Washington DC – EBSCO Information Services, the largest U.S. online library database subscription for K-12 schools, has come under fire from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation for exposing children to pornographic and sexually graphic content in their educational products. Though EBSCO has worked with NCOSE to clean up their systems, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE) uncovered on-going systemic problems this week that should concern all parents.
“Children have been exposed to pornographic and sexually graphic content in public and private schools providing EBSCO services,” said Dawn Hawkins, Executive Director of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. “This company markets itself as providing curriculum-appropriate educational resources, and so it is trusted by parents and teachers, but we’ve found its databases contain graphic results for elementary, middle, and high school users regarding pornography, as well as group, anal, public, and BDSM sex.
EBSCO has been in communication with NCOSE for several months in an effort to solve these problems and has implemented many positive changes like removing certain publications and fixing some publisher settings. However, Hawkins notes the problems are so widespread within the company’s systems that much more work is needed until the parents of America will be satisfied that their children can be free of sexually explicit material on schools-based educational databases.
Just this week, researchers from the National Center found 50 sexually graphic articles in 50 minutes and many of them from databases intended for middle and elementary school children. What parent can be satisfied with that?” Hawkins continued.
“EBSCO has made significant improvements to the system and we applaud that, but parents and schools need to know that EBSCO systems are free from sexually exploitive materials or they will discontinue using EBSCO products. “Concerned parents can learn how to take action by accessing NCOSE’s packet The ABCs vs XXX: How to Ensure Your School’s Online Library Databases are Pornography Free.”
To watch NCOSE’s video reviewing examples of content found on EBSCO on June 26th, watch this video.
EBSCO is a member of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s 2017 Dirty Dozen List, which names 12 mainstream contributors to sexual exploitation. To learn more visit:endsexualexploitation.org/
