Background checks

[jdean]

Rich, et. al.

The point you raise about insurance seems significant.  Appropriate
insurance is one way to mitigate risk.  Whomever is providing our legal
advice should be asked if insurance can be obtained that will provide
coverage of this risk.  By the way, my "I think I heard" statement was
referring to what was asserted in this thread in prior messages... I meant
to convey that my understanding of the technical points was as I stated, but
that I did not claim to have perfect understanding.  I did not mean to raise
the spectre of speculation... sorry if that was unclear.

Another impression I am getting from this discussion, and I would like to
have an expert elaborate on this for our benefit, is that there does not
seem to be a "direct" rule of law to comply with.  That is, a rule in the
form of "If you have exclusive control of minor children, then you must...".
Or some other such direct statement in the law.  Instead I believe we are
told (in this discussion thread) that the law is "indirect" or "after the
fact" in that it says "If this bad result occurs, then we will examine what
you did to try to prevent it.  If you did not do enough (in our opinion) we
will penalize you severely", or something like that.  Now I do not condone
this kind of thing in the law, I just think that is what Joel told us about
what IS the law.  If that is the case then we cannot claim immunity because
we had no activities of a particular kind, we have to assess the risk
ourselves and act accordingly.  You clearly believe the risk is minimal.  I
have heard one or two others who do not believe the risk is minimal.

In any event, thank you for raising the point about insurance,  That clearly
needs to be considered.

Regards

John Dean


----- Original Message -----
From: Rich Littleton <be718 at scn.org>
To: jdean <jdean at oz.net>
Cc: <scn at scn.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 4:11 AM
Subject: Re: Background checks


>
> Or, put simply, I think our current very low risk is clearly way below the
> acceptable threshhold.  (i.e., it is acceptable)
>
> Rich
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
>
> *****  Unless stated otherwise, this message may be forwarded.  ******
>
> On Mon, 25 Oct 1999, jdean wrote:
>
> > A question for Joel (mostly), et. al.:
> >
> > Is the discussion missing the point about the law and the standard to
which
> > courts are holding organizations?  The points being discussed about the
> > desirability of a policy requiring checks, and the side issue (that
seems to
> > have consensus is a side issue) about potential impact on sponsors, are
not
> > really germain.
> >
> > I only see one area in which SCNA policy is free to operate; and that is
to
> > establish the level of risk that the organization will accept.  I think
I
> > heard here that it does not matter what kind of organization we are or
what
> > kind of events we participate in.  It just matters if someone (maybe
only
> > someone in a protected population) suffers abuse at the hands of an
employee
> > or volunteer while that person is acting as an employee or volunteer.
If
> > that happens our only defense, and our only hope to avoid legal
sanction, is
> > to show that we excercised due diligence.
> >
> > For instance, if we allow minors accounts on SCN, and we have volunteer
> > staff that interacts with acount holders, we could be liable if someone
used
> > their position to "entice" a minor to meet somewhere and abuse ensued.
> >
> > Board policy can just ignore risk and hope nothing ever happens.  Board
> > policy can identify certain job categories as potentially having user
> > contact with vulnerable / protected users, and require some type of
check
> > for persons doing those jobs. ( Or, anything else you can imagine... )
> >
> > The discussion ought to focus, in my opinion, on acceptable risk.  There
is
> > near unanimity on the point that IS being discussed... namely that
checks
> > are odious or worse... so it seems to me that that principle should just
be
> > accepted as an organizational 'given', and we should move on to the
point of
> > determining how little we can do and still have acceptable risk.  In
> > proposing this I do not rule out that we could decide that there is
> > acceptable risk in requiring no checks of anyone.  I also do not rule
out
> > that we might find that that was not the case; and that some categories
of
> > volunteers ought to require some checks.
> >
> > Apologies if this sounded 'preachy", I thought a 'process check' might
be
> > useful.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > John Dean
> >
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