TeamHarpy Faked Sexual Harassment, Hurting True Efforts to Stop It

Three librarians worked together to lead an effort to smear another with false claims of sexual harassment.  Faking sexual harassment claims harms efforts to oppose true sexual harassment as much as faking censorship claims harms efforts to oppose true censorship. These three librarians are known as Team Harpy, and they have hurt opposition to sexual harassment.

Team Harpy comprises Lisa Rabey (@ByShieldMaiden), Nina de Jesus (@satifice), and, later, Sarah Houghton (The Librarian In Black, @TheLiB) pictured top right.  Ms. Houghton became the team treasurer of online collections.  "Sarah Houghton is running the legal defense fund for the sake of transparency and openness. (link)"  I believe she traveled to Canada to speak against Joe Murphy (@LibraryFuture), the victim of the fake, phoney, and fraudulent Team Harpy.

This kind of fakery harms true efforts to stop sexual harassment.  And I'm not the only one saying so:

I would also strongly advise against using this episode to proclaim that sexual harassment is not an issue within ALA.  Hopefully we as an organization can constructively address this issue though [sic] better documentation and dialog. - Daniel Cornwall, Alaska Chapter ALA Councilor

Correct, Mr. Cornwall, and that's why I started Librarians.cc and Library Journal has written about it (link).  I'm trying to build a repository of information.

Just look how bad this #TeamHarpy debacle is:

I made false and damaging comments about librarian Joe Murphy for which I would like to apologize. .... 

... I posted tweets that referenced librarian Joe Murphy implying without a basis in fact that he was a sexual predator.  These unsubstantiated statements gained wide attention and caused Mr. Murphy significant damage. 

My intention in posting these tweets was to draw attention to the issue of sexual harassment of female librarians in the profession.  My statements were made carelessly, and were not based on facts.  I have never observed Mr. Murphy sexually harass or exhibit sexually predatory behavior. .... 

I was ill prepared for the damaging impact that these unfair statements would have.  I wholly retract my statements and unreservedly apologize to Mr. Murphy for the significant damage I have caused to his personal and professional reputation. 

I strongly encourage those who aligned with #teamharpy and decided to attack Mr. Murphy to cease to continue to defame or disparage him. ....

That is by Lisa Rabey of Team Harpy.  I have to use ellipses since Ms. Rabey successfully forced me to censor out information on sexual harassment here.  Team Harpy apparently was always interested in themselves, not in stopping the sexual harassment of librarians.

What a disgrace.

Where does Joe Murphy go to get his reputation back (link)?

Even I became a target of Team Harpy's spin machine, e.g.:

Interesting the plantiff in #teamharpy, SafeLibraries, & Steven Abrams is on the list but not me nor @satifice. @jacobsberg @MattAndersonUT
— Shield Maiden (@byshieldmaiden) December 16, 2014

Then both Joe Murphy and I got a threat:

Then the free speech librarians like Ingrid Henny Abrams (@MagpieLibrarian) sent out the message to #TeamHarpy to block me, complete with false claims of homophobia, and almost 100 have, all because I drew parallels to my being sued for defamation for exposing Gay Hate @ Your Library (link):

And Team Harpy member Sarah Houghton?  She is ALA's top Internet filtering expert.  She says Internet filters do not work even though everyone knows they work really well now (link).  ALA just published a heavily-promoted report on ten years since CIPA called, "Fencing Out Knowledge: Impacts of CIPA 10 Years Later (link)," and how filters do not work, all based on Team Harpy member Sarah Houghton's research, if you look in the footnotes.  And now Sarah Houghton is a proven faker.  I've always said that report was false as it was based on Sarah Houghton's outdated findings.  I could never have imagined the extent of the fakery.  And yes, Team Harpy's Sarah Houghton is also helping to fund the defamation suit against me.  So while complaining about a supposed SLAPP suit against her Team Harpy members, Sarah Houghton's funding a SLAPP suit against me (link).

Anyway, I am trying to help sexually harassed librarians and I am asking people not to be discouraged by Team Harpy's fakery.  Please contact me if you need help or if you want to write anonymously here at Librarians.cc.

And I see readers of #GamerGate are interested in what I'm writing.  Welcome.

