December 13, 2004

Sex offender got shelter job without background check

CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Sun-Times

December 13, 2004

BY STEFANO ESPOSITO Staff Reporter

There was no reason not to trust Michael Taylor, the woman once thought.

He said he was a church minister.

He promised to help find a home for her and her two sons.

He told her that if she stayed strong, God would find a way.

Taylor was the woman's case manager at a city-funded homeless shelter for women and children on the West Side. She first met him last summer.

But only now, after Taylor was arrested last month and accused of sexually assaulting her 13-year-old son, does the woman know the truth: Taylor, 48, is a convicted sex offender.

The woman, who did not want her name used, can't fathom why Taylor was counseling some of the city's most vulnerable people. ...

Then, as now, Taylor was affiliated with the New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church on the South Side.

Posted by kshaw at December 13, 2004 06:30 AM