Who's Running Your Child's Daycare Center?
We found this article on CNN Online.
Alabama officials say Karr was licensed for home daycare
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) -- John Mark Karr bragged to his landlord's family that "sexually, I am like a wolf," and said he preferred girls to women when he worked in Costa Rica as an English teacher, his former housemates told The Associated Press.
Karr, now jailed in Los Angeles after his arrest in Thailand, is named in a Colorado warrant as a suspect in the 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.
Karr traveled around the world in recent years, including brief stays in Honduras and Costa Rica, where he rented a room in 2004 from Canadian John Hall, who teaches at a private university in the capital of San Jose.
Hall, 42, told AP in an exclusive interview that he rented a room to Karr through an Internet posting, but asked him to leave after about five weeks because Karr was saying "rude and inappropriate things" to his Costa Rican wife and stepdaughters, then 16 and 20.
"I threw him out because he was causing problems for them," Hall said.
One stepdaughter, now 22, told AP that Karr said several times that he liked girls.
Odd conversation
"My mother asked him whether he was looking for a girlfriend in Costa Rica and he answered that he didn't like adult women, only small ones," she said, speaking on condition her name not be published. "I thought he meant young women, and never imagined he meant girls."
During his stay with the family, Karr would often either talk incessantly, or sit in his room and listen to dark rock music, like that of Marilyn Manson, something that also bothered the Halls, who are Pentecostal Christians.
After kicking Karr out, Hall remained suspicious enough to do a computer search to see if he was a sex predator.
"I suspected he was a pedophile. I looked on the Internet to see if there was something on him, but I didn't find anything," he said.
The following year, Karr taught for eight months at a small primary school in La Esperanza, Honduras, 60 miles from the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, a former co-worker said.
Renan Marquez said Karr taught second grade, but left because he had a contract with a school in another country; he didn't know which. Marquez told the AP by telephone that Karr was always "reserved, shy, responsible, organized and punctual."
Karr "required a lot of discipline" of his second-grade English students, Marquez said. "I never saw anything strange in his treatment of the children."
Alabama daycare license
Meanwhile, Alabama welfare agency officials said Thursday that Karr kept children at a home day-care center he operated in northwest Alabama.
The Marion County Department of Human Resources issued a license for Karr to begin operating a day-care out of his rural home in June 1997, said John Bradford, a spokesman with the Alabama Department of Human Resources.
He said the sheriff's department conducted a background check before the license was issued and no problems were found.
Karr didn't receive any complaints before the two-year license expired in 1999, Bradford told The Associated Press.
"We do know he kept children, but it is really hard to get a handle on the number," he said.
Karr, 41, has said he was with JonBenet when she was killed in the basement of her home in Boulder, Colorado, in December 1996, but he called her death an accident. (Full story)
Karr was living with his ex-wife in Hamilton at the time of the slaying.
Karr, who was working as a teacher, was arrested last week in Bangkok, Thailand, and flown Sunday to the United States. He is being held in Los Angeles, California.
He has agreed not to fight his transfer to Colorado to face charges of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault of a child in connection with the December 26, 1996 slaying of the child beauty pageant competitor.
While we find the entire Jon Benet murder episode particularly loathesome, we had to point out his ugly example of why you should be running a background check on anyone who is working near your home or who has charge of your children for any amount of time, yet alone the better part of the day.
Apparently Karr was cleared by Alabama for a license. The Sheriff's department claimed they ran a background check and nothing of consequence registered on the reports. Karr may well have slipped through the cracks on that one. His pedophilliac proclivities also went undiscovered as a teacher. While unfortunate, it is understandable. He had not yet been charged with any crime and, from the official perspective, he had not come under suspicion.
But, overall, the best way to avoid entrusting your children with the wrong people is to run a criminal background check, and include with it a check of the registry of sexual offenders. Every state has a crimnal registery, and so do certain counties. Most sexual registries will report to a central system. While nothing in life is absolute, this criminal background check and the sexual registry are pretty thorough and extremely comprehensive.
Corra always pairs the Sexual Offender's Registry with the Nationwide Criminal Database Search. We do it as part of our pre-employment screening package, because the last thing we need is to help put a sexual offender in the work place. This search is convenient, cost effective, and it returns quickly. If you are a parent about to put your child into daycare, it's the least you can do for your child's safety.
Check them out before you trust them.
Protecting Your Social Security Number From Identity Theft
Any victim can tell you identity theft is no laughing matter. The hoops you may have to crawl through for weeks or even years to come, in trying to straighten out your life, can elicit far more tears than laughter. These tears would be most certainly tears of frustration as you do anything and everything to reinstate your good name and most probably your good credit.
Those of you who have no identity theft insurance, which means most of you, will spend at least a part of your day notifying businesses and agencies, credit reporting entities and credit card companies. You will write letters that will need to be notarized, claiming you are indeed the unwitting victim and not the architect of some nefarious plot to ruin your own reputation. Meanwhile, until the matter is cleared, you may suffer mightily as your credit score plummets and bills come due. Bills for things you never purchased.. This translates into being denied credit for products and services you really want or paying higher, penalty interest rates for having such lousy credit.
