Fox News scrambled to find a new narrative on a story after a few of its top hosts erroneously reported that an incident in which a 10-year-old girl was raped in Ohio and forced to travel to a different state for an abortion was a hoax.
On Monday, Fox News host Jesse Watters opened his show by not-so-subtly laying the ground work for a conspiracy theory.
He recounted the story of the 10-year-old girl, reported in the Indy Star, who was ultimately forced to travel to Indiana in order to abort the pregnancy resulting from the rape.
“Obviously this is a heartbreaking story,” he said, before opining about the lack of coverage. “Why isn’t anybody asking about bringing the child rapist to justice?”
He spent the next few minutes questioning why the rape supposedly wasn't reported to law enforcement and why local media wasn't running with the story.
“You would think the story of a sexual abuser roaming free assaulting 10-year-olds would raise quite a few concerns in small-town Ohio, but no one seems to be doing anything about it,” he said. “No one even knows anything about it. Local media outlets aren't even alerting the public. There's a monster on the loose and from what we can find, no local newspaper or TV station picked up the story.”
He hedged his bets in his conclusion, saying that if someone raped a 10-year-old they should be brought to justice, but ultimately questioning if the story was accurate at all. Watters went on to claim the "mainstream media" and Joe Biden had seized upon a "hoax."
His colleague, Tucker Carlson, did not mince words on his show. He outright said that it "turned out the story was not true." Fox hosts Emily Compagno and Dan Bongino followed suit, calling the story a liberal media hoax.
Even Ohio's Attorney General Dave Yost toed the right-wing media line, calling the story a "fabrication."
But it turned out it was true.
The Columbus Dispatch confirmed the following day that a 27-year-old man named Gershon Fuentes was arrested on Tuesday after he confessed to raping the 10-year-old on at least two occasions. Detective Jeffrey Huhn told the paper that law enforcement became aware of the "girl's pregnancy through a referral by Franklin County Children Services that was made by her mother on 22 June."
Rather than issuing a correction or a mea culpa for insinuating that the story was fake, Watters sought to take credit for the prosecution.
"Primetime covered this story heavily on Monday, put on the pressure and now we are glad that justice is being served," he said on his show on Thursday.
Townhall writer Matt Vespa also scrambled to find a non-damning angle on the story, running a piece that accused progressives and the press of celebrating the 10-year-old girl's rape because it validated the story, expressing more outrage for the left's chiding of right-wing media than for the fact that a child was forced to leave her state to abort a rape-induced pregnancy.
Indiana’s Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita said he was “looking into” the licensure of the doctor who performed the abortion.
“We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure,” Mr Rokita said. “If she failed to report it in Indiana, it’s a crime for — to not report, to intentionally not report.”
Dr Caitlin Bernard, who performed the abortion, has since become a target for right-wing media and angered conservatives. She shared her perspective with The Independent.
“This is, unfortunately, the real-life consequences of the abortion ban,” she said. “All states have people who are pregnant who need abortion care, in the most extreme circumstances and in the most common circumstances, and everyone deserves to have access to comprehensive reproductive healthcare in a state in which they live.”
