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‘I didn’t touch no kids’ Sex offender hired as mall Easter Bunny

Posted at 1:23 PM, Mar 24, 2015
and last updated 2015-03-24 15:28:09-04

GREENSBURG, Pa. – Parents are demanding answers after learning that a registered sex offender worked as the Easter Bunny at a Pennsylvania mall.

He 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. 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 worked at Westmoreland Mall as the Easter Bunny. 

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

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

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

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Credit: CNN

Jacobs says he never hid his convictions when he applied for the Easter Bunny job, just that 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 said.

A spokesman for Westmoreland Mall said Cherry Hill Photo Enterprise leases space to take Easter photos in the mall.

The mall said in a news release, “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.