Employers, more than ever before, need to protect themselves against accidents and crimes committed by their employees. With negligent hiring, lawsuits, training costs, workplace violence and theft on the rise, pre-employment screening as well as taking the correct pre-employment screening steps are no longer an option, but rather a necessity for businesses.

A new bill in Ohio, Senate Bill 321, calls for criminal background checks on all staff members of camps, FBI checks if the staffer has not lived in Ohio over the past five years and Social Security Number verification on all volunteers.

Up until now, background checks have only been required of day camps, but if this bill passes, all types of camps would be required to run the checks.

The bill stems from an incident last year in which a camp volunteer, Timothy Keil, was caught sexually molesting a child inside a cabin at Perry County Youth Camp. This revealed the loophole wherein the background checks were required for day camps, but not other types of camps.

Keil was convicted and is serving time in prison, for Gross Sexual Imposition. While he professed his innocence in court, another counselor testified finding Keil lying on a bed, caressing a boy who was on top of him. Keil has also been on probation for four years in Pennsylvania due to misdemeanor charges of indecent assault and corruption of a minor.

Helen Jones-Kelley, director of Ohio Department of Job and Family services, said they are working on this issue, “We’re just kind of taking on a more positive, proactive kind of role so that we can get out of there and make sure children are safe.” Her department is teaming up with health inspectors in order to notify camp directors about the required background checks.

Tags: employee background checks, summer camp

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 3:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.