The Illinois Senate has passed legislation – Senate Bill 2545 (SB 2545) – that would create the ‘Internet Dating Safety Act’ requiring online dating websites offering services in Illinois to clearly disclose if they perform criminal background checks on members, according to a press release on the website of the bill’s sponsor Senator Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago). SB 2545, which passed in the Senate 42 to 9, will next move to the House, where a similar bill has won committee approval. The full text of SB 2545 is available here. (more…)

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris and three of the nation’s leading online dating websites – eHarmony, Match.com, and Spark Networks – have issued a ‘JOINT STATEMENT OF KEY PRINCIPLES OF ONLINE DATING SITE SAFETY’ that online dating providers should follow to help protect members from sexual predators through background checks, the California Office of the Attorney General (OAG) announced in a press release on the OAG website. A copy of the joint agreement, which also aims to protect online dating website members from identity theft and financial scams, is available online at: http://ag.ca.gov/cms_attachments/press/pdfs/n2647_agreement.pdf?. (more…)

In a story first reported by WHP-TV CBS Channel 21 News in South Central Pennsylvania, Jerry Sandusky – the former Penn State University assistant football coach currently charged with 40 counts of child sex abuse in a Grand Jury Presentment (WARNING: Graphic Material) – failed a background check for a volunteer football coaching position at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in 2010 after he did not disclose that he was under investigation for child abuse at a high school in another county in the state. (more…)

According to a report in the Myrtle Beach (SC) Herald, the father of a former Middle School student in Horry County, South Carolina has filed a lawsuit against the school district that hired a teacher who had a sexual relationship with the man’s daughter, who was only 13-years-old at the time. The Herald reports that the lawsuit filed in civil court – which does not identity the girl or her father – states “the school district was negligent in both the supervision of its students and the screening of prospective hires,” and that the teacher also had sex with a student in Michigan before being hired by Horry County Schools. (more…)

Child protection advocates are calling for background checks for workers with access to child actors after a recent Los Angeles Times article revealed that a convicted child molester who worked as a Hollywood casting assistant for the past decade once spent five years in prison for kidnapping and molesting an 8-year-old boy in 1996. The 35-year-old man currently is cooperating with a Los Angeles Police Department investigation into whether he complied with requirements for registered sex offenders and there is no evidence that he had committed any new crimes, the Time reports. (more…)