San Francisco Superior Court placed a 48-year-old man on probation September 18 after he pleaded no contest to one count of felony vandalism, with a hate-crime enhancement, for defacing more than 600 books, most on gay and lesbian subjects, at San Francisco’s Main Library and Chinatown branch. John Perkyns, an apartment building security guard, must undergo counseling, stay away from all city libraries, and pay $9,600 in restitution to the library system.
According to the September 19 San Francisco Chronicle, librarians first noticed that books were being sliced and sometimes stuffed with torn-up religious material during the summer of 2000. Perkyns was finally caught by a librarian in April 2001 just as he was returning a freshly slashed gay history book to the Main Library shelves.
James Mason, materials manager for the library’s general collections, said some of the damaged volumes will be difficult to replace because they are out of print. “My opinion is,” he told the Chronicle, “the $9,600 wouldn’t cover the replacement of 600 books.”
Prosecutor Sam Totah said he did not know what agenda Perkyns had: “It could be religiously based, but it just seems to be focused on gays and lesbians.” The head of library security, Rachel MacLachlan, reported that the vandalism was sometimes “kind of insane” and even included books by Gay Talese, historian Peter Gay, and a poetry book called Enola Gay, after the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. After leaving court, Perkyns reportedly wrote out a $2,000 check as the first installment of his restitution, and police delivered it to the library.
Posted September 23, 2002.