Just to cast a slightly different light on this discussion, which might be just as shocking to most....I was a social worker for 25 years before becoming a REALTOR. The majority of victims of sexual offenders are relatives of the perpetrator. Many of those registered sex offenders you are worried about prey only on their daughters/sons/cousins/neices/nephews. One of the things a predator needs is to gain the trust of his or her victim in order to be able to have access to them in the first place.Uncle Joe taking Susie and her friends to the circus is often much more the threat one should be worrying about.

Though we don't like to think about it this way, this scenario is much like that of rape. The perpetrator is almost always someone who is known to the victim and with whom they have a personal relationship. Again, stranger rape is much less of a threat than being attacked by a realtive or "friend"....We should always do what we can to make buyers aware of the resources available to them to find out as much as possible about neighborhoods they are considering. We also need to be careful about stigmatizing people and neighborhoods......remember about a third of the people on Death Row are found to be innocent after things like DNA testing or other evidence is used. How do we know we are doing any better in these cases?

I believe that all these horror stories are true and there are many others like them. That sadest part is that the victims are seldom protected or helped to deal with the multiple levels of trauma. Many of them turn into offenders themselves. People like the gentleman who bought the house and took a while to find out why the neighbors were avoiding him are also victims, stigmatized for something they had nothing to do with and most of the time no knowledge about because the so-called watchdog sites are not accurate. We have a responsibility to give people all the tools we know about so they can to find information but we also have a responsibility not to throw fuel on the fire and make it worse by adding to confusion and inaccuracies. It is not always easy.

Then there is the question of someone having paid their debt to society....if you or anyone you know has struggled with an eating disorder or a drinking problem you know the stress they feel from public scrutiny and the fact that it makes a difficult thing more difficult.  It's like the cycle of a convicted felon who has served his or her sentence and really does want to change but can't get a job because no one will hire a convicted felon . The frustration can lead back into old friends and  habits because it is the only place they are accepted. This is not the case for all. There are some people who are not going to be different no matter what and people will not be safe around them no matter what. The hard part is to tell the difference. You can't do that without giving people a chance. Worse yet, we run the risk of making it less safe for everyone.