A convicted Marshalltown sex offender has moved in right across the street from a school and regularly visits an apartment building full of children.

It comes just months after he was accused of trying to have sexual contact with at least eight separate children.

Channel 13 asked Stewart Smith if he is a pedophile. He replied “yes.”

The 51-year old is on the sex offender registry in Florida and Minnesota and on the national sex offender registry.

But even though he was charged in Tama County in May with multiple counts of trying to entice children as young as eight years old into having sex with him and quote,  “stealing” two other kids, he insists he is no longer a threat to children.

Smith took a plea deal to lesser charges.  Tama County court records indicate police questioned Smith without reading him his rights and interviewed his wife in violation of his fifth amendment rights.

He was never placed on the Iowa sex offender registry.  That’s why he’s allowed to live right across the street from an elementary school and visit his family here in an apartment complex filled with children.

Parents there are scared.

“I just don’t understand how this can happen,” says Linda Proct, a parent of two children. “He’s here every single day multiple times a day.”

Smith says all of the accusations against him are false, made up by parents who were jealous of his relationship with their kids.

He received a suspended 10-year sentence and was placed on probation for three years.

The Tama County Attorney did not want to comment.