Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office charged Keith Woodhouse on 30 counts of lewd and lascivious acts on a minor in February of this year. In November, the families of two of the young girls filed a lawsuit against Woodhouse’s former employer, Child Development Inc, who they claim did not perform an adequate background check on Woodhouse.
Prosecutors later found that Woodhouse had been fired from a previous job in 2007 for similar accusations, however the incident had not been reported to the police and no investigation had been done into the situation. Additionally, Woodhouse has been suspected of similar acts at jobs as a camp counselor, Sunday school teacher and day care worker. All of the information given to police indicates that these incidents were recorded by the companies in question, Woodhouse was reprimanded on site and the police were not brought into the mix.
The families of the latest alleged victims are suing the company Child Development Inc for failing to perform a background check on Woodhouse. According to witnesses of the incidents as well as former employees of Child Development Inc, little to no background check was ever done on Woodhouse at any time during his employment.
When companies like Child Development Inc do not perform an employment history background check, not only does it put the company in danger, more importantly it puts children in danger of being victimized by people like Woodhouse. In this case, a criminal background check would not likely have shown any indication that Woodhouse had this history, however, a few calls to past employers Woodhouse had listed on his resume as part of a comprehensive background check would have given Child Development Inc the opportunity to possibly avoid this situation.
A story like this shows again that it remains extremely important to check the full backgrounds of any person that is considered for as position. You certainly can’t tell what a person is like from simply talking to them in a short interview, so take the initiative and hire a company to do your background checks. Moreover, companies like backgroundchecks.com can not only get the information that you need for an initial decision, they also offer specific products like Ongoing Criminal Monitoring to continue the protective aspects of employment screening for your business past the initial hiring stage.
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Source - http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_19621625?source=most_viewed
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Michael Klazema is the lead author and editor for Dallas-based backgroundchecks.com with a focus on human resource and employment screening developments
