When we were house hunting a few years I made a list of the exact address of houses we were short listing. My husband looked at me funny until I commandeered his computer and began pulling up the sex offenders in the area around each location. There was only one house on our short list that we eliminated because of the proximity of a child predator, but eliminate it we did.
Now that we’ve moved I try to check our address at the sex offender registry at least once a month. But it’s not enough. When it comes to child safety you have to cast a wider net:
Check the address of your child’s school.
Check the area around their daycare; especially if your child is in a home daycare since they are in residential neighborhoods and likelier to have someone living nearby than a commercial area.
If they have a particular friend they like to visit, check their address, particularly if it is somewhere they go without you.
Check the area around you and your child’s favorite parks and play areas.
Check the neighborhoods where other family members live.
That last one never occurred to me until I was at my mom’s one day last year and she mentioned in passing that we should take Jay around to the back yard to play.
“Why?”
“Don’t freak out on me…But the guy in the yellow house across the street is a registered child molester and I’d just as soon not have him watching my granddaughter play. He likes little girls, according to what I could find on the website*…”
We went around back and I keep that knowledge in the back of my head every time I visit her.
My mother-in-law called today and asked if we’d be willing to let Girlchild stay with her for a week some time in the next month or so. I said yes. Now I’m going to go look up their address, since I’ve never checked it before.
Until next time, stay safe!
*Texas’ sex offender database is pretty specific and you can get fairly detailed anonymous victim information; things like the number of convictions, the victim’s gender and age at the time of the crime, etc.