Can’t she sue the school, given that, at will or not , they gave a reason for firing her, and this reason might not hold up in court?
There is no law protecting you from getting fired for dating a sex offender. ‘At will’ means they can fire you for anything that is not protected by law or contract.
This, and so much more of THIS.
All I could think of while reading the OP was “Of course he has excuses for it, but why is he dating a woman who works with kids???”
Forget lawsuits, what about simple loss of business? When my kids were in daycare, a revelation that one of the caregivers was dating/living with a convicted pedophile would have led to a mass exodus (myself included).
(When my daughter was in daycare, the other facility in the area got a kitten from a local rescue group. A week or so later, everyone had ringworm. One of the mothers led a campaign against the daycare and a month later they had lost most of their clientele. Daycare initiated a lawsuit against the cat shelter, which they lost, which alienated the few remaining clients. They closed down. )
Shelly sounds like a not-too-savvy lady.
Rick: I need to tell you that I’m a registered sex offender, and even though my conviction was for something I didn’t do, coincidentally I do consider myself to be a pedophile.
Shelly: But pedophiles are attracted to children. I’m not a child!
Rick: No, but you work w/ children.
Shelly: Aces! I’ll continue to date you and at some point probably intermingle two of the most important things in my life, my love interest and my job.
Rick: Sounds good to me.
:smack:
“But do they call me Rick the Boat Builder? NO!”
In case I missed it: How does this affect her unemployment insurance? She didn’t do anything wrong, in terms of doing her job or not doing her job. But she apparently violated her terms of employment and was fired. Can she collect, or not?
This is a tangent - but would you be comfortable giving the name of the town? It seems bizarre that there would still be that small of a high-school anywhere in the US. In the places I’m familiar with (MN, KS, MO) - the state was/is pretty aggressive about consolidating schools to save money (my HS is no - the Raiders are now the Cougars).
I’m wondering if she went to a private school in her town. My son’s dorm-mate graduated in a class of 20 or so - but that was a small Christian school in a fairly large city (at least by Missouri standards).
Hey, aren’t you “Vinyl, the Turnip Twaddler”? 
How do you fire someone for this? It’s a new rule, wouldn’t they have to at least send her a warning letter? Weird. And, “fraternizing”? How do they define that?
If it’s an at-will state, I’m pretty sure they don’t need to give warnings and such, especially if they already had certain firing offenses that were considered egregious enough to merit immediate termination.
And I’m pretty sure that the reason they immediately made that rule up is because none of them had ever remotely considered the possibility that one of their employees would be in a relationship with a known pedophile.
I’m not sure I agree with this. Guilt by association.
Just to be clear: if you’re pointing out that in practice, this will be a problem, you’re right. If you’re saying that it should be a problem, then I disagree.
In any case, people go ape-shit over anything that shows the slightest chance of harming their kids and can be blamed on someone else. It’s human nature.
An example is society’s reaction to animated or drawn child porn. There is no evidence to suggest that this increase risk. It might reduce it, by giving people who are afflicted with desires for children a safe outlet. It might increase it, by fueling the fire. If anyone knows any good research, I’d love to see a cite. Regardless, people go ape-shit over it, as though it’s certainly harming children.
People also don’t understand that people with this affliction rarely choose it. They treat it like a moral problem. It’s only a moral problem if one acts on it – and in that case, it’s a serious moral problem. Sure, I understand people being justly worried about someone with this affliction being near their children – no contest! The silly part is the moral indignation and reprehension that goes along with it.
I don’t have a dog in the fight. My son is 33, so not a likely victim. I have no interest in kids or even hot teenage girls; I prefer women. But I’ve been on the sidelines for some pretty vicious, um, discussions, which is my data for the “ape-shit” comments above.
Regarding “when they can blame someone else”. I’d love to have a nickel for every parent who’d throw a tantrum about the slightest chance of a sexual predator being nearby, who hasn’t bothered to make sure their kiddy car seat is installed correctly. (That’s not to say that anyone making this argument is careless – just that a whole lot more people raise a fuss about any issue when it’s not their problem to solve.)
I’m not particularly surprised at the school’s overreaction in this case. I wouldn’t call dismissing the teacher an overreaction: they are accountable to the parents. But sending her home immediately is silly, and my guess is the people involved are just the kind that go ape-shit over this issue.
I should probably be kinder in my selection of terms. As I said, it’s human nature, and understandable. Our instincts to protect our children are very strong, as they should be. Sorry if I’ve offended any of you ape-shit folks out there! (oops)
That’s how ‘at will’ employment works. They can fire you at will for anything that doesn’t involve a protected class.
Yesbut, in that case they just say “Hey, so long and thanks for all the work, the door is that way”. Giving a reason like this means someone can complain or sue.
