Parents outraged after sex offender worked on school construction projects

ABINGTON, Mass. -- A level two sex offender working as a construction subcontractor gained access to not one, but two local schools.

Tuesday night, Boston 25 News first reported about the serious security breach at an elementary school in Hanover.

Now, we've confirmed the same thing happened at a school in Abington.

Anthony Douglas was convicted last fall in Worcester County of indecent assault and battery on a person older than 14.

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He worked for Brait Builders at the schools as an electrical sub-contractor. An executive vice president with the construction company said Douglas used forged information and exploited a legal loophole.

Parents in Abington stunned to learn that he gained access to two local schools with hundreds of children present without ever having a background check.

“It's plain and simple. Everyone has to do a background check to do jobs nowadays. Why didn't they run one?” parent Joe Sullivan said. “That’s ridiculous.”

Although he never had access to children at Hanover’s Center School during the three months he worked there, he was occasionally in the same area as children while working in Abington off and on from April 2017 to March of this year.

In a statement, Hanover Superintendent Peter Schafer said, "although he was in the school building at times, he was never alone with students."

Republican State Representative David DeCoste said that state law currently doesn't require districts to do background checks on construction workers, though many of them do.

“People are concerned and they're wondering why there's not a law dealing with this type of thing,” he said. “Things are overlooked and this is the kind of thing that needs to be cleaned up.”

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