Pennsylvania parents are demanding answers after they learned the Westmoreland Mall had hired a sex offender as the Easter bunny.
Michael Paul Jacobs was fired three days after being hired by Cherry Hill Photo Enterprise to pose with children for photos at the Greensburg mall.
“It is regrettable that one of their local employees failed to follow their stringent background screening procedures,” the mall said in a statement.
“An employee of Cherry Hill Photo who does the local hiring of the mall Easter Bunny staff violated strict company guidelines and permitted a person to portray the Easter Bunny at the mall without first sending in the appropriate information to the corporate office for approval,” the company said.
“The person playing the Easter Bunny was immediately terminated and the local manager who does the hiring was suspended pending the completion of our investigation. No incidents of any inappropriate behavior were reported and Cherry Hill is cooperating with authorities while conducting its own internal investigation.”
But Jacobs disputes the company’s assertions.
“Because I’m on Megan’s Law, everybody looks at me different, and this is where I have trouble getting a job. I didn’t touch no kids or anything like that,” he said, donning a skeleton hoodie and pentagram necklaces.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports:
Jacobs was convicted in 2011 of statutory sexual assault for having sex with a 15-year-old girl in December 2010, when he was 19. He was convicted again in 2013 of statutory sexual assault and unlawful contact with a minor for having sex with a 15-year-old girl in March 2011.
A third case against Jacobs was filed in which he was charged with statutory sexual assault for having sex with a 12-year-old girl in June 2011. That case was dismissed in 2013 when the victim died.
He pleaded guilty this year to a “disorderly conduct” charge for “threatening to slit his brother’s throat during an argument in September about who would do the dishes.”
Capt. Scott Price, operational records division director for the state police, says nothing in the law prevents Jacobs from being around children.
“There’s nothing to preclude him from working as the Easter Bunny,” he said.
That may be, but how many parents want their child sitting on the lap of a person listed in a state database as a “sexually violent predator”?
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