True Story Media

Please note that this show discusses child abuse, which may be difficult for some listeners.

For resources about abusive head trauma, go to shakenbaby.org.

Conspiracy theories are most effective when they contain just enough of the truth to seem real.

Q&ON was predicated on the idea that global elites, particularly democratic politicians,

were trafficking children and participating in satanic abuse,

and that President Trump was going to come into office and bring them all to

justice. And as we now know, thanks to the deluge of horrors that continue to emerge from the

Epstein files, elites from across the political spectrum were indeed up to many disturbing things.

But as for the people who were supposed to bring them to justice, well, that's suddenly the last

thing they seem interested in doing.

That's another thing about conspiracy theories.

They tend to include some projection, and they take hold when they do for a reason.

The specifics may be very wrong, but the cultural anxieties that fuel them are very real. We've broken down a number of specific cases this season of parents who are presented as falsely accused of abuse because of a doctor's misdiagnosis.

But there is no evidence in any of these cases that the doctors who diagnosed abuse were wrong.

And these cases are not outliers in the media coverage. They're the rule.

There's no way I can investigate every single story about an allegedly falsely accused parent.

But every single time I have, from Take Care of Maya to my Kixenbaugh's Do No Harm series,

to the preventionist, to Daphne Chen's work, they've all been just like this. The parents' stories fall apart the

moment you take a closer look. So why does this media narrative persist? Court records provided to us

from these parents who spent thousands of dollars to fight the state in court also reveal some

doctors coming to such far-reaching conclusions without thorough investigations.

...