‘Sex Offenders’ Category

Sex Offender Caught Working As Cookie Monster

QC Characters is (was) a new business startup in Iowa that hoped to provide actors dressed as popular children’s characters for parties and special events.

Unfortunately, one of QC Character’s first hires was James Lester Rogers. The company sent Rogers dressed as the Sesame Street character called Cookie Monster to the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds to drum up a little business. While Rogers was at the entrance to the fairgrounds, he saw an old acquaintance and removed his Cookie Monster head to say hello to him. In the excitement of his new job and being reacquainted with his old friend, Rogers forgot several things:

Clearly, there are no IQ requirements to work as Cookie Monster. (Kermit on the other hand…)

Rogers was previously convicted of committing lascivious acts with a child in Linn County, Iowa and is listed on the Iowa Sex Offender Registry. He also had two contempt of court findings against him subsequent to his conviction.

QC Characters’ owner admitted to news sources that he made a serious mistake by not running a background check on Rogers. “I should have took my time, and done a background check but … you learn from your mistakes.” He says that he had intended to send Rogers to children’s parties and other events, which also would have been a violation of the terms of Rogers’ sex offender registration. Fortunately, the business was so new (or ill-conceived) that they had not yet had any customers. Rogers was quickly arrested (imagine having to move through Central Booking in a Cookie Monster outfit) and, we assume, QC Characters has changed its name because of all of the bad publicity.

Many inexperienced employers make the similar mistakes in underestimating the risks associated with hiring people without first conducting a background check. You can bet that the owner of QC-Characters won’t make that mistake again.

Sex offender assigned to Alzheimer’s care facility

Michael Gilbert is a registered sex offender convicted of aggravated sexual assault of a child (12 year old female) and was released from parole in August 2005. (He was also on federal parole for issuing “false distress signals” – he was apparently trying to fake his own death at sea in an attempt to escape his sex offender status.)

Two months later, Gilbert was hired by Comfort Keepers as a non-medical caregiver, a “sitter”, in an Alzheimer’s care unit on October 23, 2005. Comfort Keepers ran a “national” criminal background check from CBCInnovis that failed to disclose his criminal history or his sex offender registration.

On November 7, 2005, two weeks after Gilbert was hired, a 77-year-old resident identified him as the man who raped her.  He faced no criminal charges in this case, apparently due to the Alzheimer patient’s unreliability as a witness.

The family did sue Comfort Keepers and the Alzheimer’s care facility, and CBCInnovis. The civil case resulting from these allegations was settled April 8, 2009 – terms not disclosed.

The following is an excerpt from the plaintiff’s petition in this case:

It is hard to explain how so many people and businesses, who are charged with the responsibility of protecting and safeguarding our elderly, could all fail to do their jobs in such a negligent and grossly negligent manner that a known sexual predator such as Michael Henderson a/k/a Michael Anthony Gilbert could be allowed to molest and abuse a poor, defenseless 77 year old grandmother like Colleen Stagner, but that is what happened in this case. Not only were Defendants being paid to care for and protect innocent, foreseeable victims like Colleen from being sexually assaulted, they actually interviewed, hired, and placed a registered sex offender in a position to enable him to carry out these outrageous acts of physical and sexual abuse.

According to court documents, which include a copy of Gilbert’s employment application, Gilbert responded to the criminal history question on the application with “will discuss in interview.”

I always advise employers to respond “No, we won’t” and move on to the next applicant when an applicant fails to fully respond to questions on the employment application. In this case, however, Comfort Keepers interviewed Gilbert and made the following notation on the application: “Michael discussed that this was something minor that happened over 12 years ago – not on criminal record.”

Obviously Gilbert lied and the “national” criminal background check failed to catch the lie.

The fact is that there is no such thing as a “national” or “nationwide” criminal records database that has any level of reliability. The only way to obtain a criminal history on an individual that approaches reliable is to search the county, state, and federal records in each jurisdiction where the person has lived, worked, or attended school. The “national” database (Imperative Information Group prefers to call it a multi-jurisdictional criminal records database) should be used only as a source of possible records – not relied upon as the primary source of records.

UPDATE:

In April 2011, authorities say Gilbert attempted to avoid arrest in another sexual assault by again faking his own death. He is accused of fatally shooting a homeless man, putting the body in his car’s trunk and setting the car ablaze, hoping police would think that the body was his. He is currently being prosecuted. Hopefully, he won’t see daylight for a long, long time.