Identity theft begins with nine little numbers. These nine numbers can mean the world to you. They are the nine digits comprising your Social Security Number, and they are as vulnerable to corruption as a politician at a lobbyist convention. Chances are your Social Security has been disseminated, accidentally or for a job. You probably have it in your wallet and on your computer. It may be crumpled up in your trash can; along with the other papers you didn’t bother shredding. With your Social Security Number and your date of birth safely in hand, an identity thief is off to the races.
These are but a few ways thieves gain access to your Social Security Number. There are even creepier ways, including Internet and database hacking. Then there is your new found lover, the Mr. or Miss Possible you met somewhere or even online. This is the person you dated, brought home and after you fell asleep they went roaming your house, rifled your desk or purse, or rummage your computer for your most intimate files. Doesn’t happen? When you discover to your chagrin someone took out a credit card with your name but at a different address, you’ll know the answer.
To an even greater extreme, your Social Security, accompanied by your date of birth can enable an identity thief to not only acquire credit in your name, but maybe a passport, which can used by or sold to some of our more unsavory members of this planet. While there is an adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity, it’s questionable whether there is anything positive about having your identity associated with a terrorist who just made the headlines on CNN.
Losing your identity to someone else will not only damage your credit and create all sorts of legal troubles. You can face psychological difficulties as well. Besides the task at hand to make your life whole once again, you will feel violated and abused. After all, our very identity is based on…well…our identity, and if some louse has usurped it for his own purposes, then it is understandable that until you repair the damages you feel you have lost at least a little piece of yourself. Identity theft is also embarrassing, because it will become incumbent upon you to explain to everyone that matters why your life has been rendered upside down.
Perhaps the worst part about identity theft is it may be quite awhile before you realize how much damage has been done. If someone applied for credit or ordered credit cards in your name but at a different address, months can pass before you are located and notified of your lapses by either the credit service or the collection agency they send after you. It is a rude awakening the day you get that first call and throughout the day begin to wonder what other shoes may begin to drop. More often than not, if someone secured credit in your name, they will secure more, running the limit in many cases. From that day on you are facing the grim ordeal of cleaning up the mess.
Not all identity theft will relate directly to credit acquisition and unlawful purchases. In Border States especially but no exclusively you may find undocumented workers have somehow come upon your social security number. Perhaps, again, you neglected to shred the sensitive information you dumped into your trashcan. Perhaps he bought it from one of hundreds of peddlers who sell phony documents and someone else’s Social Security Numbers to undocumented workers questing increasingly to appear like legitimate immigrants.
In any event, you Social Security Number is not only used by that one undocumented worker. Chances are he has handed it out to his twelve best friends and family members. You don’t believe me? A woman called me recently to inquire as to why different names appeared on a Social Security Trace she ordered as part of a background check. It seemed odd to her that strange names would be appearing along with her employment candidate on the same document. As a favor, I ran her Social Security Number, and to her considerable chagrin, there was a male name attached to her number as well.
Can this be a problem? Often it is fairly benign and nothing comes of it. But then problems can arise, depending on your new bedfellow’s general behavior and whether he or she attempts to either get credit using your Social Security Number, or whether he or she is suddenly identified as part of a drug cartel or stolen car ring. These things do happen, and they happen when you need it least and least expect it. With the world growing increasingly crazy, what with terrorists and miscreants of every stripe the last thing you need is to be the target of a federal manhunt.
All right, so some of this I may have exaggerated. But not by as much as you think. So, how do you protect against it? Do you call the Social Security Administration? Go ahead, and see what happens there. If it wasn’t so pathetic and frustrating it may even be funny. They can’t do much, they will probably tell you. They are understaffed and overmatched and inundated all at the same time.
So what do you do? First get identity theft insurance. It may not protect you, actually, but most policies will notify you when there is suspected abuse of your credit cards and presumably good name. Credit Card Insurance provides services will assist you in repairing the damage done to your credit and reputation. The insurance will also be helpful in shortening the time and effort involved in making everything whole again. There are numerous policies, many given by credit card companies. I would suggest you shop around.
Run a credit check on yourself on a regular basis. Don’t access just one credit card service, but run all three major reporting companies. They are Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax. There are deals all over the Internet where you can run all three credit services for a decent price. It is best to run it at least every six to eight months. Monitoring your credit scores on all three services is money well spent.
Finally, we get down to the cheapest and often the best preemptive defense against identity theft, that is besides doing all the foolish things that were mentioned in the earlier paragraphs. Run your own Social Security Trace. There are a variety of reputable companies that should be willing to run your number. Some may require a consent form, verifying you are who you really say you are. This only assists you in protecting your identity, so I would never let that be an obstacle.
