Check Your Area

How to search the official sex-offender registries — the U.S. Department of Justice national search and every state's own registry — by address, around your home or your child's school. Preyed Upon publishes no home addresses; the official registries do that job, under law, with current data.

Check Your Area

This archive documents what institutions did — and failed to do — about clergy and church workers accused of abusing children. That record reaches back decades, and most of the people in it are dead, in prison, or long gone from wherever they once lived. It cannot tell you who lives on your street today, and it is not built to.

We don’t publish home addresses. The official registries do that job, under law, with current data — here’s how to use them.

Every state runs a public sex-offender registry, maintained by law enforcement and updated as offenders register, move, and are verified. Those registries — not this site — are the lawful, current tool for checking who is registered near your home, your child’s school, a daycare, a church, or a workplace. This page routes you to them, one verified link at a time.

Start here: the national search

The U.S. Department of Justice runs the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website (NSOPW), which searches the registries of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories, and participating tribal registries in a single search:

Search NSOPW — nsopw.gov

1. Choose Search by Address — Radius.
2. Enter the address you want to check around — your home, or your child’s school — plus the city and state.
3. Set the distance: how far out from that address you want to look.
4. Read each result on the official state registry it links to. That record — the photograph, the offense, the registered address as the state publishes it — is the source of truth, not this page.

One limit, printed on NSOPW itself: the radius search covers only the states that provide geographic coordinates for addresses to NSOPW. If a radius search comes back thin, run the same address through your state’s own registry below — most state tools have their own address and radius search.

How to check around a school

1. Get the school’s street address from the school or district website.
2. Run it on NSOPW with a radius — a half mile to a mile covers the immediate surroundings and the walk-to-school routes.
3. Run it again on your state’s registry (table below) using the state’s address, map, or radius search where offered. State tools sometimes carry registrations the national radius search misses.
4. Look at photographs, not just names. Names repeat. A match means a person with that name is registered at that address — check the photo, age, and physical description before you conclude anything.
5. Repeat the check occasionally. Registries change as people move and registrations are verified. A search is a snapshot, not a guarantee.
6. If anyone — a school, a church, a youth program — is placing a person around children and something in a result concerns you, act on it through the channels below. Do not confront the person yourself.

State registries — verified official links

Each link below was opened and checked against the official state source on October 25, 2026. “Area search” records only what the registry page itself showed — where it says “not stated,” the pages we could open did not display the field, and we did not guess.

Four states route through NSOPW. The official search pages for Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, and Washington could not be opened and verified from this archive on October 25, 2026 — several state registry hosts block automated reading outright, and a live-browser attempt the same day was blocked as well. (Kansas, Oregon, and Tennessee were verified in that live-browser pass and now carry direct links above.) Rather than print a link we could not stand behind, those rows use NSOPW, which searches those same state registries. The same applies to Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands, for which no official public search page could be verified: NSOPW covers them.

Where the law limits what the public list shows

A registry is not a complete list of everyone who has ever committed a sexual offense — and in several states the law itself narrows what may be published. As the agencies’ own pages state:

• Massachusetts publishes Level 2 offenders (classified after July 12, 2013) and Level 3 offenders online; Level 1 information is not public, and the complete Level 2 list sits with local police departments.
• Minnesota’s public search covers only registrants subject to public notification; most registration information is private by statute. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s public site lists non-compliant offenders only.
• New York’s online directory covers Level 2 and Level 3 only. Information on Level 1 offenders is available by phone — 800-262-3257 — with a name and one identifier.
• New Jersey’s internet registry includes Tier 3 and, with exceptions, Tier 2 offenders; Tier 1 is excluded entirely.
• Delaware displays only moderate- and high-risk registrants; Arizona publishes Level 2, Level 3, and statute-qualifying offenders; Colorado states that its site does not display the entire list of registrants; Texas states that not all offenders appear in its public database; the District of Columbia publishes Class A and Class B offenders only, with addresses at block level; Oregon’s public search lists Level 3 offenders only.

One non-government alternative

Family Watchdog is a free service — not a government site and not a registry — that offers search by address, by name, and for schools and daycares, plus free alerts when a registered offender moves near an address you watch. Some families find its alerts convenient. Treat anything it shows as a pointer: confirm it on the official state registry before you rely on it.

If you find something concerning

• A child is in immediate danger: call 911.
• An offender who appears not to be living where he is registered, or to be violating registration rules: contact the state registry (each site in the table lists its registry unit) or your local law-enforcement agency’s non-emergency line. Registries act on tips; the public cannot fix a record, but it can report one.
• You suspect a child is being abused or neglected: in Pennsylvania, call ChildLine at 1-800-932-0313; anywhere in the U.S., the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 can connect you to your state’s reporting line.
• Do not use registry information to threaten, harass, or harm anyone. The registries’ own terms warn that misuse of registry information can itself be a crime. The point of the registry is vigilance, not vigilantes.
• The abuse happened inside a church, school, or institution — recently or decades ago: that belongs in this archive as well as with law enforcement. Tell your story — on your terms, anonymously if you choose.

What a registry can and cannot tell you

Registries are kept current by offenders registering and police verifying — several registries say plainly that an address is the last one reported, and that the information is not a complete criminal history. Alaska’s registry warns of a lag of up to seven days. Absence from a registry is not proof of safety, and presence is not a verdict on who a person is today: it is a record, kept under law, so that parents and neighbors are not the last to know. Use it that way.

Verification note

Links on this page were verified October 25, 2026, one by one, against the official state and federal pages they point to: 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam carry a direct link to their official registry search (Kansas, Oregon, and Tennessee verified in a live browser after automated reading failed); 4 states (Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, Washington) and the remaining territories are searched through NSOPW, because their official search pages could not be opened and verified that day. Registries move and are rebuilt — if a link fails, start from nsopw.gov and follow its state listing. The full verification record, including each state’s stated limits, is kept with this archive’s research files.