I am shocked by all the anti-pedophile bigotry in this country. Shocked.
Actually, you should be. They are human beings. It’s very easy to pile on when the person/class at the bottom of the pile is despised. But when you can justify ignoring the civil rights of someone simply because you loathe them, that same justification just might be applied to you or me in the near future. (And no, that’s not merely a slippery slope argument.)
The guy, at least in the eyes of the law, hasn’t re-offended. He served his time for the crime he committed. He deserves the benefit of the doubt. And yes, I know that some people, including some on this board, rabidly, vehemently, eyes-bulging-and-turning-purple, disagree with that premise. But y’know–civil rights still count even if you really, really feel that someone doesn’t deserve them.
Hey there, sorry to have missed a whole page of posts.
More news on Shelley. The other part-time job she had? She got fired from that one today. Someone is definitely ratting her out. She is really really upset, understandably. Sucks all around for her, although I know many will concur that it’s to be expected if she’s working with kids & dating a R.S.O. (Let’s put aside the pedophile thing because there is a difference between pedophilia and the actual crime of molestation. So call him a molester, sex offender, etc. That’s what got her fired. I don’t think if Rick had just been a pedophile any of this would have come out.)
Regarding asking for more details – first, I’m pretty sure that was a joke on the poster’s part, because obviously I am reeeally not gonna be doing that. Same about giving more specifics on the town, because it is so small and it would be irresponsible of me to post on a permanent message board, accessible via Google, the name of this podunk little backwater where five people live.
But btw, yes, it was a religious school, although I get the impression that the regular school wasn’t much larger than the one she attended. Could be wrong and it’s the size of The Breakfast Club school, but I’m just going by Shelley’s descriptions.
I just feel so sorry for Shelley. I have to agree it’s a good point regarding not giving her any time to rectify the situation. They don’t have to do it, but for a worker in good standing (other than this niggling little detail, heh) why not give her the chance? And what if it weren’t her boyfriend but her brother. Is she supposed to stop fraternizing with her family? The sad truth is, the answer is yes, if she’s going to continue in this profession.
In the end she’s beginning to realize that this is not a likely option for her. Her last email to me said that she’s looking for something outside the childcare realm. Which, again, is a real shame because she’s a natural caretaker.
I do want to emphasize one more time, although the faux dialogue was funny, they started dating before she had a childcare job. I don’t think it went “hey, you’re in childcare? Cool, wanna date a pedo?” I suppose it’s possible he knew her interests beforehand. I just don’t know. And, as I said, I just don’t wanna know. The less I know about this whole situation, the more easily I can work and interact with Shelley without screaming at her for being so naive.
I hope she does qualify for unemployment; I don’t know if this would count as being fired “for cause,” which I believe is a no-no as far as getting the benefits. They can’t say she broke the rules or lied to them–the rule didn’t exist when she was hired, and they never asked her about her external associations. Maybe that was her problem and she should have volunteered it? That’s a rough thing to expect when job-hunting and you genuinely believe your boyfriend isn’t a risk. (Naive or not, foolish or not, that is what she believes.)
So that’s the latest scoop. I have to say I hope someday we, and by that I mean society, figure out a better way to deal with this issue. I just can’t believe the only solution is to make life virtually impossible for the offender to rehabilitate himself/herself and keep them from finding homes and jobs. I was looking into this last night and discovered that Miami apparently has such tough restrictions about where R.S.O’s can live that there’s literally nowhere for them–the city’s solution is to “house” them literally under a bridge. I can’t help but think putting this kind of stress and pressure on someone only makes the chances of re-offending more likely. That doesn’t help anyone, especially the kids we’re trying to protect.
Sigh. I’m not weeping sad tears for Rick, because to use a super-inappropriate phrase, he made his bed. (Assuming the conviction was just.) But the lives of everyone around him are affected, starting mostly with the child, her relatives and, now, Shelley.
Belated postscript: Fuck, she just emailed me after I reminded her to seek unemployment, and said that the nursery is run by a church. So they’re exempt from unemployment, and thus she’s S.O.L. Damn.
No, it means they can fire you for no reason at all, or for any reason at all, as long as it doesn’t involve a protected class.
If I’m in sales, and my employer says I’m being fired because I’m not making enough sales, that doesn’t give me a magic “get out of being fired” card.
Yeah, that’s the problem with “at will” employment laws. I believe the only likely way you can fight it is if your employer is stupid enough to give you some sort of evidence that you’re being fired either a) due to being ____ (race, gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) or b) because you didn’t ____ (*submit to their sexual demands, assist them with money laundering or some other illegal activity, *etc.)
Otherwise you can get bounced for wearing a red hat on a Wednesday after 2PM. Or because you didn’t.