@SafeLibraries /hug #GamerGateHugPatrol pic.twitter.com/K4tBWrrCmQ

— Targa (@astragaal) March 26, 2015

NOTE ADDED 28 MARCH 2015:

This story has gone international.  See:

• "#TeamHarpy: Another Ugly Story of 'Progressive' Vigilantism," by Allum Bokhari, Breitbart, 27 March 2015.

I commented there as follows:

Missing from this story is the third member of TeamHarpy, Sarah Houghton, calling herself the "Librarian in Black." Interestingly, the Librarian in Black got involved in this matter to the point of essentially becoming part of TeamHarpy. And we know what happened to TeamHarpy.  And the Librarian in Black is the American Library Association’s [ALA] leading expert on library filtering software and she says filters don't work and should not be used.  And your local library might not use filters as a direct result of this proven liar's false claims.  

This intentional destruction of a man's career over false allegations for a year is in part the Librarian in Black's doing. It was all false. That has got to be very bad for Librarian in Black's credibility. And she's ALA's leading expert saying library filters do not work. That has got to be very bad for ALA's credibility.  

They can spin it all they want but if this were a court of law opposing counsel would tear her to pieces. I know, I've investigated experts myself and they lost all credibility as a result of what I uncovered.  

Of course library media will do all they can to ignore how ALA's filtering expert has completely destroyed her credibility. I mean this is a national story now, this TeamHarpy debacle.  

What a complete debacle.  

When ALA is on your local library, in its anything-goes policy based on ALA's “Library Bill of Rights,” now you know ALA’s top expert supporting the claim that library filters do no work is one of the TeamHarpy liars who destroyed a man’s career. They lied there and they are lying about filters not working when everyone now knows they work well. See “FCC: Filters Work, Communities Should Decide, Libraries Should Revisit CIPA” http://safelibraries.blogspot.com/2014/08/visser.html  

Don’t let a TeamHarpy liar influence your public library’s following the law by filtering out p0rn, since libraries are for the use and benefit of the community by law, and that precludes p0rn, no matter what ALA and its TeamHarpy liar-expert says.  

My opinion, of course.  I have to say that so I don't get sued by the self-arrogated free speech police, again.  Contact me for help cleaning out the p0rn from your local library.

URL of this opinion:

librarians.cc/2015/03/teamharpy-faked-sexual-harassment.html

Illinois HB 2689 to Protect Librarians from Sexual Harassment

Rep. Peter Breen

Illinois HB 2689 (link) "[c]reates the Internet Screening in Public Libraries Act."  Its sponsor, Rep. Peter Breen (link), designed the bill to, among other things, protect librarians from being sexually harassed and having to work in a hostile work environment that is the direct result of library patrons viewing unfiltered pornography including child pornography.

Internet Screening in Public Libraries Act:  HB 2689 requires internet filters on public library computers to prevent the viewing of hard-core pornography on those computers.  Breen emphatically stated that, “I’ve heard from many moms over the years that adult men are regularly viewing hard-core pornography on public library computers, in full view of children and others.  This is an abuse of taxpayer resources and creates a hostile environment for public library employees and patrons.  No child should have to walk past obscene and abusive material in order to take advantage of the educational opportunities available at their public library.”

• Source:  "Breen Files First Bills Promoting Individual Freedom and Open Government," by Illinois Review, Illinois Review, 19 February 2015.

No doubt the American Library Association [ALA] and the Illinois Library Association [ILA] will work to see the defeat of this bill because promoting child pornography (link) and "constitutionally protected" pornography (link) trumps protecting librarians from sexual harassment and having to work in a hostile work environment.  Indeed, ALA recently revealed that librarians have never been sexually harassed and likely never will be (link).  To admit otherwise is to admit its own policy applied locally is at fault.

Prediction: the usual excuses will be laid out by ALA/ILA as to why the bill should fail.

