And we have, on the local and, most emphatically, on a national level. In 1994, after the alleged abduction by way of the Internet of 10-year-old Bruce Burdinski in Maryland, the FBI announced that it would become proactive in regulating Internet traffic in images and bodies. A year later, the agency launched "Innocent Images," a program designed to train law enforcement officials to imitate young girls and boys in chat rooms in an attempt to catch electronic stalkers. The idea was to lure the would-be molesters out of hiding and into meetings -- and then arrest them.

According to the FBI's Peter Gullotta, the program has been a great success, resulting in 515 arrests and 439 convictions since 1995. (Former Infoseek executive Patrick Naughton, sentenced to five years' probation earlier this month, was arrested in an Innocent Images sting operation.) In 10 division offices across the country (the headquarters is in Baltimore), the FBI now trains specially deputized workers with the support of a special congressional grant of $10 million. Innocent Images initiated 700 investigations in fiscal 1998 and 1,500 the next year.

Gullotta carefully notes that the increase in cases, some of which may be based on nothing more than an anonymous tip, doesn't indicate a huge increase in the number of pedophiles but simply reflects a greater number of "efforts to catch them." He does, however, express unambiguous confidence that the people being caught are indeed predators and that the Innocent Images program is effectively addressing a genuine menace.

The problem is that there is little evidence that we are genuinely menaced. Statistics are scarce, anecdotes easy to come by. Arrests have been made -- but for abduction? Assault? Rape? Sexual molestation? Well, no. The Burdinski case that inspired the Innocent Images program was never brought to court or solved, so we simply do not know what happened: The boy was never found. He may indeed have been abducted by way of a chat room, but we don't know that.

Gullotta says the FBI has no figures on how many children are abducted or met by way of chat rooms. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children doesn't have any figures either, though it does have a CyberTipline, where concerned citizens can call in suspicious things they spot on the Internet: child pornography, prostitution, child-sex tourism, molestation and enticement.

The CyberTipline has recorded 1,848 tips concerning enticement in the past two years, but that's only 12 percent of the total tips taken by the service, and no one knows how many of those complaints are duplicates, mistakes or malicious calls meant to do harm to enemies.

It would seem that at this point, invested as we are in this crisis, we are simply trusting our instincts -- our worst fears -- which is something we have done before, particularly in the area of child sexual safety. In the past decade or so, we have gone on a lot of crusades in the name of protecting our children from sexual predators: We have raided preschools, the dens of witches and our own memories. We have managed to make a number of arrests too, very often of innocent people, and have disrupted lives, scared kids and separated them from parents.

But we haven't seemed to learn that our ability to convince ourselves that a threat exists is no guarantee that there is one; our ability to make arrests does not mean crimes have been committed; our determination to protect our children does not mean we are doing so. Satanic ritual abuse, we recall, did not exist at all -- nowhere, not once, not to anybody: So says the FBI.

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