Massachusetts Library Revisits Security after Child Molested
A convicted sex offender is being held without bail after allegedly raping a 6-year-old boy January 30 in a reference-room magazine aisle at New Bedford (Mass.) Public Library’s Main Library. During the assault, the child’s mother was working at a computer some 10 feet away in an adjacent hallway, NBPL Director Stephen Fulchino told American Libraries, and had given the child crayons and paper to keep him occupied.
“I can’t say enough about the reference staff and how they reacted,” Fulchino asserted, explaining that a reference librarian found a photo of Corey Deen Saunders, 26, in a registered offender database after seeing the suspect emerging from the aisle several times with the child and speaking with him. Staff alerted the child’s mother, which caused Saunders to flee the building. The librarian called police after the child—who, Fulchino explained, was too afraid to make a noise during the attack—revealed what had happened. Saunders was arrested a short time later while sitting outside a homeless shelter.
New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang has responded by calling for a city ordinance that would bar convicted sex offenders from libraries, schools, and playgrounds. Additionally, Lang has recommended several proposals to the library board in a February 4 letter:
- adding to the library’s 29 surveillance cameras and the number of monitors that pick up the camera feed;
- forbidding children younger than 10 from entering the library without direct adult supervision;
- increasing the frequency of intermittent police patrols throughout the five-facility system;
- mandating “a valid photo I.D. in addition to a library card or guest pass, equipped with a bar code, requiring patrons to swipe their card in order to gain access and to exit the library [which] would enable staff to have current information as to who is present in the library at any given time.”
Noting that the alleged assailant would still have had access to the building since he had a library card, Fulchino said staff was already at work reconfiguring the two reference rooms to improve the sightlines; one room will contain visitor tables and the other shelving arranged parallel to the walls. Trustees are considering a patron behavior policy authorizing staff to call police if they see adults engaging in conversation with children whom they are not accompanying.
Fulchino is also looking at adding more security cameras and viewing monitors, although the existing configuration “worked well in a sense”: The assault was captured on film but no one is assigned to constantly view the monitor. “The problem is that nothing happens most of the time,” he contended, which can lull someone assigned to a security monitor to “not see what’s actually there.”
He added that a concerned pro-filter activist from safelibraries.org sent an e-mail intimating that the incident wouldn’t have occurred if the library had filtering software. Fulchino told AL that NBPL has blocked material deemed obscene or child pornography for some time, but that staff have since discovered that Saunders bypassed the settings.
Posted on February 8, 2008. Discuss.