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| A controversy about banning books in New Jersey has led to a defamation lawsuit. |
A New Jersey librarian just dragged a couple of people into the latter stage of the "F@ck around and Find Out" principle.
From The Miami Herald
A woman working as a high school librarian is fighting back in court against local residents who she says are targeting her and calling her a “child predator” over books on the school’s shelves. Roxana Russo Caivano, a librarian at Roxbury High School in New Jersey since 2010, accuses four Roxbury town residents of slandering and libeling her by suggesting she’s exposing students to books that they consider pornographic, according to a lawsuit filed in state superior court in late March.One resident attacked Caivano’s character online on a Facebook page for high school students’ parents — writing she’s including “hard-core pornography” in the school’s library collection — while three others accused her of luring and exposing children to pornographic material, “characterizing (her) as a child abuser,” at a school board meeting, a complaint says. Now she’s suing the four residents for defamation. She says their accusations, which began in September, wrongly accuse her of criminal behavior and are aimed at harming her reputation and job, according to the complaint.. . . Three defendants named in the complaint are women who spoke out against Caivano at a March 6 Roxbury Board of Education meeting, according to the lawsuit. At the meeting, they “attacked (Caivano’s) credentials and employment status, and caused (her) emotional distress by stating that (she) has engaged in luring children with sexually explicit materials, stating that (she) is a child predator, stating that (she) exposed minors to pornographic material…,” the complaint says.. . .Caivano says one of the women has published “libelous and defamatory” information on a blog, saying she’s “guilty of criminal acts by including certain works of literature” at the school library, according to the complaint. That blog is titled The Roxbury Parental Rights in Education, The Daily Record reported.The blog says “Pornography, obscenity, pervasively vulgar. Regardless of how you describe them, there are books in Roxbury Public High School that are not age or school appropriate. Parents have sent us correspondence with the librarian and the Superintendent who defend keeping them in there under the guise of ‘‘inclusivity’ and ‘reflecting the community.’”
Caivano is seeking an unspecified amount of damages. I hope to see more of this. It's long past time for these book banners and wannabe child protectors to reap the fruits of their hysteria.
