THE TELEGRAPH: The US Postal Service has been accused of Scrooge-like behaviour after it imposed strict rules on a 55-year-old Father Christmas letters service over fears that paedophiles might gain access to the young correspondents.
Since 1954, the Operation Santa programme, which is centred in the small Alaskan town of North Pole, has been forwarding about 150,000 letters a year addressed to “Santa Claus, North Pole”.
Replies written by volunteers around the US and bearing the North Pole postmark, come signed by one of Santa’s elves. However, concerns were raised last year when a worker at a sorting centre in Maryland recognised an Operation Santa volunteer in the state as a registered sex offender.
The individual was sacked before he could answer a child’s letter, but the episode prompted the Postal Service to tighten up the rules, which already required “elves” to show identification.
The service now prohibits volunteers from having access to children’s full names and addresses. They will be replaced by codes that match computerised addresses known only to the post office. >>> Tom Leonard in New York | Thursday, November 19, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: US cancels Santa Claus letter service over paedophile fears >>> James Bone in New York | Friday, November 20, 2009
