Personal Injury Law

Stop Businesses From Sending Child Molestors Into Your Home

By Michael Phelan

The Sex Offense Registry can be accessed for free in a matter of minutes. Requiring a prospective employee to sign a release authorizing the prospective employer to access his criminal record takes no time at all. Following through and actually requesting the criminal record simply requires mailing the form, typically with a check for a few dollars. If a certain Fortune 500 company had taken any of these simple steps when hiring home installation technicians, a little girl would not have been molested in her home by a registered sex offender who had been sent to the home by his employer to maintain a product sold to the homeowners. That's right, a simple background check would have revealed that the guy had already done prison time for a sex crime involving a minor. Before allowing some stranger who arrives at your home in a white van into your home, make sure the vendor has done a background check on this person. Get the vendor to commit that this simple background check has been done. Another thing we can all do is lobby our legislators to pass a bill requiring background checks on all service people whose primary job is to enter consumers' homes to install, maintain, or repair their employer's products. After learning the facts of these egregious case, I won't even allow my teen age children to have pizza delivered to the house unless my wife or I am home. The pizza delivery business is also notorious for not requiring background checks. Home much would it cost for these businesses to take that extra step to protect our kids?

Full post as published by Richmond Virginia Personal Injury Lawyer on October 24, 2008 (boomark / email).