I'm not sure if this will be of any comfort or not, but when I was a kid, my brother, sister and I lived across the street from a convicted child molestor. We were all under 10 at the time. My parents made it absolutely clear that he was a dangerous man and we were to stay far away from him and his house. I don't really know how they did it, but they definitely got the message across without terrifying us so much that we lived in fear.
We simply stayed far away from him and never had any problems. In fact, there were no reports of any misconduct in that neighborhood as long as he resided there. He very much kept to himself. After we moved my mother confessed that she slept with her eyes open for the three years we resided in that area.
