What does the BP oil spill have to do with background checks? Nothing, at least when the spill initially happened. Like most stories we post, the two have nothing to do with each other until it is found a proper criminal search was NOT conducted.
Investigation: Could background check have prevented alleged rape?
BP and a company used to hire workers in the gulf explain why background checks aren’t always being done on oil spill cleanup workers on tonight’s “AC360°” at 10 ET.
Pascagoula, Mississippi (CNN) — A lack of screening of oil spill cleanup workers meant a sex offender got a job, and left him free to rape a colleague according to a Mississippi county sheriff.
A CNN investigation into the incident reveals that basic background checks were not done on those hired to remove oil from the beaches in and around Pascagoula.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd told CNN he was shocked when he met with the head of BP security for the area several weeks before the alleged rape took place. He said the BP representative told him that only drug screenings, not background checks, were being conducted on the cleanup workers.
“I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’ He said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘There’s so many of them, we were told to do drug screens and that was it.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s not good at all.’ ”
Byrd said he told the BP official that “you’re going to have every type of person coming in here looking for a job, and you’re going to have the criminal element in here, and we’re not going to know who we’re dealing with if we don’t do background checks on these people.”
“It’s sad because you got a victim now by a sex offender, and he’s in our jail. Had we have known this, he would have been arrested before the crime could have been committed,” said Byrd, who also said that if asked, his department would have done the background checks for free.
Rundy Charles Robertson, 41, who faces charges of sexual battery and failure to register as a sex offender, is in the Jackson County, Mississippi, jail with bail set at $505,000. He told police that he had consensual sex with the woman. He has not yet entered a plea.
Robertson has a criminal history dating back to 1991, according to police records. He was put on the national sex offender registry for a 1996 conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a minor in Louisiana. He is also on probation after being convicted in 2003 in Georgia for cruelty to children.
Robertson had been supervising a crew of cleanup workers, including the alleged victim. She told CNN he offered to take her home one day in June because she was not feeling well.
However, she said, when he dropped her off, he asked to use the bathroom in her motel room. When he came out, she said, he raped her.
The woman told CNN she is scared and angry that this happened.
This is a perfect example of how it is the responsibility of the employer to conduct background checks on all employees. If you are not currently conducting background checks on employees or are looking for a simpler way of doing it visit https://www.candidresearch.com/resources/faqs