From Sign-On San Diego comes a story of how the Friends of the Valley Center Library are none too pleased with the county requiring them to have background checks and be fingerprinted in downtown San Diego.
Library Bookstore Manager Jo Rudolph says “”Our volunteers are 70 and 80 years old in some cases,” she said. “We have women that have volunteered here for 10, 20 and 30 years. Trying to find out if we are criminals or pedophiles at this late date is a little ridiculous. We raise money for the library and put books on the shelves. I doubt anyone here is a threat to children.”
My view’s worth five cents
Quit your whining. It’s an effort meant to try and protect children. Really. What could be more important? I’ve done it, countless others have, especially when you may be alone with a child. Age doesn’t matter, as there are 70 year old sex offenders living on this earth. It’s a minor inconvenience, even if it is really only good to add to the public trust.
And people wonder why the public distrusts some libraries with the safety of their children.
BTW…I haven’t had my coffee yet, so I’m probably just cranky.
bookstores:a threat to all
You fool. Don’t you realize, like the rest of us,
that September 11 made obvious the clear threat to public safety of 80 year old retirees selling “My child is a reader” bumper stickers. Literacy kills.
Protecting children
The volunteers in the local Catholic organizations are dropping out due to new regs about working with children–even though there haven’t been any scandals involving Catholic volunteers here, but several involving priests. Plus, they have to pay the $100 for the background check.
Our church requires DL#, SS#, and you sign off on everything from your employment and university records to your military record, and supposedly it does a “background” check. I’ve refused (I volunteered to sell VBS t-shirts to parents of children) because I don’t think the database is secure, and identity theft is a big problem.
I regret to say, that setting the standards for the volunteers higher than the state requires, is really about protecting a volunteer organization from lawsuits. They are getting nervous about our litigous society with willing, hungry lawyers close at hand.
The best protection is to know your volunteer staff. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of pedophiles not listed in any database or police records. One of the biggest pedophilia-porn stories locally involved a pediatrician! He was not in any database. He was caught because of purchasing child porn on the internet with his credit card.
Re:Protecting children
Good points. Why should the standards for volunteers be any different than for full employees? Background checks are standard fare, and your SSN is always necessary.
The point that older people are not sex offender or criminal risks clearly shows the ignorance of the bookstore manager. That’s like assuming a cute puppy is completely safe. Librarians ought to know you can’t judge a book by its cover.
Re:Protecting children
I regret to say, that setting the standards for the volunteers higher than the state requires, is really about protecting a volunteer organization from lawsuits. They are getting nervous about our litigous society with willing, hungry lawyers close at hand.
Hey now, some lawyers are out there to protect us from big, non-human corporations. Unfortunately, many in the the media choose to print only stories about the bad apples. I could go on and on here about the evils of tort reform (if we can’t sue for damages, what incentive will business have to create products that do not harm the users?), but that would be way off topic.