Herndon 2019 Sex Offender Safety Map For Halloween

HERNDON, VA — Before kids go out trick or treating on Halloween, fall is a good time to take an inventory of who is living in your neighborhood. Herndon currently has 22 registered sex offenders listed on the Virginia State Police sex offender registry who are living in the area.

All eight of them are mapped below. Pins on the map represent addresses of offenders convicted of or wanted for sex crimes. Roll your cursor over the pins and you will see the full address.

Sex offenders in Virginia who have restrictions placed on them may not participate in Halloween activities, according to the Virginia State Police website.

"If the convicted sex offender is on supervision - which means restrictions have been placed on them as they relate to probation supervision and not state law - then they may not be permitted to participate in trick-or-treat activities (i.e. porch lights must be turned off; not permitted to open the door to trick-or-treaters, etc.)," the site states. "This restriction only applies if that offender's conditions of probation supervision prohibit contact with children."

You may want to avoid trick or treating at these houses and apartments on Halloween, or merely be aware of who's living in your neighborhood during the rest of the year.

Law enforcement officials and researchers caution that the registries can play only a limited role in preventing child sexual abuse and stress that most perpetrators are known to the child. The U.S. Department of Justice, which oversees the National Sex Offender Public Website, estimates that only about 10 percent of perpetrators of child sexual abuse are strangers to the child.

The Justice Department estimates 60 percent of perpetrators are known to the child but are not family members but rather family friends, babysitters, child care providers and others, and 30 percent of child victims are abused by family members. Nearly a quarter of the abusers are under the age of 18, the department estimates.

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