1. It's overbroad, which it is not as it tracks the federal Children's Internet Protection Act [CIPA] law.
2. It takes away local control, but it actually restores local control from ALA/ILA that has effectively taken away local control by massively pressuring libraries to follow ALA diktat.
3. It violates freedom of speech, the First Amendment, and intellectual freedom, but CIPA has already been ruled to be constitutional by the US Supreme Court that ruled that pornography may be completely blocked with filters without violating the First Amendment.  See United States v. American Library Association (link), 539 US 194 (2003).  By the way, in Illinois, Internet porn in public libraries is illegal under existing state law (link).
4. Internet filters do not work well.  The reality is ALA was forced to admit library Internet filters work well (link) and the Federal Communications Commission recently revealed library filters work really well, communities should get to decide whether to use them, and librarians need to reconsider old grudges against filters (link).

Prediction: ILA will order local libraries to crank up library Internet filter strength to block nearly everything possible, having placed handouts at the computers urging patrons to call to oppose the filters.  Or libraries will simply turn off the computers and leave up signs about the draconian HB 2689 that must be defeated, riling up the people to call the legislature to kill the bill.  It's as if ILA controls local community resources and the people managing them because I sure would not want my local library's filters turned up or computers cut off just so some state library association can astroturf fake support.

Both those predictions are easy to make because both have already occurred and have successfully misled people.  Examples and more:

• "In Protest, Illinois Libraries Turn Off Internet or Filter Heavily," by LJ Staff, Library Journal, 16 May 2007.
• "Action Needed on Filtering Legislation (Illinois SB2784)," by Eric Edwards, Health Science Librarians of Illinois, 3 February 2014.
• "Illinois Librarians Fight Porn Filters with Internet Shutdown; Smith and Varenhorst Decry a Planned Protest by Illinois Librarians Against HB 1727 That Will Use Public Funds and Facilities to Advance Private Political Goals," by David E. Smith, Christian Wire, 14 May 2007.

Sponsor Pete Breen is on the right track.  CIPA author Ernest Istook specifically stated how ALA misleads up to a third of American libraries into allowing porn despite the law.  He specifically laid out exactly how ALA misleads people, and no doubt the same misleading tactics will be at work against HB 2689.  He specifically advises legislators to use the federal CIPA model to create similar law like the Illinois state Internet Screening in Public Libraries Act.  So to see how Pete Breen is on the right track, read what the CIPA author said about how ALA misleads and what can be done to stop it:

• "Children's Internet Protection Act Author Ernest Istook Interviewed," by Dawn Hawkins, National Center on Sexual Exploitation (formerly Morality in Media), 17 April 2012.

Did you notice how the CIPA author spoke out on behalf of sexually harassed librarians? "Many librarians complain that if you make pornography freely accessible, oh, and the behaviors that come with it, you create a hostile work environment."

They do complain but you won't hear it in Library Journal or ALA's own American Libraries.  What the CIPA author said about sexually harassed librarians never made it into library media.  They are protecting the very policy that harms communities and creates hostile work environments for librarians.  When they do write about it, they mock it, like calling it "poppycock" (link).  Are you a sexually harassed librarian?  Your library media is working to bury anything that could help you.

It is really good that federal and state legislators are speaking up for sexually harassed librarians.  Bravo, Representative Peter Breen.

Now it's time for the people of Illinois to expect ALA/ILA to promulgate the usual false astroturfing and to stop letting them control your local communities.  If you won't do it for yourselves, do it for the sexually harassed librarians forced to work in hostile work environments—Illinois public libraries.


NOTE ADDED 7 MARCH 2015:

Exactly as I predicted, the Illinois Library Association has pulled out the exact same tried and true lies to mislead people yet again:

• "Oppose Mandatory Statewide Public Library Filtering Legislation (link)," by Illinois Library Association, 25 February 2015.

URL of this page:

librarians.cc/2015/02/hb2689.html

No Smut At Work, Please

No Smut At Work, Please; 

Minn. Librarians Settle with Officials

by Gary Young

The National Law Journal

15 September 2003

Are sexual harassment law and the First Amendment on a collision course? If so, which one will give way?

A federal lawsuit that ended in a settlement last month poses those questions in a particularly sensational fashion.

On Aug. 15, the Minneapolis Public Library announced that it had agreed to pay $435,000 to 12 employees-lead plaintiff Wendy Adamson, five other librarians, five aides and a page-who accused the library administration of subjecting them to a hostile work environment by leaving them exposed to pornography.

On First Amendment grounds, library officials refused to intervene when patrons used library Internet stations to display sexually explicit material.