When you run your Social Security Trace you will be able to ascertain what names are attached to your number. Sometimes, due to mixed financial efforts, you might your spouse attached, and that is seldom worth concern. It is the strange name or, in some cases, strange names that should cause some alarm. As I noted earlier, this could be undocumented workers who usurped your Social Security Number to appear as a legal worker. Or, worse case scenario, it could be someone out to use your name for their own personal gain.
Once you know that someone has stolen your number, you can notify the appropriate credit services and authorities that there may well be an interloper. You can request they screen any purchases on you accounts and notify you when there are transactions in other cities. Identity Theft insurance will help with that. You can notify the legal authorities, and maybe they will help you track it down. In any event, the faster you become aware that someone has stolen your identity the greater the chance you will minimize the damage.
Finally, there is no reason to live your life with a siege mentality. It is wise to remain aware and to be sentient, especially with regard to who may have stolen your identity. Remember, credit is great but don’t abuse it. Most importantly don’t allow someone else to abuse it for you.
You have only one name. Keep it to yourself.
Human Resource Management Should Play It By The Numbers
We found this interesting article in a Profiles International Newsletter
Changing Role of HR:
Forget 'Warm and Fuzzy' - Know Costs of Lost Talent
Jack and Suzy Welch, in the July 17 edition of Business Week, took on the issue of what HR must do to retain the line-item overhead category on most business balance sheets. Any HR professional who has experienced cuts in HR budgets, reductions in staff and outright elimination of HR departments will understand the importance of this move. Every HR professional should read the article, or stop pretending to want a strategic role in the company.
Welch says that HR must first become a functional part of corporate financial management. Quantify. Dollarize. Given the very large, real and documentable costs of vacancies, turnover and legal problems, this is relatively easy. The real payoff, though, is on the positive side of the coin, when HR can track and document the dollars associated with productivity increases, longer tenure, better managers and employee satisfaction. In assuming this role, HR professionals have two major obstacles:
1) Lack of training in finance, numerical reasoning and communication of financial impacts (and worse);
2) Lack of interest in any of these things.
Traditionally, people go into HR because of the warm and fuzzy, intuitive, "health-and-happiness" approach. Welch even counsels, "Drop the socialist &lsquotreat-them-all-the-same' mentality." In the words of cartoon character Pogo, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
If you're still not convinced you can (and must) take this route, answer the Welches' challenge: "What could possibly be more important than who gets hired, developed, promoted or moved out the door?"
If you're having trouble with the numerical side of this challenge, make the CFO your ally. As John Sullivan noted in his Workforce Week review of the Welch position, "The CFO is the undisputed king of placing valuations on activities that are difficult to enumerate." By the way, your CFO is probably as uncomfortable with your warm and fuzzies as you are with the financial reports. But together, you can make things happen.
Look at a specific example of this way of thinking: Talent retention - As far back as most of us care to remember, HR has tracked "turnover" as one of our few consistent metrics. As commonly used, however, turnover is at best a hodgepodge statistic, lumping together the results of current hiring practice, past practice, management change or failure to change, the winds of the economy and goodness knows what else!
Talent retention, on the other hand, is more focused on current practice. According to Leslie Stevens-Huffman, writing for Workforce Week, "Nearly 70 percent of executives say that they view talent retention as important or extremely important." Identify the costs (both direct and indirect) of replacing talented individuals in your company, learn when new hires are most likely to leave and identify the factors causing them to leave.
Design a program to extend the average life of talent in your company by even a few months and calculate the direct dollar impact. You will find you have reduced the costs of hiring, training, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, management time and negative impacts on coworkers. Simultaneously, you will have improved productivity, job satisfaction and leadership, while holding on to valuable company knowledge and loyalty. The total positive financial impact of your talent retention initiative alone may well pay for your entire HR operation!
Even in the entertainment industry, a business that many thought so creative they needn't pay attention to things like cost overruns, employee efficiency and careful budgeting, there is pressure to be more cost effective in every way and to always keep an eyes on the bottom line. As competition grows in every industry, there is no business from watching its costs, hidden or otherwise. One cost that is often overlooked is the hidden costs within the workforce. Turnovers and retraining alone can be a drain on an otherwise healthy business.
Then there is the matter of employee theft and substance abuse, that in combo can jeopardize the security of your proprietary systems, your databases and your intellectual properties. With these threats looming over just about any business, it becomes incumbent upon the Human Resources Manager to conduct careful employee screenings while paying close attention to the bottom lines. In this changing age, overviews are not viewed as favorably as specifics.
The devil is in the details, and the details, at least part of them, are in the numbers. As the article suggest, HR Managers should work with the CFO who are after all the numbers people. Working together, you can assure better cost control and overall productivity. Human Resource personnel who learn this and become efficient with numbers will be far more eligible for promotions than those who don't.
Coupled with watching cost, measuring productivity and assessing the bottom line, always remember to conduct pre-employment background checks on every job candidate. Pre-Employment Screening is the foundation for efficient hiring procedures. We always suggest a criminal background check and a Social Security Trace. You may also want to conduct a DMV search and a variety of civil searches.
So play it by the numbers, and check them our before you hire.
