Patron saint of abused children
Dioceses won’t perform background checks
The Roman Catholic dioceses of Los Angeles and Orange County have backed away from a promise to conduct fingerprint background checks on anyone working with children, saying they don’t want to lose volunteers who are illegal immigrants.
The dioceses had pledged to do the fingerprint background checks as a way to prevent pedophiles from working with children. But church leaders said the background checks could prevent illegal immigrants from volunteering, since they lack government-issued photo IDs, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
Instead, volunteer candidates without photo IDs in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles are allowed to give a sworn affidavit stating that they have not been convicted of any crime, officials said. In Orange, they can provide a sworn affidavit and two character reference letters.
Between the two dioceses, more than 70,000 priests, employees and volunteers have been fingerprinted, church officials said. In Orange, the background checks have resulted in the removal of nine people with violent crime convictions and two others with records of sexual abuse, chancellor Shirl Giacomi said.
Advocates for abuse victims said they were unaware of the policy change and accused the dioceses of placing concern for illegal immigrants above children’s safety.
Way to go guys, showing how forward thinking you are in this day and age.
[/sarcasm]
I couldn’t view this post without skepticism after the last one.
Its a better example — I can’t imagine that these guys would be anxious to hire anybody that might give them competition.
Once again, though, the question remains why there’s such an unfulfilled demand that such a thing would be necessary.
If this kind of thing bothers you, volunteer to provide child care. No one’s going to stop you from taking a Mexican’s job.
Good luck, though — I spent a couple of months as the only non-spanish speaking employee of a company at one point. I left because I simply could not keep up, and I’m not exactly soft or unfamiliar with hard work. Whatever Mexico’s done to hold itself back, it hasn’t occured as the result of a lack of drive or initiative.
Max:
What made Mexico hold back is corruption.
Angel:
That was sarcasm. Its kind of subtle, and you might not notice it right away until you’ve seen it the first few times.
But then its totally awesome!