that person was a threat to my child. But I have no, quote, evidence that he molested.'

78. At this writing, in 2001, a constitutional challenge to the 1996 law is on the Supreme Court's docket.

79. 'Cynthia Stewart's Ordeal,' editorials, Nation (May 1, 2000).

80. James R. Kincaid, 'Hunting Pedophiles on the Net,' salon.com, August 24, 2000.

81. A particularly harrowing account of a year-long entrapment campaign resulting in the conviction of a man who seemed to have no preexisting sexual interest in children can be found in Laura Kipnis, Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America (New York: Grove Press, 1996).

82. Christopher Marquis, 'U.S. Says It Broke Pornography Ring Featuring Youths,' New York Times, August 9, 2001.

83. Kincaid, 'Hunting Pedophiles on the Net.'

84. During the U.S. Postal Inspection Service's late-1980s Project Looking Glass investigations, 5 of the 160 people indicted saved the government the effort of seeking a plea bargain by promptly committing suicide.

85. Marquis, 'U.S. Says It Broke Pornography Ring Featuring Youths.'

86. Susan Lehman, 'Larry Matthews' 18-Month Sentence for Receiving and Transmitting Kiddie Porn Raises Difficult First Amendment Issues,' salon.com, March 11, 1999. The brazenness of the putative mother's post gives it the scent of a sting operation, in my view. Frequenters of such chat rooms, and surely criminals involved in child prostitution, are meticulously secretive, understanding that they are under constant surveillance. In the mid-1990s, lawyer Lawrence Stanley was also indicted (though not convicted) for receiving alleged child-pornographic images through the mail. He had received the pictures from a client for whom he was acting as defense counsel; they were the indictable items in the client's case, and Stanley was challenging the prosecutor's claims that the images were indeed legally pornographic.

87. Kimberly J. Mitchell, David Finkelhor, and Janis Wolak, 'Risk Factors for and Impact of Online Sexual Solicitation of Youth,' Journal of the American Medical Association 285 (June 20, 2001): 3011-14 (unpaginated online). Commenting on the study, Harrison M. Rainie, the director of a more comprehensive study called 'Teenage Life Online,' by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said, 'Virtually every kid we talked to knows there are some really bad things and bad people in the online world, and know that there are some good things and good people. When they get down to weighing the pluses and minuses, most kids will say the pluses pile up and the minuses are manageable.' John Schwartz, 'Studies Detail Solicitation of Children for Sex Online,' New York Times, June 20, 2001.

88. Ron Martz, 'Internet Spreading Child Porn, Investigators Say,' Sunday Rutland Herald, June 28, 1998, A8.

89. 'Bonfire of the Knuckleheads,' Contemporary Sexuality 28 (April 1994): 1.

90. James Kincaid documented a dozen or so with newspaper articles, but my researches would suggest there are many more that don't make the papers. James Kincaid, 'Is This Child Pornography?' salon.com, Janu-ary 31, 2000.

91. Katha Pollitt, 'Subject to Debate,' Nation (December 13, 1999); 'Cynthia Stewart's Ordeal'; and Cynthia Stewart and David Perrotta, 'Thank You, Nation Family,' letters, Nation (May 1, 2000).

92. Matt Golec, 'Bill Would Expand Sex Offender Notification Law,' Burlington Free Press, January 30, 2000, A1.

93. Ross E. Milloy, 'Texas Judge Orders Notices Warning of Sex Offenders,' New York Times, May 29, 2001.

94. In 1997, the first subject of the Kansas law, who had no record of violence, but rather a rap sheet of exhibitionism and mild fondling, brought his case to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost. The law was upheld. By that year, Washington, Arizona, California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin had passed similar laws.

