Sandusky (Penn State Accused Sex Abuser) was denied a volunteer position in 2010 due to a Failed Background Check

POSTED: 12/12/11 11:35 AM
CATEGORY: Industry News, Uncategorized

 WHP-TV CBS Channel 21News in Pennsylvania, reported a story on Jerry Sandusky – the former Penn State University assistant football coach currently charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse in a Grand Jury Presentment  – failed a background check for a volunteer football coaching position at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in 2010 after he did not disclose that he was under investigation for child abuse at a high school in another county in the state.

CBS 21 News reports that the accusations at the high school arose after a student’s mother reported that her son was sexually assaulted by Sandusky, who was working as a volunteer football coach, the same job that he applied for at
Juniata College, and that the college subsequently wrote in a rejection letter to Sandusky: “You failed to include this information on the background verification form that you filled out at the time of your interview.” After being denied the position, CBS 21 News reports Juniata College informed the football coach at the time Sandusky could not be associated with the school’s football program.

According to the 23-page Grand Jury Presentment, Sandusky “founded The Second Mile, a charity initially devoted to helping troubled young boys. It was within The Second Mile program that Sandusky found his victims.” Later
on Page 1, the Grand Jury Presentment stated that through the charity, “Sandusky had access to hundreds of boys, many of whom were vulnerable due to their social situations.”  These situations emphasize the need for volunteer organizations to protect those whom they serve and be diligent in requiring background checks of their volunteer s and staff.  You must protect the people put in vulnerable positions.  For more information visit http://www.backgroundchecksforvolunteers.com/ . True Hire has designed a background check program that will fit your organization’s needs. Please call us for more information at 1-800-262-7301.

Sources:

http://www.whptv.com/content/Sandusky/story/Sanduskys-return-to-coaching-derailed/ibh5wvVLNkWQg-h4hbo39g.cspx.

http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/uploadedFiles/Press/Sandusky-Grand-Jury-Presentment.pdf.

Connecticut to Restrict Credit Bureau Use in Hiring

POSTED: 08/3/11 10:35 AM
CATEGORY: Uncategorized

Effective October 1, 2011, a new law in Connecticut -

S.B. 361, signed by Governor Dannel Malloy, will prohibit certain employers from using credit reports in making hiring and employment decisions regarding existing employees or job applicants.

 The law applies to all employers in Connecticut with at least one employee. Connecticut is one of six U.S. states – joining Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Oregon, and Washington – that currently prohibit the use of credit history in employment decisions.

 S.B. 361 bans almost all employers from requiring job applicants or current employees to consent to a request for a credit report as a condition of employment.  Exceptions to the statute are: employers that are financial institutions as defined under law; credit reports required to be obtained by employers by law; and credit reports “substantially related to the employee’s current or potential job.” These “substantially related” reports are allowable if the position:

• Is a managerial position that involves setting the direction or control of a business, division, unit or an agency of a business;
• Involves access to personal or financial information of customers, employees or the employer, other than information customarily provided in a retail transaction;
• Involves a fiduciary responsibility to the employer, as defined under the law;
• Provides an expense account or corporate debit or credit card;
• Provides access to certain confidential or proprietary business information, as defined under the law; or

Involves access to the employer’s nonfinancial assets valued at $2,005 or more, including, but not limited to, museum and library collections and to prescription drugs and other pharmaceuticals.

If you hire in CT, please contact us for more information about this new legislation.

Philadelphia Passes New Restrictions on Use of Criminal Record History by Employers

POSTED: 05/2/11 4:05 PM
CATEGORY: Uncategorized

Philadelphia Bill 110111-A, the Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards Act, was signed on April 13, 2011 and becomes effective 90 days from passage.

The bill forbids employers from inquiring the candidate’s criminal record history on an employment application and from making personnel decisions based on arrest records that didn’t result in a conviction.

The Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards Act creates three basic restrictions on the use of criminal record histories:

1. Employers may not ask job applicants or employees about any arrest or criminal accusation that is not still pending and did not result in a conviction.
2. Employers may not require job applicants to disclose any criminal convictions during the application process through the first “interview.” Employers that do not conduct interviews are prohibited from gathering any information about criminal convictions of job applicants during the hiring process.
3. Employers may not take any adverse action against job applicants or employees because of past arrests or criminal accusations which did not result in convictions.

The new ruling doesn’t entirely ban Philadelphia employers from using criminal record history information.

Employers are permitted to conduct a background screening which includes a criminal record history, or inquire about an candidate’s criminal record history, only after the initial “interview”. The bill broadly defines an “interview” to include any direct contact by an employer with an applicant – in person or by telephone – to discuss the position or the candidate’s qualifications. Violating employers will be subject to a $2,000 fine for each infraction.

Philadelphia Bill 110111-A, the Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards Act, is at http://legislation.phila.gov/attachments/11273.pdf.

‘Pre-crime’ Comes to the HR Department

POSTED: 10/5/10 12:12 PM
CATEGORY: Industry News, Uncategorized

Mike Elgan writes by Dissent September 29, 2010 by:

In the Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report, police belonging to a special Pre-crime unit arrest people for crimes they would do in the future. It’s science fiction, and it will probably never happen in our lifetimes.

However, the pre-crime concept is coming very soon to the world of Human Resources (HR) and employee management.

A Santa Barbara, Calif., start up called Social Intelligence data-mines the social networks to help companies decide if they really want to hire you.

