How much and in what ways should the high school behavior (including crimes) of a middle aged or elderly person still affect their present employment or treatment in society?

A few days ago, there was a news piece about a 58 year old woman, who was employed by Wells Fargo Bank. They recently discovered that she was arrested for shoplifting as a teen (16 or 17 years old at the time). She had not revealed the conviction when she was hired, and because of company policy, they fired her. She worked there for five years.

It has just been revealed by some prep school classmates of Mitt Romney that when he was in high school, he participated in bullying incidents against a classmate. Today on the news they said they tackled the classmate and Romney cut his hair off. The classmate later came out as gay. Romney now claims that he does not remember the incidents, admits that they did engage in what he calls “pranks” and he apologized.

I have to admit when I heard about the bank employee getting fired for something she did in the 1960’s, I felt sympathetic, for a variety of reasons, like her age and the circumstances of her being young and stupid and now, older and hopefully wiser. However, when I heard about Romney, I felt unsympathetic, due to feeling like the attacks of the gay classmate speak more to his character. I am not sure (and this may take some thought today) if my feelings are tainted by my dislike of Romney in general.

How do you feel? In what ways should the high school behavior of a middle aged or elderly person still affect their present employment or treatment by society? What particular circumstances might you feel are forgiveable and what circumstances do you feel should not be forgiven?