JoAn Karkos, who checked It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris out from the public libraries in Lewiston and Auburn, Maine, and refused to return them in September, pleaded not guilty to a civil charge of failing to return library property December 19. Her trial was set for May 28, 2008, the Lewiston Sun Journal reported December 20.
Her appearance in court came the week after Lewiston police decided not to pursue an obscenity complaint Karkos filed November 19 against Lewiston Public Library for carrying the sex-education book. “The determination that we made was that having those books available does not violate city ordinances,” police Sergeant David Chick said in the December 11 Sun Journal. Lewiston’s obscenity ordinance covers materials with a “shameful or morbid interest in sex,” and the police found that the book’s educational aims put it outside the ordinance’s reach.
“I don’t view this as obscene material in the least,” said library Director Rick Speer. “I thought of it as a waste of the police’s time and of ours, and that’s just been ridiculous.”
Posted December 21, 2007.