TX- Texas agents arrest sex offenders in Halloween sweep

10-24-2008 Texas:

SAN ANTONIO -- The two federal agents had been working for 15 hours, tracking down sex-offense suspects as part of an agencywide sweep before Halloween.

The majority of arrests were for sex offenders violating their registration requirements.

“There's a lot of kids that are going to be on the streets pretty soon,” said Smith, who headed the sweep. “That's the main thing. We wanted to make sure our kids are safe.”

Such sweeps are part of a nationwide law enforcement trend targeting sex-offense suspects or registered sex offenders on or before Halloween and more severely restricting their activities that night. In Maryland, for instance, sex offenders this year are required to post a bright orange pumpkin on their doors marked with the slogan: “No candy at this residence.”

In Texas, where Attorney General Greg Abbott recently called for some of the toughest sex offender reporting proposals in the country — suggesting an expansion of the state sex offender registry to include e-mail addresses and Internet screen names — there are no such pumpkins yet.

But registered sex offenders in Texas are required to turn off their porch lights and are prohibited from having any exterior decorations between 5 p.m. and 5 a.m. on Halloween, with parole, probation and police officers checking to see if they comply.

In some counties, such as McLennan County in Central Texas, probation officers have taken it a step further. This is the fourth year they will order convicted sex offenders to gather in their office during prime trick-or-treating hours. That idea was floated here this year, Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed said, but never materialized.

Some critics say those measures unnecessarily scapegoat sex offenders who already are complying with the conditions of their parole. They also point to federal statistics that show juvenile sexual assault victims know their abusers 93 percent of the time. Mostly, it's a family member or a friend. Rarely is it a stranger.

It's also unusual for a stranger to snatch a child. According to the Justice Department, of almost 800,000 missing children in a one-year period, just 115 were victims of a stereotypical kidnapping, with half of those involving sexual assault.

Calling such Halloween programs “foolishness,” Scott Henson, a criminal justice blogger, said it “mis-targets resources on a night with one of the year's highest youth crime rates, plus it increases the burdens of sex offender registration with no discernible public safety payoff.”

Writing on his site, Grits for Breakfast, he said, “Just let the kids go get some candy. ... And if you're worried about what will happen, tag along.”

Available statistics don't indicate there is any truth to the widespread perception that trick-or-treating children are at increased risk from sex offenders on Halloween.

Henson cites only one publicized Halloween sexual assault and abduction of a child — in Wisconsin in 1973, involving a man with no prior criminal record, who therefore wouldn't have raised any red flags for authorities.

In that case, Gerald Turner, who later became known as the “Halloween killer,” sexually assaulted and killed 9-year-old Lisa French after she knocked on his door while trick-or-treating.

Neither San Antonio police nor the Bexar County Sheriff's Office could recall any such Halloween-related instances here. At the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Kristen Anderson, the director of the case analysis division for sex offender tracking, said no one really tracks that information.

But from the center's collected data, Anderson found only nine nonfamily child abductions reported between Oct. 29 and Nov. 1 over a five-year period. None, she said, appeared to have any connection to Halloween.

But Anderson said law enforcement agencies nevertheless must take these proactive approaches because, “if something happens, then they're blamed for not doing anything.” The primary onus, however, remains on parents to look after their trick-or-treating children, she said. ........ ..News Source.. by Lomi Kriel San Antonio Express-News