by Jason Morris

So it looks like the city was a “day late and a dollar short” on their background screening program.  It appears in 2007 they were enlightened and decided to start running background checks….but what about current employees?  A day late; They should have been running these way before 2007, don’t they read the news? A dollar short; adding a simple service like IQ Review would have gone back and checked those not already screened.

Swimming Pool Rape Case Prompts Demand for Background Check Policy Review

By Amos Maki (Contact), Memphis Commercial Appeal
Thursday, August 21, 2008

Mayor Willie Herenton and members of the Memphis City Council are demanding answers after an employee at a city swimming pool was charged with raping a 17-year-old girl and exposing her to HIV.

Timothy Bernard Payne, a pool attendant at Westwood Community Center, was hired in 2006, one year before the city began running background checks.

Payne was indicted on a rape charge in 1993, but pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of misdemeanor assault. He was charged Monday with the July 31 rape and is being held in the Shelby County Jail on $250,000 bond.

On Aug. 5, Human Resources director Lorene Essex told the council she would perform regular background checks on temporary employees who had contact with children after a television station reported a city lifeguard remained on the job after being charged with assault.

Essex said the lifeguard, who had since been terminated, had a clean background check when he was hired, but because the city does not do yearly follow-up checks, the charge he received while he was a lifeguard was unknown to city officials.

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by Jason Morris

Media Bridges fires sex offender

The non-profit group Media Bridges is conducting background checks on all its volunteers after a tipster alerted officials that a Tier III sexual offender - used for Ohio’s worst offenders - was working for them.

The offender, Bryan Lee, 35, of Avondale, was dismissed Wednesday.

“He came across as a nice, eager young man who wants to help people,” said Tom Bishop, executive director of Media Bridges, which shows people how to use video and audio software to create movies, television shows, and multimedia programs.

While anyone can use the equipment, the organization has a focus on children, trying to help them with skills for the future, Bishop said.

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by Jason Morris

Earlier this week we wrote about sex offender recidivism rates.  These are the type of individuals working around our kids when the employer fails to conduct a proper background check.

Sex Offender Charged with Molesting 3 Children

A registered sex offender faces more sex-crimes charges for allegedly abusing three children over the course of a year.

Cumberland County deputies arrested John Thomas Nackab, 45, of 204 Gillespie St., early Thursday. He was charged with one count each of first-degree rape and aggravated assault and 21 counts of taking indecent liberties with a child.

Investigators said Nackab began victimizing the children, aged 7, 8 and 10, more than than a year ago. He lived in the same house with the children and their mother during that time, detectives said.

Nackab was being held in the Cumberland County Detention Center under a $620,000 secured bond on Thursday afternoon. His first court appearance was set for Friday.

Nackab was charged in with raping a child in November 1997 in Cumberland. Detectives said he pled that charge down to taking indecent liberties with a child and was ordered to sign up with the National Sex Offenders Registry.

State Department of Corrections records show that Nackab received probation for that conviction. He served a little more than a year in jail for violating that probation with a conviction on a charge of driving-while-impaired in June 2001.

by Jason Morris

This new law will make running background checks easier for businesses in Tennessee. Kudos to the Tennessee Legislature!

MEMPHIS, TN - Eyewitness News Gets Results: In May, Eyewitness News Everywhere exposed a loophole in Tennessee state law that allowed sex offenders to work on ice cream trucks. After seeing our story, lawmakers did something about it.

On Thursday, June 12, 2008, Governor Phil Bredesen signed a sex offender bill into law. Chief Investigator Jeni DiPrizio uncovered several sex offender that worked on Mid-South ice cream trucks, including Ivan Pryor. Pryor was arrested three times for rape of a child, sexual exploitation and exposing himself to a person under age 13. Pryor is now off the streets and in Jail.

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by Nick Fishman

I’m sorry, but this is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard (okay, I hear many stupid things every day especially from me, but this is up there).  The state of Virginia has a law that mandates that day camps perform background checks on their employees.  Most of us would agree that this is a good law.  It allows camps to weed out those who have been convicted of crimes that would disqualify applicants from employment, especially Sex Offenders.

Evidently, that law (nor any similar laws) does not apply to overnight camps where it would seem there is even greater opportunity for predators.

See excerpt from the article Summer Camp Concerns below.  This should disgust any parent who entrusts their children to overnight camps.

