reporter, dazzled by pastel eggs, shows no interest in facts

In Greensburg PA, a man hired to be the Easter Bunny was fired when his status as a registered sex offender was disclosed. 

Parents are demanding answers after learning that a registered sex offender worked as the Easter bunny at a Pennsylvania mall.

When the sex offender label is given to an entire category of crimes without regard to what the actual offense was, and when the media continues to sell the idea of scary sex offenders, people do not think straight.

He was fired after three days on the job, and now he’s speaking out about what happened.

Brave man, speaking out.

“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,” said Michael Paul Jacobs. 

Jacobs, spoke about his jobs here at Westmoreland mall as the Easter bunny and his conviction as a Megan’s law violent child sex offender.

Violent! Will no one think of the colorful plastic eggs?

“My case — it revolved around having consensual sex when I was a teenager myself, with another teenager,” Jacobs said. 

But records show that Jacobs was convicted in two different cases of having sex with a 15-year-old girl when he was 19.

Oh, the reporter relishes that fact. Two different cases of "having consensual sex when I was a teenager myself."

An adult having sex with a minor is a crime, no matter how you slice it.

Smug self-righteousness will not allow the reporter to question whether it makes sense to make a crime of consensual sex.

“Because I’m on Megan’s Law, everybody looks at me different, and this is where I have trouble getting a job. And just, didn’t touch no kids or anything like that,” he said. 

He is right: everybody looks at him differently because he is on the registration website, not because he had sex with a girlfriend or two. Think about that.

Jacobs said he never hid his convictions when he applied for the Easter bunny job.
It just never came up. 

“They didn’t ask for my background on the application that I filled out. It didn’t say anything about a criminal background,” Jacobs claimed. 

So who dropped the ball?

The ball dropped when no one stopped to wonder if this young man poses a danger to children.

A spokesman for Westmoreland mall tells us Cherry Hill Photo Enterprise leases space to take Easter photos in the mall and said. “It is regrettable that one of their local employees failed to follow their stringent background screening procedures.” 

As for Michael Paul Jacobs, he’s out of work again.

That happens too often to sex offenders.

“I think it’s messed up that people judge me for me just being on that site, basically,” Jacobs said. 

It is definitely messed up. To label a young man a violent sex offender for having consensual sex is messed up.

To pretend that he is a danger to small children when he has no history of harming children is patently dishonest.

Don't open those plastic eggs, kids. They were filled by dishonest people who are happy to pretend there is no difference between chocolate and rabbit droppings.