Ambler 2019 Halloween Sex Offender Safety Map

AMBLER, PA — 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. Ambler currently has four registered sex offenders with local residential addresses listed on the Pennsylvania Megan's Law Sex Offender Registry, a publicly available online database. None of them are Tier 3 offenders, the tier which includes kidnapping, rape, and aggravated sexual assault.

Nearby, Whitpain has three sex offenders with registered addresses in the township, and Lower Gwynedd has four, all of which are also included on the map.

Pins on the map, which is at the bottom of this article, represent addresses of offenders convicted of sex crimes. Roll your cursor over the pins, and you will see more information pop up, including the address of the offender, and a notation if they are a Tier 3 offender.

It's important to note that this list does not include sex offenders who may happen to be employed in the Ambler area while residing elsewhere.

In some states, registered sex offenders are prohibited from passing out candy on Halloween. This is not the case in Pennsylvania, as the state does not restrict offender activities on the holiday.

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.

The full map is below: