Sex Offender Seeks Construction Jobs

Season's Greetings.

My fiance's ex husband is a paroled sex offender. He was released from prison more than ten years ago and my fiance divorced him but has too much compassion to turn him out on the street. He had found work in construction driving tractors and heavy equipment but all that disappeared when the recession hit. After a long stretch of unemployment he got another construction job that required heavy manual labor. His bosses knew of his crime and worked him extra hard because of that.

Despite what I have read about parole officers, the reality is that many of them don't really like their work so they play games, mostly trying to violate these men again. If the parolee is living in a good neighborhood (despite the hatred of the neighbors) the parole officer may be very jealous, which is the case with my fiance's ex. She is not there to help him in any way. That is the reality.

Meanwhile, he makes a meager income of about $800 a month, and he lives in my fiance's home taking care of their teenage son. My fiance takes contract work and travels to stay away from him. Prior to her ex husband's incarceration, he worked in the office of a major defense contracting firm and earned a very good living. But now, he is mostly a broken middle-aged man working manual labor at minimum wage.

My fiance and I would like to help him find meaningful and lucrative work. He had worked in positions that would earn upwards to $40 an hour, but no one would hire him because of his status. The guy has an impressive resume, and he's constantly worried about being violated again, or that his parole officer will go after him. We're considering to set up a LLC and make him an 1099 employee. We would handle marketing of his skills There are a number of contract web sites - Odesk.com, Textbroker.com and Elance.com where we can try to get work for him.

What are your thoughts about such an arrangement?

Sex Offender Seeks Construction Jobs

I'm not sure. I suggest you get the legal angle one it. Convicted sex-offenders are subject to reporting regulations that other ex-offenders and felons don't have to deal with.

What I would suggest in the meantime is to make a list of local contractors and offer to himself out as a day laborer. There are in all probability quite a few contractors in your area looking for skilled day laborers as a way to keep their own costs down. He could get a list of contractors that have recently been issued building permits at your local municipal building. This is public record so he should have no trouble getting that information.

I hope this helps.