DUNEDIN (FL)
St. Petersburg Times
A Times Editorial
Published September 28, 2005
What good is it to check the background of a potential employee if you hire the individual before getting the results of the checks?
Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church in Dunedin apparently thought it was important to do background checks on people who applied for jobs at the church. The process was in place to perform the checks.
But then the church turned the process into a useless exercise. In 2003, the church simply didn't wait for the results when filling the job of facilities manager. Now it is paying a heavy price.
Our Lady of Lourdes went ahead and offered the job of facilities manager to William Forte. That was the church's first mistake. Then it compounded the error when, after the background check revealed an arrest record, church officials trusted Forte's explanation that the charges amounted to nothing. We'll hazard a guess that a big percentage of people with arrest records would deny their guilt, especially to their employer. Forte did do something wrong, and what he did should have kept him from getting the job at Our Lady of Lourdes.
In 1992, Forte was charged with six counts of showing obscene materials to minors, six counts of soliciting for prostitution and seven counts of giving liquor to minors. The charges followed allegations by six teenagers and an investigation by the Polk County Sheriff's Office. The teens told authorities that over a two-year period, they visited Forte in his home, where he gave them drinks made from vodka and orange juice, showed them pornographic movies and paid them for sex acts.