Legal News

Nebraska Gov. Says State Workers Shouldn?t Help Disabled Buy Porn

By Dionne Searcey

Fresh from fixing a law that briefly turned Nebraska into a national repository for unruly teenagers, Gov. David Heineman (pictured) has turned his focus from safe haven laws to the state’s role in obtaining pornography for some residents.

Heineman is reviewing a state policy that requires state employees to help patients at state hospitals buy pornography. The policy was highlighted in an Omaha World-Herald story concerning an alleged sexual assault at the Beatrice State Developmental Center, which houses developmentally disabled residents.

According to the paper, the assault suspect, a developmentally disabled man, had obtained permission from employees to possess pornography and had even been driven by state workers to two sex shops to buy it.

“I don’t like it at all,” Heineman told the newspaper in this follow-up story.

Heineman has plans to discuss with the state Attorney General’s Office discontinuing any involvement from state workers. The governor said, however, he would not restrict residents or family members from buying such material.

Officials of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services said that under its policies concerning “appropriate sexual expression,” a resident at the Beatrice center or other state facilities for the developmentally disabled can obtain pornography if it’s approved by a treatment team.

One Nebraska advocate for the mentally disabled said the outing for the man, who has been accused of sexually harassing the same woman he allegedly assaulted, was “like pouring kerosene on a fire.”

A footnote: the Beatrice center has been under fire for months as authorities investigate numerous allegations of abuse and neglect. Regardless, the incident raises some thorny legal issues for those interested in disabled rights as well as civil rights.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on November 26, 2008 (boomark / email).