[WikiEN-l] Former Wikimedia employee was a felon.

[Ray Saintonge]

Florence Devouard wrote:
> It does not seem to be very common practice in the USA to check criminal 
> background. Originally, Carolyn was hired through a company. This 
> company did not do any check on her either, even though they were 
> providing bookkeepers.
> When Carolyn was hired by Brad through this company, we had only 3 staff 
> members.
>
> One thing I will be absolutely insistent upon is that I have always told 
> the truth.  And to the best of my knowledge, other board members told 
> the truth as well. When she was hired, we had no idea she had a criminal 
> background, or it is pretty obvious we would not have hired her. You may 
> choose to believe us or not on this, but if you are going to call us 
> liars, I will ask you to provide proofs that we lied.
>
> Also, we have been asked not to comment on personnel issues from our 
> legal counsel and I hope you would not advice us generally to not follow 
> the recommandation of WMF legal advisor.
The Board has my vote of confidence in how it handled this matter.  
There is no question of "dazzling incompetence", and those who would use 
that epithet may not have much experience with real-life sensitive 
decisions.

Carolyn may have been right to say nothing because she wasn't asked.  
Whether she would have been hired if she had been open about her past is 
a matter of speculation.  I would prefer to believe that she would at 
least have been given an opportunity to explain the circumstances, and 
given a fair hearing.

Ec