So heres a moral pickle. An applicant with a pending criminal charge in general, would you hire? An applicant with a pending felony charge? an applicant with a possession of child porn charge?
This is one of those times where if you have ever deferred to the constitution, youre skirting the edge of extreme hypocrisy. But reality dictates maintaining a constitutionalist posture may not always be possible. We have one applicant on parole, we are somewhat giving him consideration, though it was an aggravated battery, so physical in nature, but his "story" does soften the charge. He was able to transfer a parole out of the conviction state, thats not something they tend to do for non compliant parolees. Could go either way. Now the pending charges guy happens to be my neighbor, my rental tenant, a shirt tail cousin, and my daughter babysat for him (that risk has already been assessed). Historically I tried to recruit him as staff, but my nephew got him a job in sales, and he made pretty good dough, better than we pay. As a result of no call no shows post arrest, hes no longer a team member at my nephews workplace (that kept them clean on the legailty of firing over an unconvicted charge) My nephew, who was his supervisor and close friend discussed the charges. What was relayed to me is it was something from when he was young and dumb catching up to him. My nephew, whose opinion i trust has the full details and said it really isnt a "serious" issue. My guess is something dumb like a nude pic on his phone from when he was a teen of his current GF at the time (illinois codified that as a possesion of child pornagraphy a few years back) His bond was only 10,000 10% so 1000 to walk, this county never sets bonds that low on child porn charges, so it indicates a less severe issue. Our county, however doesnt indiscriminately drop sex crime charges, so that tells me its reasonably suspiscious and beyon a pic of his kid in the bathtub type of thing. He says hes fighting it, I assume all predators would say that. There is a selfish motivation for concerning myself with his employment status, we are his landlord, and we need paid. If I wasnt such a firm believer in the value of our constitution, I may not have any quandry here. Its a charge, and a bad one. But, we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, and as late we have seen popular opinion and guilt are not one in the same. So I hate to recommend something that goes against my core principles. I also understand that pending charges of any sort equate to lost time, but there are many reasons for a new hire to miss time toward the beginning of the hire, thats a managable issue. Theres the risk of the employee going off to prison, but again, theyre unconvicted. Then there is the most real of the concerns, the charge is public knowlege, not put in papers, but available by looking up the name in the public court files (another oddity, this county always publicizes arrests of this sort, so im not sure what not doing so is about) But our customers would probably not be pleased to know we were sending pedophiles into their homes. Granted, this isnt a pedophile charge and theres no conviction, I think we all can agree that for the most part any sex offender is looked on as a pedophile, I know that until otherwise confirmed, thats how I look at them. The minute I found out about the charge I reached out to a counsellor friend on exactly how to approach my 13 year old daughter who had babysat there. I wanted to ensure had there been anything nefarious that took place my line of questioning wouldnt make her clam up. It turned out to be ok after talking to her, but this is a kid Ive known since he was little and my first response was to assume he was a pedophile. So customers would react the same It is a quandry, I dont forsee any way of hiring the guy even if I wanted to recommend it, but it does make me question my convictions I had up until this point considered to be very firm.
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