DRAPER, Utah (ABC 4 News) - A new study finds as many as 16 percent of all sex offenders in the United States may be cheating the system and living closer to you than you think.
ABC 4 wanted to know how is this happening and what's being done to protect innocent children here in Utah?
A sex offender search reveals hundreds of sex offenders in the Draper area. ABC 4 set out to knock on doors of sex offenders to ask if they really live where claim they do.
The ABC 4 team knocked on five doors. One offender was home, three were gone and one no longer lived at the address posted on the sex offender registry.
Bond said to the owner, "The sex offender registry says this guy Daniel lives here." Holly Anderton responded, "No I've never seen that guy before."
Anderton moved into the home three weeks ago and says as a mother she's concerned.
"I just hope they can keep improving the system and know where all these guys are," said Anderton.
Three percent of Utah's 7,000 sex offenders are unaccounted for, according to Department of Corrections spokesman, Steve Gehrke.
That means about 210 offenders are drifting unnoticed by law enforcement officials in the State.
Gehrke says this is a significant improvement from 2009 when more than 1,000 sex offenders were unaccounted for.