While background checks, which mainly look for a criminal record, and even credit checks have become more common, Social Intelligence is the first company that I’m aware of that systematically trolls social networks for evidence of bad character.

Setting Screens

POSTED: 07/19/10 3:34 PM
CATEGORY: Industry News, Uncategorized

By Nicholas Brown
July 2010 AthleticBusiness.com

Of the 10,436 profiles submitted by municipalities last year to the National Recreation and Park Association’s TLC2 volunteer-screening program, nearly one in 10 people were found to have criminal records. And nearly 40 percent of those people were discovered to have committed an offense that, under the program’s standards, precluded them from coaching children. Those “disqualifying offenses” included serious drug and alcohol convictions (114), violent offenses (106), various other felonies (71), recent misdemeanors (49) and even sex crimes (11).

Perhaps the most sobering aspect of those statistics is that one of TLC2’s primary functions — as is the case with any volunteer-screening program — is as a deterrent, designed to prevent those people who’ve been convicted of committing violent or sex-related crimes from even applying to work with groups of children.

When Gil Fried, a risk management consultant and chair of the Sport/Hospitality and Tourism Management Department at the University of New Haven College of Business, years ago helped roll out the city of Houston’s first formalized volunteer screening program, a full 1,200 of the city’s thousands of existing volunteers refused to submit to a background check, thereby relinquishing their duties. “That’s not to say that all 1,200 had criminal histories, but I would assume some of them did,” says Fried, on whom NRPA relied as a risk management consultant when it developed the TLC2 program five years ago. “It’s true some people aren’t going to want a background check done even if they don’t have a criminal history, but others actually do have something to hide.”

The problem arising in today’s economy is that recreation providers are struggling just to keep their core athletics programs afloat, and those are the very programs that rely most on volunteer help. This can create the attitude that the $20- to upwards of $150-per-person cost of a criminal background check— representing just one component of a risk management plan addressing volunteers — is a superfluous expense. But be warned, says Fried and others, that such an investment pales in comparison to those costs, financial and otherwise, that will be incurred if an agency is implicated in a violent crime against a child perpetrated by one of its volunteers.

“Almost every week we see cases of sexual abuse coming up in sports,” Fried says. “Organizations are going to be encountering this, whether they like it or not. Even if they do have the best training or preparation, these incidents are going to happen. The question is, are you prepared to deal with this when it occurs in your organization?”

Granted, you don’t often see published cases of municipalities or individual parks and recreation departments being held liable for crimes committed by volunteers. In many instances, the alleged perpetrator will be charged with a criminal offense, and then sued independently in civil court. However, experts agree that municipalities and other youth sports providers are not altogether free from liability, even in jurisdictions where nonprofit immunity statutes may exist. Gary Bradley, a partner with the law firm Bradley & Gmelich in Glendale, Calif., suggests that many such cases exist but that municipalities are eager to settle them before they go to trial, in order to avoid the continued scrutiny and mere association with crimes committed against children.

“It’s one of these issues where, if I’m a defense lawyer, I have to realize it doesn’t really matter how reasonably my clients acted, because what the jury is going to see is a hurt little kid, and they’re not going to like it,” Bradley says. “Unless I can say that they did a comprehensive background check and it came back clean, the jury is not going to like my story.”

For many agencies, conducting background checks may not even be a matter of choice, as a slow but steady wave of state-level legislation requiring them has been growing since the National Child Protection Act became law in 1993 and was amended in 1998 to allow organizations to use nationwide fingerprint-based criminal history checks. Minnesota, Florida, Oregon and Ohio are among the states that have since passed laws requiring or at least recommending certain organizations use background checks to screen volunteers planning to work with children. Similar legislation is pending in California and other states.

Insurance providers also are now requiring background checks as special conditions within certain policies. For example, the Midland Park (N.J.) Borough Council in May passed an ordinance requiring all volunteer coaches to be fingerprinted and submitted to background checks with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the state police’s bureau of identification. Such was the insurer’s requirement for the borough’s recreation teams, volunteers and employees.

Unfortunately, whether background checks of volunteer coaches are required by state law or by an individual insurance plan, the onus always falls on municipalities to pay for them. The resulting vexation is two-pronged for most recreation departments, which a) have little money to devote to such new initiatives, and b) have trouble enough attracting quality volunteers without the additional screening measures.

“When the Florham Park (N.J.) Recreation Committee recommended mandatory criminal background checks for coaches in our youth sports programs last year, there was discussion of who would pay for it,” the borough’s mayor, Scott Eveland, announced as a new mandatory screening program was introduced last October. “I didn’t want to put this burden on the volunteers who give of themselves so generously, or on the backs of taxpayers.”

Therefore, Florham Park secured an $8,000 grant from the Megan Nicole Kanka Foundation, estimated to cover the cost of the recreation department’s approximately 300 background checks in 2010. Midland Park’s recreation director, meanwhile, told the council that she was confident about receiving a $6,000 grant that would cover the cost of 200 fingerprintings and background checks.

If all else fails, says Bradley, “You can force the volunteers to pay for it, although obviously you don’t want to reduce the number of potential volunteers.”

Bradley’s courtroom experience with volunteer screening is complemented by his personal experience as a father and coach in a community recreation sports league. “I had to get fingerprinted and checked,” he says. “It was a complete hassle, but it was absolutely the right thing to do.” And from a legal standpoint, adds Bradley, “It’s close to a completely indefensible position for the park and rec agency if they don’t take the time to do this.”