A former boy scout leader, Rodney Almond, served time for sodomizing a 15-year old camper at a Surry county boy scout camp.  He also pleaded guilty to similar charges in Norfolk and Virginia Beach.  But if you think this can’t happen closer to home, think again.
The case shows a loophole in virginia’s requirements for camps. That’s because Virginia law does not require residential camps to run criminal background checks on employees.

Think someone ought to revisit this moronic loop hole?

by Jason Morris

Another article about sex offenders in our nations schools! The recidivism rate for sex offenders is higher than any other crime.

“Facts don’t cease to exist because they are ignored” - Aldous Huxley

A background check was never conducted on this employee.

Sex Offender Discovered Working at Catholic School

TOLEDO — Lucas County Sheriff’s deputies have found a sex offender who’s been “missing” for quite some time. They say he’s been working at a Toledo parish and school — for years.

Five years ago, 60-year-old William Werner was a sex offender looking for work. He found it at as a part-time cleaner at St. Joan of Arc Parish.

Parish representatives have told deputies Werner did a good job at the church and also helped clean the school. The Catholic Diocese of Toledo says when the parish hired Werner, no one knew of his past.

It wasn’t until last week, when officers in California checked on Werner’s whereabouts, that the parish discovered he had committed sex crimes against a 13-year-old girl. He was convicted in 1989, released 10 years later and then came to Toledo.

Article

by Jason Morris

Tougher sex offender laws make it easier to conduct thorough background checks!  While this article does not lend itself directly to employment background investigations, tougher laws are good for our industry.

Sex Offender Law Sent to Governor

BY GEORGE PAWLACZYK AND BETH HUNDSDORFER
News-Democrat

A proposed law to correct an earlier error in a statute, which was supposed to prohibit child sex offenders from living within 500 feet of an in-home day care, has passed both the House and the Senate and awaits Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s signature.

The governor has 60 days from receiving the bill to sign it.

House Bill 4402 resulted from an investigative story published Feb. 17 in the News-Democrat that reported that none of the state’s home-based day cares was actually covered by a 2006 law specifically designed to protect them.

The flaw was in the 2006 law’s definition of a “day care,” which was defined as any licensed for nine or more children. None of the state’s approximately 10,000 in-home day cares had more than eight children because of a regulation of the Department of Children and Family Services requiring that an assistant be hired if the home was licensed for nine or more kids.

Article

by Jason Morris

No one will be around my children without a proper background check!

Prom limo driver had a suspended license, is sex offender

By J.J. Huggins and Bill Cantwell

HAVERHILL — Some parents of Haverhill High School students are angry that their children were driven to the prom by a limousine driver who had a suspended license and is a convicted sex offender.

Police said they will summons to court Troy Barrett, 29, of Lee, N.H., on a charge of driving with a suspended license. Police said he was driving a limousine owned by Ambassador Travel of Salisbury that was hired by several Haverhill High students to take them to the prom Friday night.

Barrett drove the students to the prom at Atkinson, N.H., Country Club. The event ended at 11:30 p.m., and Barrett was about 15 minutes late picking up the 10 students who hired him. The teens said they saw empty beer bottles and a cooler inside the limousine. Barrett said that he transported another party after he dropped them off, the teens said.

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by Jason Morris

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Reported by: Stacy Daniel

ARROYO GRANDE

A sex offender in a kindergarten classroom?  It doesn’t sound possible, but it happened at Harloe Elementary School in Arroyo Grande.

Some parents are saying if the school had performed a simple background check, the man never would have been allowed on campus.

Arroyo Grande police say the school was made aware of the situation when an alert parent who works for the Sheriff’s Department recognized the name of the school volunteer.

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by Jason Morris

In my opinion one of the most over looked and underutilized searches in employment screening is the Sex Offender Registry Search, an inexpensive way to protect your employees, customers and your reputation. There are over 250,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. These people need to work and maintain a living. The question is: are they working for you?

Conducting a Sex Offender Registry search is the most effective way to screen out these predators. A Countywide Felony & Misdemeanor Search will sometimes uncover these crimes but if the perpetrator knows the system, they can outsmart it. A Countywide search is still the most effective way of finding a record if it exists in that particular County. Using additional tools such as the Registry Search will allow you to uncover additional areas not found otherwise. Organizations must be diligent in trying to uncover these misdeeds. Using your entire arsenal of searches to uncover this type of criminal history is imperative. A typical Sex Offender Registry Search will scour a County and, or State Sex Offender Registry to see if your subject has a listing. Per the FCRA, the result would again lead us back to the source of the record to make it compliant and reportable to you.

