Three years ago, The Atlantic magazine published a longform article that took a lot of people by surprise. It was entitled, “THE GREAT (FAKE) CHILD-SEX-TRAFFICKING EPIDEMIC.” It dismissed the supposed “moral panic” among conservatives on the issue, saying it amounted to an “Internet conspiracy theory.”
The Atlantic published this piece just days after a CNN staffer was arrested for attempting to persuade minors to engage in unlawful sexual activity. It was also published while the Ghislaine Maxwell trial was going on. Maxwell, of course, conspired with Jeffrey Epstein to operate a sex-trafficking ring that exploited multiple children over the course of a decade. And the piece in The Atlantic came after several reports indicating that the United States, thanks largely to its open southern border, is one of the top destinations for child-sex trafficking in the world.
So why…