Adamson and her colleagues (11 of the 12 were women) claimed not only that they were exposed to objectionable material, but that the administration's laissez-faire attitude led to overt acts of harassment, such as catcalls, masturbation, physical threats and stalking by patrons.

The work environment greatly improved in 2000, when the administration finally reacted to their Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint, the employees said. But they pursued litigation in Minneapolis federal court for compensation for three years of suffering, among other reasons. The settlement brought Adamson v. Minneapolis Public Library, No. 03-2521, to a close.

Some experts see the settlement as the victory of a common-sense interpretation of the First Amendment rights of library patrons. Others worry that it inches the legal system further along a slippery slope that will one day lead to the outright triumph of workplace rights over the First Amendment.

First of its kind

There has been wide speculation that employers may face liability if they fail to stanch offensive material injected into the workplace by third parties using the Internet, such as pornography spammers. The Minneapolis case appears to be the first in which an employer has actually paid out.

Robert S. Halagan, the Buffalo, Minn., solo practitioner who represented the 12 plaintiffs, said that the decision is the first of its kind of which he's aware.

Still, he dismissed the idea that he's set a precedent with far-reaching implications. "You won't see another case like it," he said, because other libraries have been willing to place reasonable restrictions on Internet use by patrons.

Law Professor Robert M. O'Neil, who directs the University of Virginia's Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, agreed with Halagan on that point. He said that the issue of whether a library can put restrictions on its patrons' choice of Internet material has largely been rendered moot by the U.S. Supreme Court's June decision in U.S. v. American Library Ass'n Inc., No. 02-361.

In that case, the court upheld the Children's Internet Protection Act, a 2000 law that requires libraries receiving federal funds (virtually all of them, public and private, according to O'Neil) to use filtering software to prevent children from being exposed to pornography on the Internet.

The law allows libraries to disable such software when adults want to access a blocked site "for bona fide research or other lawful purposes."

Writing for a four-member plurality, with which two justices concurred, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote, "A library's need to exercise judgment in making collection decisions depends on its traditional role in identifying suitable and worthwhile material; it is no less entitled to play that role when it collects material from the Internet than when it collects material from any other source."

O'Neil conceded that material considered offensive on racial or religious grounds can also give rise to hostile work environment claims; The Internet protection act decision might not be dispositive in those cases, he added, since such material is less likely to be deemed harmful to children than pornography.

Even so, O'Neil said, "This kind of conflict is unlikely to arise again." He said that if such a complaint were filed in the future, most employers would take steps to remedy the situation.

"It's not censorship for a librarian to tap a patron on the shoulder, tell him that what he's viewing offends other patrons, and ask him to use a corner terminal," he said.

Eugene Volokh, a University of California at Los Angeles law professor currently visiting Harvard University, is not so sanguine about the impact of the Minneapolis settlement.

It's not that he thinks librarians should have no say in what gets displayed in public areas or that library administrations should be prevented from placing restrictions on what their patrons view.

What he finds troubling here is that it was "the threat of federal enforcement" that brought the library around to settlement. He worries that publicity from this settlement will lead other libraries to impose restrictions on Internet access, not because it makes good management sense, but because of that threat. "The federal government is pressuring the nation to adopt speech codes," he said.

Volokh argued that the danger of sexual harassment law trumping the First Amendment is not limited to public libraries, since private employers are also liable if they create or tolerate a hostile work environment. Finally, the danger is not restricted to libraries, since "every place is someone's workplace, whether it's a park, a library or an art museum," he said.

A hypothetical

To illustrate how bad things could get, Volokh offers the example of a private research library devoted to the medical aspects of sexuality. If librarians found offensive the images and texts they were required to handle, he suggested, the library would be required to restrict the free flow of information to avoid creating a hostile environment.

Volokh's proposed solution is to impose sexual harassment restrictions only on workplace speech that is one-on-one. "If a speaker says something to a recipient, and the recipient has made it known that the speech is offensive, then I see no great need for First Amendment protection," he said.

Adamson, who took the lead in organizing the protest against the Minneapolis library's policies, said that she understands Volokh's misgivings.

After seeing Volokh refer in print to "squeamish librarians," Adamson, who considers herself liberal, wrote to him to explain that she and her colleagues were not stereotypical, prudish librarians, and she has since carried on a correspondence with him.

