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Before becoming a Utah representative, Nicholeen Peck , a Republican from Tooele, made headlines in 2018 when she claimed she could access pornographic content through academic research databases available to public school students. Her assertions were quickly debunked after the Utah Education and Telehealth Network (UETN), which oversees and manages these services, recreated the searches using the explicit terms and keywords provided by Peck and were unable to replicate the alleged pornographic results, according to a staff report from that time. Seven years later, Peck, now a freshman lawmaker, attempted to revive the issue — but this time through a proposed bill she sponsored during the latest legislative session.
HB473 would have tightened regulations on digital materials and research databases in public schools, building upon the state’s existing sensitive materials laws . Current law requires a book to be removed from all public schools in the state if at least three school districts (or at least two school districts and five charter schools) determine it amounts to “objective sensitive material”— pornographic or otherwise indecent content, as defined by Utah code. Peck’s proposal ultimately failed; it cleared the House Education Committee on Feb.
28 but was never heard in the Senate during the last week of session. It was during that Feb. 28 committee meeting where Peck, despite UETN’s findings, resurfaced the same allegations she made in 2018 — that “pornographic content” and “obscenities” can be found in Utah’s public school databases.
“We do not want [databases] to be teaching our children that prostitution is a satisfying job,” Peck said Feb. 28. “We don’t want it to teach BDSM.
We don’t want it to teach masturbation. We don’t want it to teach all of those things, which it’s teaching.” Anti-censorship organizations and librarians quickly and strongly opposed HB473.
“Libraries are not the problem,” said Rebekah Cummings, a committee co-chair for the Utah Library Association , before lawmakers Feb. 28. “Libraries are the solution.
Research databases are curated, walled gardens of credible resources appropriate for student research.” Although Peck’s bill fizzled out this year, Utah’s anti-censorship groups warn the issue isn’t going away. “This isn’t over yet,” said Peter Bromberg, associate director for EveryLibrary .
“There are groups behind it, and even here in Utah over the last few years, there have been repeated attempts to pass bills that would do something along these lines.” In a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune on March 21, Peck maintained that “Utah schools are not keeping with school instructional materials standards.” “The issue was first noticed in 2018,“ she said.
”And, despite some work done by UETN, there are still problems with databases not following state education standards.” What are digital databases? A digital database is an online resource that provides access to scholarly articles, journals and reference materials, typically for student research and academic purposes. For instance, if a student were writing a paper on World War II, they could enter that term into a database’s search bar, generating hundreds of primary sources for research.
In Utah, the Utah Education Network (UEN), a division of the UETN, helps to oversee and manage the databases, which are often provided through third-party vendors. Under existing law , any vendor contracted by the state is required to “block obscene or pornographic material” from resources offered in K-12 public schools. Databases are also curated for age-appropriateness by the UEN.
High schoolers, for example, can access a broader range of research collections than elementary school children, but all content is filtered to block “obscene” material. Adding another layer of protection, all Utah school-issued devices must also be equipped with software to prevent access to internet sites that contain pornographic or obscene material. That means if a student were to type an inappropriate term into a Google search bar, the results would be limited or blocked altogether.
After Peck’s 2018 assertions, which were targeted at a research database called EBSCO Information Services , the UETN began conducting regular audits of the database. The state no longer contracts with EBSCO, according a UETN official, but during its partnership it conducted a total of 28 audits . The last one, published in December 2023 , found zero instances of “inappropriate search terms” between October and December of that year.
The report concluded that “the term filter is working as it’s supposed to.” During those three months, students performed nearly 2 million searches, with “artificial intelligence” being the most searched term. Cummings cited those audits and existing Utah law as reasons why she felt Peck was proposing “unnecessary legislation,” according to a post published on her Substack .
Let Utah Read, an anti-censorship organization, reposted her thoughts on its blog. “This bill is the epitome of a solution looking for a problem,” Cummings wrote. “Whether intentionally, or due to ignorance, Rep.
Peck has repeatedly presented false information as fact.” What is Peck saying about Utah’s digital databases? (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Utah Capitol in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2025.
HB473 aimed to expand Utah’s sensitive materials law. It would have allowed UETN to immediately cut off student access to a database and revoke vendor contracts if “three separate items of digital instructional material that the vendor provides” violated the state’s sensitive materials law. The bill also would have required public schools to provide parents with information on sensitive materials and how to challenge school materials “at the time of student registration” each year.
Peck said during the Feb. 28 House Education Committee meeting that, beyond her alleged 2018 findings, the bill was crafted in response to parents who recently told her that their children had accessed pornographic content through school databases. “We all know that children are getting exposed to porn at the school for the first time,” Peck said Feb.
28. “We know that they’re seeing all this stuff, but there’s nothing you can do about it.” Bromberg said Peck’s assertions were “factually inaccurate and obviously so” and pleaded with lawmakers on Feb.
28 to “interrogate” her allegations and “look at what is true and what is not before making a decision.” The bill passed out of committee before it died in the Senate. Also during the Feb.
