Lewd Behavior At Public Libraries Investigated

Shocking acts of indecent exposure, sexual harassment and people recruiting teenage girls for questionable purposes – it’s all happened in public libraries around the metro area.

We poured over thousands of reports and complaints and found that libraries are not as safe as you might think.

Public libraries are open to everyone. You don’t need a membership card to get in. And while most of the time, public libraries are quiet places to study, read and use the internet, we found librarians consistently have to deal with people who use the libraries for indecent – even illegal – acts.

“I see this man’s hands in his pants. I was like, I don’t know who this is, this is a library, why are you doing this,” says a teenage victim who asked not to be identified.

The teen is still troubled by what happened to her in Atlanta’s Southwest Regional Library last year. She was 15 at the time, alone and studying for an exam when a man exposed himself and made lewd gestures in her direction.

“I was scared cause some people say why didn’t I get up and run, but if I was to get up and run he was probably going to chase me and grab me and then we’re going to have a bigger problem,” she says.

She’s not the only victim.

We poured through 3 years of incident reports at four metro Atlanta public libraries. In all, we found 144 cases of inappropriate sexual behavior.

Among them: A man “fondling himself in the children’s room” at the Buford Sugar Hill Library. In DeKalb’s Brookhaven Library, “Five teenage males engaging in sexual acts in the juvenile area.” And in Sandy Springs, according to a police report. A man was touching-groping and exposing himself in front of the wrong victim – Officer Tasha Jenkins was working undercover. That case is still pending.

“He did what he wanted to do and didn’t know who he was doing it to, and at that time, I apprehended him,” says Officer Jenkins.

The director of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library system says extra security can cut down on lewd behavior, but can’t prevent it altogether.

“At the end of the day, we are a public building. We are open to everyone,” says John Szabo with the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library system.

Libraries say they report suspected crimes to police. Not all incidents we investigated were crimes, but are troubling none the less.

“They said they couldn’t stop him because he didn’t harass me,” says another teenager.

She is talking about her bizarre encounter with Clive Richards at Atlanta’s downtown library. As mentioned in his web page, he told her he was setting up a kingdom for young females and wanted her to join. He showed her more on a library computer.

“…About his kingdom, where the project for building this compound is,” she explains. “I’ve seen a lot of things, but that by far is the craziest.”

“I want to be a ruler,” says Clive Richards.

Richards told Channel 2’s Tom Regan that he is serious about creating a kingdom made up of young women. He’s written about it in his books.

“My favorite age, when I recruited them from 12 to 16,” Richards says.

Richards says he’s never had sex with anyone under legal age of consent.

“I’m not a pimp,” explained Richards.

Channel 2’s Tom Regan said, “You’re not a pimp? Some people might think that, hearing the story.”

“A pimp, what he do, he pimps his females and gets money from them. I don’t do that because I’m too jealous. As stated in my book, I’m a jealous king,” explains Richards.

We need to emphasize Clive Richards has not been charged with, nor accused of any crime. He says he runs a construction business and sells his books to earn the seed money for his kingdom.