Do Sex Offenders Live In Your Neighborhood?

April Davis
WSAV News 3
Monday, August 8, 2005

People in South Carolina have a new way to check if their neighbors are sex offenders. By federal law, every state is required to have a sex offender registry. For years, there's been talk about a federal registry, a central location to go to find sex offenders all over the country.
The government hasn't done it yet. But Crime and Safety Reporter April Davis reports a private company isn't waiting around for an act of congress.
Last month, a four-day search for an eleven year old boy had a happy ending. Brennan Hawkins was found alive after he disappeared from his boy scout camp. Some called it a modern-day miracle.
It just so happened that Utah web developer Aaron Olsen helped in the search and was there when Hawkins was found. "You just felt good to be out there knowing you're helping his family out. It as just amazing when they found him."
Even though Hawkins wasn't abducted, it was speculated during the search, and Olsen had a brainstorm. Why not make it easier for people to find sex-offenders and predators in their neighborhood and map it out?
In South Carolina, now you can, on mapsexoffenders.com.
The SC Sex Offender Registry is run by the state, and on this site you either have to type in or click on the city you want to search. Once you get to that site, it will tell you the names of all the sex offenders in that area. Once you find one you want to search, you submit that and it will bring up the person's name and address.
Mapsexoffenders.com will show you right away where a sex offender lives by searching for them with maps. Every sex offender who lives in the area is marked with a red dot. Click on the dot and you can find the sex offender’s name, and then you know exactly where that sex offender lives because it is marked on a map.
"It just really allows them to visualize it and give them a better sense of where they're at very quickly." Olsen says that seeing the Hawkins family's joy to have their son home safe was the inspiration to protect as many children as he can with his own modern-day miracle.
So far, 36 states have been mapped. South Carolina is already on the website and Olsen says Georgia will be added in a few days.