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Lawsuit Alleges FedEx Negligent
Says background check missed child sex abuser
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The Commercial Appeal
December 16, 2005
FedEx Corp. was sued Wednesday for negligence after a former FedEx Kinko's employee in Connecticut with a history of child sexual abuse was charged with sexually assaulting a customer's 8-year-old son.
According to the lawsuit, former employee Paul Sykes, 36, solicited customers at the Fairfield, Conn., FedEx Kinko's store for a computer repair business he ran called "Facts and Fantasy."
The lawsuit says he molested the boy Sept. 27 while on a computer repair call at the boy's home in Fairfield.
The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in Bridgeport, Conn., names FedEx Corp. and FedEx Kinko's as defendants, saying the company's screening check failed.
"We are horrified by the charges regarding a former employee," said spokeswoman Sandra Munoz. "However, we totally disagree with the allegations that FedEx was negligent."
FedEx's pre-employment check on Sykes came back clear, she said. Munoz would not discuss the company's background check procedure.
Neal Rogan, the boy's attorney, said the $25 check he ordered came back "within an hour, showing four convictions in the state of Maine," including gross sexual misconduct with a minor child.
"The rap sheet on this guy is 19 pages long. FedEx absolutely has an obligation to do quality background checks. I don't belive Mr. Sykes is an isolated incident."
Tal Moise, CEO of Verified Person in New York, doesn't either. But he blames other background check companies who sell national searches even though they don't have data from every state.
"All databases have holes; they are all insufficient," he said. "Electronic checks have to be done in conjunction with manual retrieval processes."
For example, Paul Sykes' name does not show up on Maine's sex offender site, even though he was jailed for sexual misconduct there.
Finding that information, Moise said, required a check of the state's Department of Corrections site, which shows Sykes was imprisoned from 1989-1993 on three counts of gross sexual misconduct and three counts of unlawful sexual contact. He returned to prison two more times, both for parole violations, before his release in 2000.
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