GREENSBURG – Parents are demanding answers after learning that a registered sex offender worked as the Easter bunny at a Pennsylvania mall.
He was fired after three days on the job, and now he’s speaking out about what happened.
“I can understand, you know, where they’re coming from, about them being upset. But what a lot of people need to realize is, you know, I wasn’t put in jail for touching little kids.” Michael Paul Jacobs told WTAE.
Jacobs was hired as the Easter Bunny at the Westmoreland Mall despite his conviction as a Megan’s Law violent child sex offender.
Jacobs says, “My case — it revolved around having consensual sex when I was a teenager myself, with another teenager.”
WTAE found Jacobs was convicted in two different cases of having sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 19.
“Because I’m on Megan’s Law, everybody looks at me different, and this is where I have trouble getting a job. And just, I didn’t touch no kids or anything like that.” Said Jacobs.
He says he he never hid his convictions when he applied for the Easter bunny job. It just never came up.
Jacobs said, “They didn’t ask for my background on the application that I filled out. It didn’t say anything about a criminal background.”
A spokesman for Westmoreland mall tells us Cherry Hill Photo Enterprise leases space to take Easter photos in the mall …
Saying, quote,
It is regrettable that one of their local employees failed to follow their stringent background screening procedures.
As for Jacobs, he’s out of work. “I think it’s messed up that people judge me for me just being on that site, basically.”
