| Job seeker loses opportunity after inaccurate background check
Meet Stephanie Smith. She's a fitness guru who just earned her certificate as a personal trainer. "Physical fitness has been part of my life for years," Smith said. With years of experience educating people on how to get in shape, Smith was recently offered a job as a personal trainer by a nationally known health club. She was excited. But first the health club wanted to do a criminal background check on her. "My thought was OK, I filled out background checks before so I thought no problem," she said. The health club hired a company called ChoicePoint to perform the background check. But ChoicePoint found some disturbing information -- information that kept the health club from hiring Smith.
School district considers background checks
Volunteers in the Beaufort County School District soon may face background checks before they are allowed to work with children. The district hopes to initiate the new background checks this year, said Connie Long, the district's assistant superintendent for human resources. But the process is expensive and time-consuming, so implementing the checks will happen gradually. "That's something we need to do as soon as possible," she said. "We want to make sure that the people who are working closest with our children are people of integrity and people with nothing to hide and who are genuinely interested in the education of our students and don't have an ulterior motive." No incidents involving Beaufort County volunteers prompted the change, Long said.
Background check on carnies finds substantial owed back child ...
A controversial background check on people who worked the rides and booths at the last Athens County Fair has reportedly turned up nearly $90,000 in unpaid child-support bills among them. Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren said Tuesday that his office plans to aggressively pursue payment of the back child support, though it hasn't collected any of the money yet. After overcoming a legal challenge by the owner of JCJ Amusements, the Florida-based company that ran concessions at the fair, Warren obtained personal information including Social Security numbers on 35 JCJ employees. He said he wanted them because of some suspicious behavior he had observed at the fair, and because it's not unusual for employees at the fair to be arrested on outstanding warrants or for other causes. The amusement company owner tried to fight Warren's original subpoena for records in court, but gave in and produced the records after Warren issued a grand-jury subpoena.
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