EmployeeScreenIQ Blog

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – Another camp season is passing by, and there’s no authority for the state to enforce background checks on employees at residential camps across Ohio.

A bill to fix the problem is stalled after the state Legislature broke for the summer in June without passing it.

Bill sponsor State Sen. Steve Stivers, a Republican who is running for Congress, said in late April he hoped he could pass the bill before the start of summer camp season. Democrats have accused him of not following through on a commitment.

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This is a very timely article considering I just wrote about background checks at camps this morning. This article comes from the Wall Street Journal.  People we pay to keep our children safe at camp are putting them into harms way by not conducting a background check.

Rape Case Against Counselor Puts Camps On Guard

A recent rape case involving a popular, longtime counselor at an exclusive all-girls camp in Maine is raising anew questions about how camps vet the people they hire to teach, entertain and safeguard children.

The camp, Tripp Lake, is one of the nation’s oldest girls’ camps and is a popular destination for the children of New York bankers and lawyers, some of whom call it “the Harvard of summer camps.” During the off-season, a 35-year-old counselor who had worked at the camp for 14 years was imprisoned in the U.K. for raping an 8-year-old girl there. British authorities said they discovered underwear from campers in the man’s Derby, England, residence and that some of the 4,000 indecent images of children found in his possession may have been taken at the camp.

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When stories come from your own hometown they can’t be ignored.  I have two kids, both in camp, nothing infuriates me more than people putting kids in harms way!

Report: Ohio camps aren’t checking up on employees

Published on Sunday Jul 06, 2008

Just 42 percent of summer day camps surveyed by the state’s Department of Job and Family Services have completed mandatory background checks of employees, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

But camps that fail to carry out the checks have little to fear. The state’s Department of Job and Family Services has little recourse, since there’s no real punishment provision in the state law that requires the checks, department spokesman Dennis Evans said.

Department employees last month polled 96 of the state’s approximately 250 children’s day camps, 70 more than it checked a year ago when the department found that nine of 26 camps had not completed the required checks, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

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