GREENSBURG, Pa. — Parents are demanding answers after learning that a registered sex offender worked as the Easter Bunny at a Pennsylvania mall.
Michael Paul Jacobs 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,” Jacobs said. “But what a lot of people need to realize is, you know, I wasn’t put in jail for touching little kids.”
Jacobs said his case revolved around having consensual sex with a teenager when he too was a teenager.
Jacobs was convicted in two different cases of having sex with a 15-year-old when he was 19 years old.
“Because I’m on Megan’s Law, everybody looks at me different, and this is where I have trouble getting a job,” he said. “And just, I didn’t touch no kids or anything like that.”
Jacobs said he never hid his convictions when he applied for the Easter Bunny job.
“They didn’t ask for my background on the application that I filled out,” he said. “It didn’t say anything about a criminal background.”
The spokesman for the Westmoreland Mall where Jacobs worked said a group called Cherry Hill Photo Enterprise leases the space to take Easter photos in the mall.
He added that 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 again.
“I think it’s messed up that people judge me for me just being on that site, basically,” he said.