95. Bill Andriette, 'America's Sex Gulags,' Guide (August 1997) (re-print): 1-3.

96. A 1996 review of the data by the National Center for Institutions and Alternatives concluded that only 13 percent of former sex offenders are arrested for subsequent sex crimes. This compares with a recidivism rate of 74 percent for all criminal offenders. The NCIA estimated at this time that of 250,000 potential compliers with community registration statutes, 217,000 were 'ex-offenders' or people who were not destined to commit additional crimes. National Center for Institutions and Alternatives, 'Community Notification and Setting the Record Straight on Recidivism,' Community Notification/NCIA/info@ncianet.org, November 8, 1996.

97. In Corpus Christi, several of the men who posted warning signs immediately had their property vandalized, two were evicted from their homes, and one attempted suicide. An intruder threatened the life of the father of one of the men, who had been arrested for indecency with a child in 1999 'after a night of drinking ended with an encounter with a fifteen-year-old girl.' Milloy, 'Texas Judge Orders Notices.'

98. Todd Purdum, 'Registry Laws Tar Sex-Crimes Convicts with Broad Brush,' New York Times, July 1, 1997. Later that year, California excised the names of men convicted of consensual homosexuality from the list. 'Gay Exception Made to Registration Law,' New York Times, November 11, 1997.

99. U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 'Child Pornography and Pedophilia,' Report 99-537, October 6, 1986, 3.

100. Evidence suggests that statutory rape, or sex with minors, did occur at Waco. David Koresh did so with the parents' consent, because his followers believed it 'was his religious duty to father 24 children by virgin mothers.' Because the parents cooperated, the state did not bring charges. Dick J. Reavis, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1998).

101. The number of fatalities, including the number of children among them, is hard to pin down. On James Tabor and Eugene Gallagher's 'Why Waco?' Web site, a list of Branch Davidians counts seventy-two dead, including twenty-three children. The New York Times, reporting on the FBI's belated admission that it had fired pyrotechnic gas canisters at the compound, noted on August 26, 1999, that 'about 80 people, including 24 children, were found dead after the fire.' The following day, a subsequent story said 'about 80 people, including 25 children.' David Stout, 'FBI Backs Away from Flat Denial in Waco Cult Fire,' New York Times, August 26, 1999, A1; Stephen Labaton 'Reno Admits Credibility Hurt in Waco Case,' New York Times, August 27, 1999, A1. The Justice Department's report directly following the events said 'the medical examiner found the remains of 75 individuals' but did not specify how many were children. Edward S. G. Dennis Jr., 'Evaluation of the Handling of the Branch Davidian Stand-Off in Waco, Texas, February 28 to April 19 1993,' U.S. Department of Justice report, Washington, D.C., October 8 1993.

3. Therapy

1. The story of the Diamonds was drawn from interviews and time spent with the participants, including the family, their therapist, Philip Kaushall, and various social-service professionals, lawyers, and others involved in their case, as well as from several thousand pages of Child Protective Services case files kept between December 1994 and late 1996, when I visited. I have changed the names of the family members, as well as the social workers and foster parents whose names appear in the case records.

2. Brian's story was constructed from interviews with the family and from San Diego police, court, and psychologists' records.

3. Shirley Leung and Stacy Milbauer, 'New Hampshire Boy, 10, Charged in Rape of 2 Playmates,' Boston Globe, August 22, 1996, A1.

4. Andy Newman, 'New Jersey Court Says 12-Year-Old Must Register as a Sexual Offender,' New York Times, April 12, 1996.

5. 'Police Uncover Child Sex Ring in Small Pa. Town,' Associated Press, Burlington Free Press, July 5, 1999.

6. See Paul Okami, ''Child Perpetrators of Sexual Abuse': The Emergence of a Problematic Deviant Category,' Journal of Sex Research 29, no. 1 (February 1992): 109-30; and Okami, ''Slippage' in Research of Child Sexual Abuse.'

7. Leonore Tiefer, ''Am I Normal?' The Question of Sex,' in Sex Is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 10-16.

8. San Diego County Grand Jury, Report No. 2: Families in Crisis, February 6, 1992,