No Jail for ME Woman Who Took Library’s “Obscene” Book

By Norman Oder -- School Library Journal, 9/10/2008

The city of Lewiston, ME, has decided not to pursue further prosecution of a woman who refused to return a library book on sex education she calls obscene.

JoAn Karkos still has to pay a fine of $100 and is barred from the Lewiston Public Library, but she won’t be sent to jail for violating a judge’s order to return a library copy of Robie Harris’s It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health (Candlewick, 2004), according to the Sun-Journal.

Karkos last year tried to get the book determined obscene, but police, noting that the book had circulated 30 times without previous complaint, disagreed.

Still, she told the newspaper, “I guess I was shocked to find out that the library is exempt from obscenity laws.” Lewiston officials decided that the cost of going to court wasn’t worth the benefit, and it would keep the city out of the limelight. Indeed, a statement from city administrator Jim Bennett noted that the library now has four donated copies of the book, rather than the one that Karkos took.

Community sentiment has been significantly critical of Karkos. “We felt that one person does not have the power to keep a book from the 36,000 citizens of Lewiston,” library director Rick Speer told the newspaper.