How to Protect Your Children from Sex Offenders
The United States has one of the largest numbers of registered sex offenders in the world, nearing 900,000 registered sex offenders as of 2020. Unfortunately, many sex offenders do not disclose their past when meeting new people. Also, sex offenders who have been released from prison after serving time for committing sex crimes are more likely to re-offend than other released prisoners (7.7% compared to 2.3% of non-sex criminals). So, it is highly likely that a sex offender will re-offend once out of prison. To make sure that your children are safe and that do not have close relationships with registered sex offenders, it is imperative to find out who in your child's life has committed a sex crime.
Sex Crimes Involving Children: The Facts and Stats
Research among sex offenders who have committed crimes involving children has shown the following:
- 1 in 3 girls is sexually abused before reaching 18.
- 1 in 5 boys is sexually abused before reaching 18.
- 90% of children who fell victim to sexual abuse know the person who abused them.
- Approximately 20% of child victims of sexual abuse are under the age of 8.
- 1 in 5 children is solicited to sex through the internet before the age of 18.
- Sex offenders who commit crimes against children will commit 117 sex crimes in their lifetime.
The alarming numbers demonstrate how prevalent child sex abuse is and the high likelihood of child sex offenders to re-offend. To protect your children from getting hurt by sex offenders, it is up to you to discover if another parent, neighbor, or other individual in your child's life has a history of committing sexual crimes.
How to Perform a Sex Offender Search?
Registered sex offenders are required to re-register every year or other period of time, based on their sentence. The information about sex offender registration is available to the public, so you can get access to it whenever you desire. The data in sex offender registries include the name of the offender, the crime he/she committed, their address, mugshot, and additional information about the offenders and the crimes they have committed. To discover if there are sex offenders in your neighborhood and near your children, here is what you need to do:
Perform a local sex offender search
Official online registries allow you to discover who are the sex offenders who reside in your area. To find out who they are, you need to use search engines and enter your neighborhood's information. For instance, "Michigan, Okemos, Sex Offenders". The search will yield a map of the registered sex offenders who live in the area in question, and detailed information about them and their offenses. In many cases, you will also receive links to official offender pages where you will be able to view more detailed information about sex offenders who reside in your area.
Public records search
If you want a more focused sex offender search, you can use a public records search service, like ProPeopleSearch.com. The online public records search directory provides detailed reports about individuals in the country, so you are able to perform a search about any individual that you desire and discover if he/she is a registered sex offender. You can perform a name-based people search, phone number search, or an address search to discover more about the people who are a part of your children's lives. 
Once you enter an identifying detail about a person of interest, the search engine on ProPeopleSearch will begin to scan public records in search of information about the said person. At the end of the query that lasts several minutes, you will receive a detailed report about the person of interest, including their full name, residential history, arrests, crimes, sex offender registries, and more, which will let you learn more about the people in your children's lives, allowing you to better protect them from potentially harmful adults.
