94 Sex Offenders Live In Fredericksburg As Of October 2020

FREDERICKSBURG, VA — Fall is a good time to take an inventory of who is living in your neighborhood. The city of Fredericksburg has 94 registered sex offenders, according to the Virginia Sex Offender Registry.

Registered sex offenders cannot hand out candy on Halloween if they have restrictions related to probation supervision not allowing contact with children, according to the Virginia Sex Offender Registry. In those cases, they may not turn their porch lights on or open the door to trick-or-treaters.

Among the 94 registered sex offenders in Fredericksburg, 11 are listed as being incarcerated. Thirty-three of the registered sex offenders are listed as under probation supervision. Seventy-one of the registered sex offenders are Tier III, three are Tier II and 20 are Tier I.

Tier III is the most serious level of sex offender. It includes people whose offense is punishable by more than one year imprisonment and is comparable to aggravated sexual abuse or involves kidnapping of a minor, unless committed by a parent or guardian.

Law enforcement officials and researchers caution that the registries play 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 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. 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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