USPS's Operation Santa Changes The Rules

Cranky

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From the AP, via Yahoo!:

A sex offender is responsible for taking away some of the joy of the Postal Service's Operation Santa program: Volunteers who answer children's letters to Santa can no longer deliver gifts in person — or even know where they're going.

The program resumed Saturday morning in New York and Chicago, three days after it was abruptly suspended after a postal worker in Maryland recognized one volunteer as a registered offender. A postal inspector intervened before the individual could answer a child's letter, but officials decided changes had to be made.

I can't tell you how sad this story makes me. I'm glad, however that the program will continue. I'm just depressed that reality has to intrude in such a nasty way over a great holiday donation program.

That said, I've always just donated to Toys for Tots or via an Angel Tree, having been a recipient of such gifts myself a time or two as a child.
 

Maryn

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When I read this in the paper, I was flabbergasted that the program still allowed complete strangers unsupervised face-to-face meetings with kids they'd chosen. Of course you're going to get people whose interest in the kids is less than wholesome. Who was the bozo who opened it to volunteers who had not been screened in any way?

Maryn, realist
 

Cranky

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When I read this in the paper, I was flabbergasted that the program still allowed complete strangers unsupervised face-to-face meetings with kids they'd chosen. Of course you're going to get people whose interest in the kids is less than wholesome. Who was the bozo who opened it to volunteers who had not been screened in any way?

Maryn, realist

Well, the program started back in the twenties, when child molesters weren't so much at the forefront of people's minds. Not so much a bozo as different times, I suppose.