Sex crimes against children don’t increase at Halloween, says Lynn University professor

9-18-2009 National:

In recent years, law enforcement agencies have warned parents that sex offenders may target children during Halloween, a time when they could have more access to kids trick-or-treating or during parties.

The Florida Department of Corrections forbids sex offenders on supervision to give out candy during Halloween. They are also told not to decorate, answer the door, dress in a costume or keep their porch light on.

But a Lynn University professor recently completed a study (Complete Research Paper -or- Summary of Research Paper) that found sex crimes against children don’t increase during the Halloween holiday.

Jill Levenson, a human services professor at Lynn University in Boca Raton and a licensed clinical social worker, published the report in July in the journal, “Sexual Abuse: A Journal of research and treatment.”

“Sexual molesters sometimes use seemingly innocent opportunities to engage children for sexual abuse and therefore might be expected to use trick-or-treat for ulterior purposes,” the study says. “However, this logic does not appear to translate into an increase in sex offenses around Halloween.”

Researchers looked at a 9-year period, saying even before increased awareness and enforcement, there were not significant spikes in sex crimes against children around Halloween.

“Reasonable parental supervision and vigilance on Halloween is appropriate, but there does not appear to be cause for alarm concerning sexual abuse risk in particular,” the study found. “Increased vigilance concerning risk should be directed to the summer months, where regular seasonal increases in sex crimes are readily seen.”

The report also notes that it could be more worthwhile to have police focusing on traffic-related incidents on Halloween over monitoring sex offenders.

“The wide net cast by Halloween laws places some degree of burden on law enforcement officers whose time would otherwise be allocated to addressing more probably dangerous events.” ..Source.. by Kim Miller