It’s well after midnight. While you’re asleep, your 14-year-old daughter is out there meeting people, chatting with friends, working the crowd. To her, the night is young. And, of course, she is young. Too young.

Not my daughter, you say. She’s not allowed out that late. She’s in her room. Doing her homework. Talking on her phone. Instant-messaging her friends.

Maybe MikeDog is her friend. MikeDog has been out of high school for over a decade. Maybe he thinks your daughter is interesting. They have a lot in common, he tells her. Maybe he wants to meet her and has even suggested a place to get together.

Or another friend could be SarahFree from Indiana. Even though she’s 26, she has lots of teens that are her friends.

What about Chris from Boston? Perhaps he’s asked your daughter to “chill into some drum and bass” with him. Which is exactly what he asked Meri Kennedy of Cranston.

Meri has been telling me about these people — MikeDog, SarahFree, Chris and hundreds of others — who have contacted her on the social networking Internet site called MySpace over the past year. Although she’s 43, on her MySpace profile, Meri, who goes by an entirely different online identity, claims to be 14.

Devious? Yes indeed. Misleading? Of course. But her motive, at least in my mind, justifies her method.

What Meri is doing brings to light one of the most provocative and, if you’re a parent, scary aspects of the Internet. Sites like MySpace are virtual. Who knows if Chris is from Boston? And for that matter, who knows if he’s even Chris? Maybe he’s Sam or Mary. Who really knows anything?

On the Internet, you are who you say you are. You can tell the truth or you can lie through your teeth. From the anonymity of a keyboard, you can create a parallel reality, make up your story as you go in a world where there are no shelves to separate fact from fiction, no warnings, no disclaimers.

In the year or so that Meri Kennedy has been leading a secret online life as a 14-year-old, she’s made literally hundreds of friends. She’s been invited to do all sorts of things and what she’s witnessed has left her deeply troubled.

The provocative photos, the references to doing drugs and alcohol, the derogatory remarks about peers and teachers on MySpace are bad enough. But what is even more disturbing is that these teenagers, some as young as 12 or 13, are posting their addresses and phone numbers, their photos and their school schedules, right there online for anyone and everyone to see.

“In this day and age when sexual predators are constantly in the news, it appears that the teens just did not care who viewed their information,” Meri said. “It is alarming.”

Yes it is. And Meri Kennedy understands the dangers these teenagers are exposing themselves to on a very deep level. In her book My Enemy, Myself, Meri tells about the sexual abuse and rape that devastated her own childhood. Since her courageous recovery, Meri has become a strong advocate, working on another book, writing for the Cranston Herald, appearing on radio shows and yes, even going undercover as a teen on MySpace, all to prevent others, including her own 14-year-old daughter, from suffering a similar fate.

“I would never want a child to go through what I endured as a child,” Meri said. “The effects of sexual abuse are life-altering. The abuse may stop, but the recovery lasts a lifetime.”

Meri’s message to parents is as sobering as it is straightforward. “It is up to you to monitor your own child on the Internet. If you don’t, many strangers are more than happy to do it for you.”

Rita Lussier can be reached at ReetsAL@aol.com or by mail c/o Features Department, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.