Former Catholic Priest Accused of Sexual Abuse Hired to Pat Down Customers by TSA

A disgraced former priest who was defrocked in 2002 over allegations of molestation in his New Jersey diocese has found a new job that is raising eyebrows: three months after he lost his clerical post he was given a job as a TSA officer.

According to the Daily Mail, Thomas Harkins’s duties include doing pat downs on children, which reports say proves the agency failed to do a thorough background check when it offered him a position at Philadelphia International Airport.

The 65-year-old was accused of sexually abusing two grade-school girls, which is information that was apparently not shared in the wake of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks. The urgent need for agents at the time meant that staff were being hired without being put under sufficient scrutiny, a TSA agent told the Mail.

50,000 new security workers were employed at the same time as Harkins, a TSA official told philly.com, many of whom were hired without checks.