About 93 percent of sex crimes against children are not committed by strangers but by family members or acquaintances. Laws linking sex offenses to Halloween are the product of a culture marked by decades of irrational fears about children and safety on Halloween. Sociologists, such as Joel Best, have tried to understand the urban myths surrounding poisoned candy on Halloween. Media reports warning of potential dangers, such as razor blades in apples, first appeared in the early 1970s, and then spread via word-of-mouth. Best has never found a death or injury of a child on Halloween related to candy based on his decades of research — and the only substantiated case involves a child deliberately harmed by his own father.