One of our clients operates several overnight camps for children with terminal illnesses. I have had the pleasure of speaking at their national conferences a few times and the example I use regularly is as follows: People who like numbers find jobs in accounting. People who like medicine find jobs in the medical field. People who like writing find jobs writing. People who like to molest children WILL put themselves in situations where they are around kids. The facts are there: sexual predators feed their hunger by exploiting situations and taking the opportunity presented to them. Unfortunately, sex offenders don’t only prey on children, hiring a sex offender could jeopardize your clients, employees and your reputation.

Click here for some interesting information about recidivism rates among sex offenders. A few interesting Facts:

• For women, homicide was the second leading cause of death on the job in 2003.¹⁰
• Women are the victims in 80 percent of rapes and sexual assaults that take place in the workplace – at least 29,000 acts of rape or sexual assault each year.¹¹
• Women who have been raped or sexually assaulted report diminished work functioning, sometimes for up to eight months after the attack.¹²
• An estimated one million women are stalked each year in the U.S.,¹³ and about one-fourth of them report missing work as a result of the stalking, missing an average of eleven days.¹⁴
• One study of female domestic violence victims found that 44 percent were left without transportation when the abuser disabled the car or hid the car keys.¹⁵ ’
• In a survey of 7,000 women, 37 percent said domestic violence had a negative impact on their job performance.¹⁶
• Among a group of abused employees receiving workplace counseling, the average absenteeism rate of the group at the time of beginning counseling was about 30 percent higher than the average employee absenteeism rate.¹⁷

This information is available for all fifty states due to Megan’s Law. Megan’s Law is named after Megan Kanka, a New Jersey girl who was raped and killed at age seven by a known child molester who had moved across the street from the Kanka family without their knowledge. In the wake of the tragedy, the Kankas sought to have local communities warned about sex offenders in the area and on May 17, 1996, President Clinton signed Megan’s Law.

¹⁰ U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2004). Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries: Table 4. Fatal occupational injuries by worker characteristics and event or exposure, 2003.
¹¹ U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (August, 2001). Crime Characteristics: Summary Findings.
¹² Resick, P.A., Calhoun, K.S., Atkeson, B.M., & Ellis, E.M. (1981). Social adjustment in victims of sexual assault. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 49, 705-712, as cited in Koss, M.P. (1991). The Rape Victim. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, p. 62.
¹³ U.S. Dept. of Justice, National Institute of Justice. November, 2000. Full Report of the Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women. NCJ 183781., pp. 14 – 15.
¹⁴ Tjaden, P. & Thoennes, N. (April, 1998). National Institute of Justice Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Research Brief: Stalking in America: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice.
¹⁵ McFarlane, J., Malecha, A. Gist, J, Schulz, P. et al. (2000). Indicators of intimate partner violence in women’s employment: Implications for workplace action. AAOHN Journal, 48(5), 215.
¹⁶ The Body Shop. (September, 1997). The Many Faces of Domestic Violence and Its Impact on the Workplace. New York, NY: EDK Associates.
¹⁷ Urban, B.Y. (2000). Anonymous Foundation Domestic Abuse Prevention Program Evaluation: Final Client Survey Report. Chicago, IL: The University of Illinois at Chicago. Contact byurban@aol.com.
¹⁸ Burke, D.F. (January, 2000). When employees are vulnerable, employers are too. The National Law Journal.
¹⁹ Patrice Tanaka & Company, Inc. October 16, 2002. News Release: Corporate Leaders See Domestic Violence as a Major Problem That Affects Their Employees According to Benchmark Survey by Liz Clairborne, Inc. Contact Lauree Ostrofsky (212) 229-0500, x 236.
²⁰ Partnership for Prevention. (2002). Domestic Violence and the Workplace. Washington, D.C.: Partnership for Prevention, (202) 833-0009 or www.prevent.org.
²¹ Ibid.
²² Urban, B.Y. (2003). The Attorney General’s Report to Congress: Workplace Responses to Violence Against Women. An unpublished report of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, with release pending.