Digital library resources offered to grade school students also contain a deluge of links to hardcore pornography and even an article depicting a woman’s rape with a gun barrel.
“EBSCO is at the center of a sexual exploitation scandal,” said Executive Director Dawn Hawkins of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). “This K-12 online library resource provider markets itself as providing reliable educational resources. EBSCO’s family-owned brand leads school administrators, teachers, and librarians alike to trust the material it provides, yet EBSCO’s resources are awash in links to hardcore pornographic sites, and other extremely graphic sexual content.”
Hawkins goes on to say that the search results are not educational, but instead instruments of normalization of sexual violence and dangerous sexual behaviors.
NCOSE has added EBSCO Information Services to its 2017 Dirty Dozen List.
Various other links direct to sites containing pictures of sex toys, explicit texts, and descriptive advice on sex. NCOSE has documented the presence of this content and more on a YouTube video archive.
In its 2017 Dirty Dozen List, NCOSE lists EBSCO alongside other notable services like YouTube, Amazon, HBO, and Comcast.
