President Clinton Signs Bill Giving Organizations and Businesses Dealing with Children, the Elderly and the Disabled, Access to FBI fingerprint records

On October 9, 1998, President Clinton Signed into law the Volunteers for Children Act as Public Law 105-251, which amends the National Child Protection Act of 1993 (42 U.S.C. Sec. 5119a). For the first time, any business or organization, whether public, private, for-profit, not-for-profit or voluntary, that provides care, treatment, education, training, instruction, supervision or recreation to children, the elderly or individuals with disabilities, has the lawful right to request fingerprint-based national criminal history background checks through the FBI of their volunteers and employees. Access to the FBI would come through each state's Criminal History Records Repository. Parents will finally be able to really know who they are willingly turning their children over to when they sign them up for activities such as scouting, Little League, etc.," says Jody Gorran, Founder and Programs Director for the National Foundation to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse (NFPCSA) and originator of the Volunteers for Children Act.

In 1993, Congress passed the National Child Protection Act, also known as the Oprah Winfrey Act. This Act was hailed as a major step forward in protecting children from sexual abuse. It provided for individual states to pass legislation which would require FBI national fingerprint criminal history record checks for volunteers and employees of youth serving organizations.

However, the 1993 Act had two major flaws. Unless a state passed legislation implementing this Act, organizations were not permitted to submit fingerprints of volunteers and employees for FBI background checks. Additionally, Congress did not mandate state legislation; instead, the National Child Protection Act only stipulated that states "may" enact fingerprint background check legislation. As a consequence, five years later only a small handful of states had passed any legislation even allowing selected organizations to have access to fingerprint-based national criminal background checks.

Why did Congress bother to pass this Act in 1993 and why are fingerprint criminal background checks so important? According to the NFPCSA, recent retrospective studies of adults suggest that 1 of 3 girls and 1 of 6 boys will be subjected to some form of sexual abuse by age 18. These studies further indicate that 46% of child molesters are non-family members who are known to their victims. The NFPCSA contends that sexual predators are generally unrecognizable to the community and parents of children. Child molesters who are known to their victims are frequently trusted adults in the community, like teachers, scoutmasters, coaches, day care workers, volunteers and employees of other youth serving organizations, clergy, friends of the family, and neighbors. These are the people with whom we entrust our children on a daily basis.

Gorran asks, "Can every parent spend time to personally get to know every single adult that provides services for their children -- every day and for every extra-curricular activity? Think about it. How many people would that be? And, if you did have the time to get to know all of them VERY well, would you know if that person had a criminal history of child molestation? And what if they came from another state. How would you know? Would they tell you? I doubt it." According to Gorran, child predators are very cunning. They may spend up to a year "grooming" their victims; that may include becoming good friends with the intended victims' parents.

Gorran believes the odds are very good that there are volunteers and employees in your community sexually molesting your children or your child's friends. Why does he believe this? "Because most child victims do not tell," says Gorran.

Since child sexual abuse victims rarely tell, the NFPCSA believes that organizations and parents must have the ability to protect these children. The NFPCSA further believes that parents MUST have the right to know that any adult with a relevant criminal history will be prevented from being placed in a position where they can establish a trusting relationship with their children.

Many responsible organizations such as the Boys and Girls Clubs of America want to be able to further protect the children in their care through the use of fingerprint-based, national criminal history record checks of their volunteers and employees but have been unable to do so because of the lack of appropriate legislation. By passing the Volunteers for Children Act and amending the National Child Protection Act of 1993, Congress has given them as well as tens of thousand of other responsible organizations this important protective tool.

Unfortunately, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has dragged their feet for the past four years waiting for even more federal legislation before properly implementing the Volunteers for Children Act. Due to the stubbornness of the FBI in refusing to simply follow the amended law, they prefer to exist in the past and do as THEY please and so today only a handful of states have fully implemented the Volunteers for Children Act and have a program in place.

The cost to an organization for a fingerprint-based national criminal history record check varies per state program and will run anywhere from a total of $23.00 to $36.00 for a volunteer and $29.00 to $42.00 for an employee.

To see if YOUR state has implemented the Volunteers for Children Act and has a program, contact your State Repository Director. Click here for a list.

A few reasons why national fingerprint background checks of volunteers and employees of child-serving organizations are so important.