BC School Trustee ‘Traumatized’ by Detailed Child Rape in School Library Book

A file image of a school library. John Moore/Getty Images

Explicitly sexual, and even violently sexual, books found in B.C. school libraries have sparked an outcry that has especially flared up in Chilliwack School District 33.

One of the books, “Identical,” by Ellen Hopkins, details a father raping his 7-year-old daughter. “I was traumatized,” District 33 Trustee Heather Maahs told The Epoch Times. “I cannot imagine what that would do to a child reading it or an adolescent.”

Maahs is one of a minority of trustees on her board who has expressed grave concerns over this book and others, including “Gender Queer, a Memoir,” by Maia Kobabe. Kobabe’s book includes detailed drawings of sexual acts between two males.

“It needlessly sexualizes children before they are even remotely mature enough to digest some of the suggestions in these books and pictures,“ she said. ”You can never unsee these pictures.” The books “equate to pornography,” she said, and they start children on the wrong path in a world where pornography addiction is a problem.

Board Chair Willow Reichelt has positioned herself on the opposite side of the issue.

At a school board meeting on Feb. 7, she said most teenagers have sex in their lives or on their minds and “there’s going to be some sexual content in your books. I think that trying to ban all such content is just illogical.” She did not respond to a request from The Epoch Times for further comment.

She said in a Feb. 19 Facebook post, “The book banners keep showing a one-page excerpt from [“Gender Queer”] out of context that depicts a sex act.” The book’s author is “asexual,” Reichelt said, and the scene is meant to show how uncomfortable the author had become with sex or romantic relationships.

“I found ‘Gender Queer’ interesting and educational. It gave me insight into what it means to be nonbinary in a way that I hadn’t thought about before,” Reichelt said.

She said the book is available in two of the district’s high school libraries and the only reason a younger reader would see the images in question is because the book’s critics keep sharing them.

‘Politically Correct’ Educational Resources Policy

The board passed a new learning resources policy at the Feb. 7 meeting, with Maahs and Trustee Richard Procee as the only dissenting voices. The policy is now several pages long and filled with “a lot of politically correct verbiage,” Maahs said at the meeting, having grown from an earlier version of only one paragraph.

Maahs read out a couple of excerpts from the policy, saying she doesn’t know what exactly they mean. One said that the learning resources should provide “an appropriate context for complex issues all the while highlighting the importance of having an awareness of personal bias.” Another said the policy should create “dynamic programming in order to foster innovative and inclusive opportunities.”

A woman with grandchildren in the school district spoke at the meeting saying the policy lists several principles for learning resources, but most aren’t about academics. “All the diversity and the ... ideology seem to be the first criteria,” she said. She also took issue with the “appropriate context” stipulation. “Who is deciding what is appropriate?”

Reichelt said during the meeting that the books are reviewed by a panel of educators. This “puts education in the hands of education professionals, which is where it should be,” she said. Some parents at the meeting and Trustee Procee expressed concerns that parents were being excluded.

A provincial learning resources policy with similar wording is set to roll out after spring break, according to Superintendent Rohan Arul-Pragasam. He read excerpts from it at the meeting.

Regarding parental concerns about the sexual content of library books, Arul-Pragasam said the board’s policy includes a process for parents to submit complaints about particular resources. Maahs said such processes are “onerous.”

‘Illegal Pornography’

Maahs said her piece at the meeting, for the most part, but when she started talking about the books being “illegal” pornography, Reichelt cut her mic. Reichelt cut the mics of other speakers who made similar comments.

“This is certainly not the way a chair should act,” Maahs told The Epoch Times afterward. “I actually spoke to her after the meeting and I asked her not to cut my mic just because she didn’t like what I was saying, or didn’t agree with me. And the following meeting, she cut my mic twice.”

Maahs said she has received 360 emails objecting to both the books and the way Reichelt ran the meeting. “I have never, ever seen that many emails from concerned parents.”

Reichelt defended her actions, saying on Facebook that she would not allow people to say teachers are distributing illegal child pornography because it’s “a defamatory lie.”

The RCMP got involved.

Sgt. Krista Vrolyk said in a Feb. 22 press release that, after investigating the matter, the RCMP has determined the content of concern in the Chilliwack school libraries “does not meet the definition of child pornography under the Criminal Code of Canada.”

However, the investigator did find “the material may be deemed inappropriate or concerning to some people.”

Pierre Barns, a father in Abbotsford, B.C., finds the material very concerning, and he also finds the RCMP’s statement on it concerning.

“It makes it even worse, because the people will interpret this [as], ‘OK, well, I can show all kinds of sexual stuff to my children, and it’s completely legal,’” Barns told The Epoch Times.

He has emailed school boards all over Canada asking them to remove the books from their libraries. “So many books contain sexually explicit material. They contain images of people having sexual intercourse. And they don’t just use proper language to define the sexual intercourse, they actually use very vulgar language,” Barns said.

Images Shunned at Meetings

Barns and other activists on the issue have received pushback from some trustees for displaying the images from the books in question while voicing complaints about them.

Tanya Gaw, founder of advocacy group Action4Canada, was at the Chilliwack meeting and had also presented at a school board meeting in Mission, B.C., in January. She has been working with parents in various parts of the province to raise concerns about these library books. She said school boards don’t want these materials presented at board meetings.

“The whole crazy thing about it is that we’re trying to find ways to go to these board meetings and expose the books,” Gaw said. It’s hard to do so without showing the images in them or reading the excerpts, she said. She showed the images from “Gender Queer” at the Mission meeting, breaking protocol because she hadn’t applied to make a visual presentation. Action4Canada was banned from future meetings.

At the Feb. 7 Chilliwack meeting, a parent and educator in the district spoke of mental health concerns for her students. She said she works with vulnerable students, including those in the LGBTQ community, who have experienced sexual violence. She said some of the books “are potentially revictimizing our youth and children.”

“I’m not here to suggest any kinds of books be taken, banned,“ she said. ”I’m just here as a concerned youth care worker.”