re trained for the information in the book; they’re not trained for the “client” they’re giving it to.
I went through sexual abuse from a family member. That same family member gave me pornography. That pornography depicted the same sexual act that that person was doing towards me. You know what that did? It made it normal.
So if you’re trying to give a book that’s a literary work of art that depicts rape to a person who’s dealt with rape, all that does is normalize the situation. “That’s normal; that happened to me.” It doesn’t open up the shadows. All it does is put somebody deeper into abuse.
I have been through [Citizens Against Physical & Sexual Abuse], and I have been through counseling. I will tell you, none of the counselors I’ve seen, therapists I’ve seen, and psychologists I’ve seen, have ever recommended that we go read a book about how rape was already done, how incest was already done, how sexual acts between two promiscuous teenagers were already done. None of that ever became [a] conversation of therapy.
[Q: What about a parent’s choice to let their child read explicit content?]
Parents, if you really want it in your child’s hands, figure it out. What parental choice is ever taken away if you take a physical book away, [in] a day and age where they have cell phones? …
That is adult content [my daughter] was given. And as far as I’m concerned, it started her down a really hard path that took her years to figure out. And I’m proud that she figured it out.
I feel sorry for the kids who are out there who don’t have the help that she was able to get. …
[Librarians] are trusted with our babies. They’re trusted with our teens. They’re trusted with our students.
I’m proud of where she’s at now. I’m proud of where she’s come, and that she’s realized that those weren’t trusted adults in her life, that those weren’t trusted peers, that those weren’t people who had her best interests at heart.
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