Adamson said that when the library first installed terminals in 1997, "I was so excited about the Internet that I could hardly sleep at night." And while she admitted that she does not have a ready answer to Volokh's worst-case scenario, she added that Volokh has not answered her question: "What were we supposed to do?"

Adamson said that between 1997 and 2000, when she and her colleagues filed a complaint with the EEOC, the administration was so loath to interfere with the viewing choices of its patrons that it chastised a security guard for telling a 6-year-old boy that he shouldn't be looking at pornography.

She said that the library fell under occupation by about 25 "sex addicts" who came in every day to use the terminals, deliberately tried to embarrass and intimidate the staff, lured children into viewing pornography and made violent threats.

"I don't care how pristine the First Amendment is, you can't use it as an excuse for not running an institution in a responsible way," she said.

After Adamson and her colleagues filed their EEOC complaint and a television station ran an account, the library administration finally took action, she said.

The library took a number of steps, such as insisting that patrons pay a fee for printouts and moving terminals to a central location. In Adamson's view, the most effective measure was the posting of a notice at each terminal that the public display of obscenity violated Minnesota law: the 25 men "crawled back under some rock" and never appeared again.

In 2001, the EEOC ruled that there was probable cause to believe that a hostile work environment had existed before the library adopted its new policies. Although the U.S. Department of Justice declined to bring suit, it gave the go-ahead for the 12 employees to sue on their own.

Forging ahead

Halagan said his clients decided to proceed with litigation, despite improved conditions at the library, because they were entitled to compensation for three years of suffering, including chastisement by the administration "for daring to think that they had rights in this area."

He said that they did not want to work a financial hardship on the library, noting that the $435,000 settlement falls within the limits of the library's insurance policy.

A second motive for proceeding was "to send a message to other libraries that this is an issue they should take seriously."

The library's director, Katherine G. Hadley, who was appointed to that post earlier this year after the board of directors allowed her predecessor's contract to lapse, declined to address the specifics of the plaintiffs' allegations in the interest of "moving forward." But she added that she stood by the library's official settlement statement that it "regrets that it did not respond sooner to the charges presented."

Volokh has his supporters, but his position appears to be the minority view among scholars.

Feminist scholar Catharine MacKinnon, a law professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in an e-mail message, "The First Amendment does not protect sexual harassment at work in any form, including through pornography. The pornography that came into the librarians' workplace via the internet created a hostile environment for their work because they were women. This is sex-based abuse, not protected freedom."

Professor Miranda McGowan of the University of Minnesota Law School, who has written on the First Amendment implications of sexual harassment law, said, "Volokh ignores all the contextual factors that courts and people in the workplace pay attention to."

She claimed that those who see sexual harassment law as infringing the First Amendment conflate two things: what is considered speech in its ordinary sense and what is considered speech for First Amendment purposes.

A threat like "I'm going to kill you," while certainly speech in the ordinary sense, would often be considered more conduct-like than speech-like depending on the context in which it is delivered and thus might not be deemed entitled to First Amendment protection, she said. McGowan admitted that libraries, newsrooms and universities can pose troublesome issues, because institutions devoted to the give and take of intellectual debate may have to tolerate speech that would be considered objectionable on a factory floor.

But she pointed out that the conduct in the Minneapolis case went far beyond mere speech. In any event, she said, she is more confident than Volokh that workplaces and the courts will be sensitive to the contextual niceties.

David Oppenheimer, a professor at Golden Gate University School of Law and the author of a critique of Volokh's position, argued that sexual harassment is not the steamroller that Volokh makes it out to be.

Asked what he would do if he were an employer in Volokh's worst-case scenario, he said he would sit down with his employees and work out a compromise to let the library pursue its mission while respecting the feelings of employees who strongly objected to certain materials.

"Volokh underestimates what reasonable people can accomplish," he concluded.

---

Source: "No Smut At Work, Please; Minn. Librarians Settle with Officials," by Gary Young, The National Law Journal, 15 September 2003.

© ALM Properties, Inc. 2003.
Republishing under US Copyright §107 Fair Use.

Read more: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=900005393712/No-smut-at-work-please

URL of this page:

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