About SHR

Milestones & Accomplishments

• 2001: The founder of what was to become SHR wins a small church grant to set up an afterschool in a depressed Appalachian coal town. Ohio's worker screening law takes effect, and he recruits the local Big Brothers Big Sisters affiliate to help him obey it. The 9-11 attack changes how America feels about scrutinizing peoples' backgrounds.

• 2002: SHR concentrates on solving the threat posed by cunning pedophiles who have no disqualifying criminal history. Famous authors and researchers counsel SHR privately at conferences and by phone. SHR discards early plans based on hopeless detection methods in favor of more subtle but comprehensive ones based on conflict-of-interest principles. The advisors coin SHR's copyrighted characterization of red flag indicators as "Appearances of Potential for Complaint." Lawyers agree Ohio's new screening law covers management and support personnel, not just teachers; Research reveals the molester's Achilles heel: the irresistible need for a constant supply of new victims. SHR develops safe means to thwart the molesters without having to specifically accuse them of criminal activity. The founder's family pours all its financial resources into the SHR project, and in late 2002 SHR pilots a legal method for safely eliciting Child Protective Services records for its first client, an afterschool in Bucyrus, Ohio. Good press, radio and TV interviews follow, and workers cooperate to refine program details.

• 2003: The bundle of inquiries is trademarked The New Precautions. The entire year is spent learning how not to market a service for upgrading vigilance. Despite the widening priesthood scandal and relentless press coverage, people cherish the myth, "It can't happen here." The Big Lesson
  was: Don't present the upgrades to the whole organization or group. It just divides them. Quietly gain the leader's support, then line up a sponsor before presenting the now-fully-funded program to users. SHR gets a logo, the Seal of Safer Selection Practice, develops a brochure, and begins getting invitations to present workshops at national conferences. There it is realized SHR has a totally unique and promising solution to the liability dilemma of screening. The handicap is: this was not invented by the big social service agencies who have spent $Millions working on the problem for years. Insiders predict it unlikely these big groups will stand up and cheer for SHR. They don't, but their officials, privately in the hallways and off-the-record, say it will work. Grant applications are prepared, then it is realized there is an 18 month lead time, and funds are reimbursed, not advanced. The 501(c)3 exemption is received, and the next pilot project takes place at a California commercial daycare center. Funding remains precarious but innumerable last-minute rescues keep happening.

• 2004: The entire year was spent beefing up the inquiry methods. A medium-sized church agrees to be a pilot project to develop the dossier-building and handling methods. Many lessons are learned, including the hazards of using interviewers who live in the client's community. Two of 100 volunteers publicly cooperated, but privately refused to ever submit the paperwork. During this year the accreditation aspect of SHR's process was scrutinized by a law firm which recommended against itPublic grants proved elusive, were found as costly to win and account-for as to pursue. Startups need private grants. SHR's advisory boards grew. County commissioners offer encouragement. Attending the NAPBS results in investor interest and prestige committee assignments. Vigorous networking gathers friends and supporters, reveals that a few widely published prevention authors worry new methods mean people won't buy books about the old ones. The website goes up full of engineering-style brochure-ware. Engineers like it. Investors don't. Paid research assignments are accepted from major mentoring and residential treatment interests. Inquiry methods are refined. The insurance industry retreats from covering child molestation lawsuits due to lack of sufficient data and sensational jury awards. SHR realizes the lawsuits occur thousands of times less frequently than the molesting. Risk of loss is vastly different from risk of harm. This explains the insurance industry's half-hearted efforts at prevention.

• 2005: The lecture circuit, research projects, and networking all advance. Key liaisons with major professional and trade associations are established. The church pilot project proceeds in small, isolated steps. Another commercial child care unit signs up. The founder begins to realize how quickly the sensitive issue of child sexual abuse risk becomes political: Lack of funds is the surface reason for not upgrading an organization's screening, but the underlying reason is even more valuable: reputation. Leaders fear a person they vouched-for in the past might turn up risky, call their overall judgment and ability to lead into question. SHR becomes an Ohio fingerprint source with legacy hardware loaned by a commercial service. Electronically captured prints go to Ohio, but the FBI still requires hand-rolled prints on cards, subject to a 20% reject rate.

• 2006: More inquiry sources are developed. Speaking invitations continue. The American Prosecutors Research Institute reviews and revises SHR's methods so they do not interfere with downstream prosecutions. A law firm donates a detailed review of all SHR processes for liability avoidance. These result in a complete overhaul of the internal processes and data handling. Client interviews with workers, accreditation, the user contract and the application forms are heavily revised. Federal privacy laws are amended to carve-out background checks pursuant to suspected employee misconduct, with the Federal Trade Commission writing rules favorable to SHR's process. The Forensic Review Board is established, recruiting from private investigator experts and retired FBI agents and prosecutors. A private funder begins covering half of SHR's expenses, underwrites participation in key conferences, encourages further development of fingerprint capture. SHR borrows high technology portable scanning equipment, learns its throughput rate of 5 minutes per person limits the size of groups that can be processed. The FBI gateway takes 14 weeks to respond, making the process impractical even if it could accommodate large groups meeting only for two hours. The equipment costs $15,000 to buy.

• 2007: The National Foundation to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse provides SHR with FBI overnight access and fingerprint-capture technology. SHR invents and pilot tests a practical method for simultaneous capture of excellent quality prints from large groups. The funder resurrects the idea of the insurance incentive, and a lottery method makes the advanced screening work affordable. An entirely new business model is formed which harnesses the financial and insurance incentive to deploy SHR's modern screening into the marketplace. The re-insurance industry responds with interest and encouragement. Small monetary gifts keep arriving to support SHR, comprising a nearly 60-month record of improbable financial rescues. The private foster care and youth sports industries express interest. SHR explores gaining access to domestic violence records, advertises for expert volunteers to accomplish large projects such as negotiating treaties with the nation's myriad Child Protective Services agencies. SHR chooses to pursue fund-raising for operating capital rather than accept new business growth that cannot be supported. (Summer 2007)