Aurora – A convicted sex offender from Oklahoma was hired by the city of Aurora and worked at the city’s annual KidSpree event earlier this month, where police said he met a 15-year-old boy whom he later sexually assaulted.
Aurora didn’t conduct a criminal background check on Jermaine Lamont Vaden, 29, that would have revealed he was a registered sex offender in Oklahoma who served nine years in prison on two counts of forcible sodomy.
Because of the allegations, Aurora on Wednesday announced it will change its policy and do background checks on all current and future employees.
“Obviously, it’s something that we should have been doing all along,” Councilman Larry Beer said. “It’s a policy that wasn’t complete and should be changed.”
Vaden was hired as a seasonal parks employee and volunteered to work at KidSpree, the city’s premier children’s event July 15 and 16 at Bicentennial Park.
Police said Vaden met a boy volunteering there and arranged to meet him the following day at his house, where he sexually assaulted him.
Police said the victim came to the Police Department at 3:30 a.m. July 18 to report the assault.
But he didn’t have enough information for police to make an arrest, according to Marcus Dudley, police spokesman. Later, police discovered that Vaden lived on the block and hadn’t registered as a sexual offender. Police arrested him Tuesday on those charges.
The teen later identified Vaden from a photo. Vaden is being held on $500,000 bail and will be charged Monday.
As the allegations came to light Wednesday, the city scrambled to change the way it hires.
“I’m furious about this,” said Kin Shuman, human resources director. “My heart goes out to the victims and the victim’s family. We’ll do everything we can to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
The city employs 2,700 permanent employees and hundreds of temporary, seasonal workers. How those background checks will be conducted is still being worked out, Shuman said.
In the past, the city performed background checks only on employees who handled money or were directly involved with children.
City Attorney Charlie Richardson said that conducting background checks on every employee could present problems.
“We have to be mindful of the existence of the state statute that makes it unlawful to fail to hire or fire an individual solely because they have a felony,” he said. “This means we will have to do a case-by-case analysis. It’s going to be very challenging, for example, to determine an appropriate course of action when a felony comes up on a person’s record but (he or she) has been an excellent employee for 20 years.”
Vaden trimmed trees and emptied trash, Shuman said. He was always with a supervisor and wasn’t directly involved with children.
However, Vaden volunteered to help haul equipment for the KidSpree event, which drew up to 30,000 people.
There were roughly 500 volunteers. No new criminal background checks were conducted on KidSpree volunteers, Shuman said.
The city’s employment form asks whether an applicant has been convicted of a felony within the past seven years; Vaden was convicted in 1995.
However, checking his name through a free national database of registered sex offenders operated by the U.S. Department of Justice shows Vaden’s criminal past.
“My first thought was for the victim. I was angry,” Aurora Mayor Ed Tauer said. “And our first priority is for the safety of our citizens. That’s why the changes have already been made.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