28 meeting, Peck asserted that searching the term “daddy” in a Utah school database led to a website where, she alleged, “children could hook up with men.” Peck had previously demonstrated this exact search in a 2021 YouTube video, but her portrayal of events on Feb. 28 differed from those in the video demonstration.
Peck demonstrates ‘daddy’ search in 2021 YouTube video In the Nov. 2, 2021, video, posted to the YouTube channel @brookestephens7967, Peck searched “daddy” in Gale , an online database available to Utah’s K-12 students. She scrolled through the results and clicked on an entry from the “Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender.
” UEN officials told The Tribune that students currently do not have access to that particular encyclopedia through Gale or any other database. However, officials were unable to confirm if students had access at the time Peck performed the search. The entry Peck clicked on defined “daddy” within the context of sex and gender as “an older male in a romantic or sexual relationship with a younger person.
” It continued: “More than a simple indication of a couple’s difference in chronological age, however, daddy signals a particular role in an unequally structured relationship in which the male has greater financial resources or more social power or cultural authority than his partner.” It went on to straightforwardly define “heterosexual daddies” and “gay daddies” as well as other types of “daddy” relationships within sexual subcultures. In the video, the term “Silver Daddies” appeared as a footnote at the end of the article as plain, unlinked text.
Peck then copied the text, exited the database, and pasted “silver daddies” into a Google search. The first Google result was a dating site for “mature gay men,” a website that students would be unable to access on school-issued devices due to internet content blockers. While explicit, the site appears to cater to both younger and older adult men and not as a website where “children could hook up with men,” as Peck described to lawmakers in February.
The Tribune asked Peck if the search she performed in the YouTube video was the same search she referenced in February. She did not directly answer the question but claimed that Utah student databases are “still revealing sensitive materials and links to sensitive materials.” “Showing, linking to, or sharing links with students that contain sensitive materials are content promotion actions that are not approved by [schools], [the Utah State Board of Education] nor the state, and need to be addressed in order to keep children safe,” Peck said.
Bromberg said Peck’s claims are untrue. “She didn’t, in fact, find a link in this database,” Bromberg said of the YouTube video. “That’s misleading intentionally.
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It’s concerning.” Bromberg said that when organizations like EveryLibrary oppose measures like HB473, they are often accused of endorsing material like Peck asserted she found. “What we support is the access to information for students that is grade-level appropriate for them,” Bromberg said.
“Not every book is going to be right for every student, but just because one book is not right for a particular student doesn’t mean we should take it off the shelf and then negatively impact another student’s ability to access that book.” Peck isn’t the only person who’s asserted that schools are providing pornographic material to kids through research databases. In 2018, a group of parents in Colorado sued EBSCO and the Colorado Library Consortium, alleging that its research databases provided pornography to students and that the consortium aided the company, The Denver Post reported .
The parent group agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice less than a year later. The parents still believed their allegations, according to a statement from the conservative Thomas More Society, which represented the parents legally. But they didn’t want to chance paying the defendants’ legal fees should they lose the case.
Despite the dismissal, the school district in question still decided to drop EBSCO’s contract after parent pressure, according to The Denver Post. “Good public policy is based on facts, and it’s also based on constitutional principles,” Bromberg said. He added that it’s concerning when lawmakers have repeatedly enacted legislation based on beliefs that are “clearly false and misleading.
” Who is Peck, the bill’s sponsor? (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Nicholeen Peck, for Utah State House District 28, during a GOP election night watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024, in Draper. Before becoming a lawmaker this year, Peck and her family appeared on a BBC reality television show called “The World’s Strictest Parents.
” The premise involved troubled or rebellious teenagers being sent to live with a strict family in another country for a week in the hopes that the experience would change their behavior. Peck’s episode aired in 2009. In 2012, Peck became the president of the Worldwide Organization for Women , a faith-based, pro-family organization that has “consultative status at the United Nations through the Economic and Social Counsel,” according to its website.
It was then Peck began her work at the Utah Legislature as an “unpaid lobbyist for faith, family and sovereignty,” according to her campaign website. Peck has also authored several books on parenting and developed a parenting system and courses that she offers through her website, Teaching Self-Government. She took over the Utah House District 28 seat after Rep.
Tim Jimenez withdrew his reelection bid last March . Jimenez served for one term and asked Peck to run as the Republican candidate in his stead. She defeated her Democrat opponent Fred Baker with 68% of the vote.
Peck was behind some of the most controversial bills this session, including HB521 , which did not pass but would have prohibited any public funds from going toward gender-transition treatments and procedures, effectively blocking transgender Medicaid recipients from care. However, two others she sponsored were signed into law last month. The first, HB209 , lifts the requirement for parents who homeschool their children to sign an affidavit swearing they have never been convicted of child abuse.
The second, HB233 , blocks schools from partnering with Planned Parenthood to teach students about sexual health but allows public schools to continue existing sexual-education relationships with faith-based entities , including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Note to readers • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.
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