2020 Toms River Sex Offender Map

TOMS RIVER, NJ — Fall is a good time to take an inventory of who is living in your neighborhood. The Toms River and Seaside Heights area has 103 registered sex offenders listed on the New Jersey State Police Sex Offender Registry.

Pins on the map represent addresses of offenders convicted of sex crimes. Roll your cursor over the pins, and you will see more information pop up, including the registered sex offender's name, address, convictions, and details on the offense where they are available. Or, click on the link to view a larger map.

This is not private information. The Megan's Law database and information on local offenders is publicly available online.

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.

The New Jersey Office of the Attorney General (OAG) website says that its sex offender registry is made available on the internet "to enable you to take appropriate precautions to protect yourself and those in your care from possible harm."

In Toms River, there are 77 listed in the registry. In Seaside Heights, the registry lists 27 offenders. Of those, one is currently incarcerated. New Jersey's registry lists only Tier II and Tier III offenders, considered at risk of committing another offense. There is one Tier III offender listed in Toms River and three in Seaside Heights (one is incarcerated).

The Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers, a nonprofit organization for clinicians, researchers, educators, law enforcement and court officials involved in sexual abuse cases, cautions that children do not face a heightened risk during the Halloween season.

"There is no change in the rate of sexual crimes by non-family members during Halloween," the group says. "That was true both before and after communities enacted laws to restrict the activities of registrants during Halloween. The crimes that do increase around Halloween are vandalism and property destruction, as well as theft, assault, and burglary."

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• Why Patch Publishes Sex Offender Registry Maps

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