How safe are the people in whose care parents leave their children, and have those people had proper criminal background checks?

http://liarcatchers.com/background_checks.html

The recent case involving a Pocono Summit karate instructor charged with raping a 12-year-old female student raises those questions.

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Rape of 12-year-old girl sparks discussion at Pocono Summit karate schoolWho do you call?
If you suspect a child is being physically or sexually abused, you can call:

The Childhelp national child abuse hotline, 1-800-422-4453.
The ChildLine national hotline, 1-800-932-0313.
The national sexual assault hotline, 1-800-656-4673.

“Prospective employees applying to engage in occupations with a significant likelihood of regular contact with children, in the form of care, guidance, supervision or training, must obtain background checks as a condition of employment,” according to the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare.

These prospective employees “include but are not limited to social service workers, psychiatrists, hospital personnel, counselors and therapists, librarians and doctors,” according to its website.

Public and private schools, day care centers, children’s camps, foster care and other programs working with children are required by law to have prospective employees and volunteers undergo criminal background and child abuse clearance checks with the state Department of Public Welfare or state Department of Public Education, state police and FBI.

Private employers
But what about a privately owned business, like a self-defense school with students under 18?

Stephen Rementer, 27, of Tobyhanna, was an instructor at the Pocono Crimson Dragon Martial Arts Academy in Pocono Summit when he was charged last week with sexual offenses, including rape of a 12-year-old female student.

Police said the student’s mother came home to find the student and Rementer in bed together.

Academy owner and instructor Anthony Gilbert said he had Rementer undergo a criminal background check prior to hiring Rementer.

“I’m not aware of any law mandating me as a private business owner to have my staff go through background checks,” Gilbert said. “It’s something I do voluntarily, because I want to be in line with procedures that others have to follow. (Rementer) had a clean record, and we never had any complaints about him or noticed anything suspicious here, but we can’t control what someone does when they’re not at work.”

Fingerprint check
An applicant for a job working with children is sent by an employer to be fingerprinted. Cogent Systems, based in Dublin, Ohio, offers job applicant fingerprinting services through various United Parcel Service locations.

Along with their fingerprints being submitted to state police and the FBI, applicants also fill out a Pennsylvania Child Abuse History Clearance form accessible on the DPW website.

The form’s first section asks for name, current and previous addresses, Social Security number, date of birth and gender and whether the person is applying to be a child care worker, foster or adoptive parent, school employee or volunteer.

The applicant must also list the names, relationships, ages and genders of family members.

Once the first section is filled out, the form is submitted to ChildLine, which offers, among other services, free 24-hour counseling for children dealing with abuse and other issues and a hotline for reporting suspected child abuse.

ChildLine then contacts the state police and FBI, who then check to see if the applicant has a criminal record.

The “state police” and “FBI” sections each contain four option boxes: criminal conviction(s) prohibiting child care employment, criminal conviction(s) not prohibiting child care employment, arrest(s) but no conviction(s) or no arrest(s).

State police and the FBI each then notify ChildLine with the background check results, after which ChildLine notifies the employer.

Who can’t work with kids
Under state law, murder, aggravated assault, stalking, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, child-luring, indecent exposure, sex with an animal, concealing a child’s death, endangering a child’s welfare, selling infants, prostitution, corrupting minors, drug possession and soliciting minors to traffic drugs are among 27 criminal convictions barring employment in the Pennsylvania public school system.

Other convictions include rape, incest and other sexual offenses, said state Department of Education Press Secretary Tim Eller.

How many background check requests are processed and how many job applicants are found with criminal records were not immediately available.

State police spokesman Sgt. Anthony Manetta said state police each year receive about 1.2 million background check requests, but did not have a breakdown available of how many requests are from employers hiring people to work with children.

About 84 percent of people on whom background checks are requested are found with clean records, Manetta said.

Checks only go so far
State police checks are not nationwide as are FBI checks, but limited to the Pennsylvania Central Repository for Criminal Records, Manetta said.

The FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division in Clarksburg, W.Va., had no statistics on how many nationwide background checks the FBI does on Pennsylvania residents or how many in this state are found with clean records nationwide.

The general public is not allowed access to information on whether a certain person has undergone a clearance check, but that person’s employer is notified if the background check turns up something of concern, said Carey Miller, director of communications for the state Department of Public Welfare.

In the end, while background checks are important, they can do only so much, say advocates for children.

It’s up to everyone to report physical and sexual abuse of children, whether that abuse is actually witnessed or just suspected.

“There are so many offenders we don’t know about, because no one reports them, which is why they have no criminal records,” said Jane Koelble, executive director of Women’s Resources of Monroe County.

Parents need to talk
Delilah Rumburg, head of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape in Enola, has been appointed to the recently formed 10-member state Task Force on Child Protection, which will make recommendations on how Pennsylvania’s child protection laws can be strengthened.

“Most perpetrators who sexually abuse children are never reported and are usually family members or have other close relationships to their victims,” Rumburg said. “Many are afraid to report their family members, which is part of why we need to look at our state’s laws to see if some of these laws might actually prohibit the reporting of abuse or suspected abuse.”

Tish Rothenbach of Tobyhanna, a member of the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network based in Washington D.C., agrees.

“According to RAINN, more than half of sexual assaults go unreported,” said Rothenbach, herself a childhood sexual abuse survivor. Rothenbach stressed the importance of parents talking to their kids.

“Our children need to feel safe, feel valued and feel loved from their parents,” she said. “When that is lacking, sexual abuse has a root to attach to.”