YMCA reviewing employees' files

By CURTIS KRUEGER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 23, 2000

ST. PETERSBURG -- The St. Petersburg Family YMCA has begun looking through files on all 120 of its employees to make sure it finds nothing questionable in their backgrounds.

The step comes about a month after the arrest of Christopher Lee Allen, who at the time was the YMCA's community outreach director, on charges of sexual battery and lewd and lascivious acts on children.

It also follows the revelation that when YMCA officials hired Allen about three years ago, they knew he was facing charges of lewd and lascivious acts against a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old girl in South Carolina. He was later acquitted of the charges but had not been cleared at the time he was hired.

His first job upon joining the YMCA was working with youths at the YMCA's after-school program at Maximo Elementary School.

Asked if any other YMCA employees had question marks in their records similar to Allen's, YMCA president and CEO Doug Linder said "I'm not aware of anybody and that's the type of thing that we're looking at now."

People hired by the YMCA receive a background screening by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which shows if someone has been arrested in Florida. These are the records the YMCA plans to review. Linder said there are no plans to conduct new background checks of employees.

Linder said no parents had contacted him to say they were upset that the YMCA hired someone with a pending sex crime charge. Several called to offer support to the Y, he said.

Exactly why Allen was hired despite his pending sex crime charges in South Carolina remains a mystery. John Cannon, who was the YMCA's CEO and president at the time Allen was hired, has declined to explain the decision.

Cannon supported Allen so strongly that he traveled to South Carolina in 1997 to testify as a character witness at Allen's trial. He said during the trial that his staff was more aware of Allen's background than he. But asked then if he would hire Allen again, he said, "without question."

Asked during the trial if he personally knew about the charges against Allen at the time of his hiring, Cannon said, according to a transcript, "It wouldn't be made known to me in specific terms. I delegate as my style of management. I have a youth director who is very, very detailed. My youth director brought to me all the forms."

In a letter written three days after Cannon's testimony, Jennifer West -- who later married Allen -- identified herself as "youth director."

But Anthony S. Battaglia, Allen's attorney, said Allen's future wife had nothing to do with hiring him, and said that at the time she had a different title. "The point is that she had nothing to do with him being retained or hired," Battaglia said.

She did later become Allen's supervisor, but Linder said that changed after they married last year, in a ceremony officiated by Cannon.

Linder, said this week that Jennifer Allen is no longer working for the YMCA. He would not explain if she was fired or resigned. Christopher Allen also no longer works for the YMCA.

Linder has declined to speak about Allen's hiring because it happened before he arrived there. But in an interview this week, Linder said "That can't happen again."

In other news related to Allen, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Nancy Moate Ley ruled that four guardians ad litem should be appointed, one for each of the children named as victims in the case. Guardians ad litem observe court proceedings and conduct interviews in an effort to make sure the interests of the children are well-represented.

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