... is that due to the emotionally charged nature of these types of allegaions, too many people are afraid to challenge the validity of such accusations, no matter how overly fantastical or sensationalized they become. They are terrified of being attacked in the media by both opportunistic fear-mongers and "survivor" focus groups as being "insensitive" and "soft" or "dismissive" of child abuse. Such people would like nothing better than for due process to be eliminated altogether in these types of cases, which would open the floodgates for opportunists, fantasists, and people of all types with low scruples seeking a combination of media attention and money. How many people like this wouldn't like to become the next recurring guest and pampered "friend" of Oprah Winfrey (or whoever is headlining these talk shows now that Oprah has largely moved onto other things)?

And too many other people would be quick to argue that all of the innocent lives that would be destroyed in a plethora of ways would be "worth it" to insure that no guilty person ever has the slightest chance of going free; and that hurting a multitude of innocents is justified if that's what it takes to serve the "greater good" by bringing this widespread "problem" to public attention (as if it hasn't been brought to public attention in spades already since the 1980s moral panic started).

After all, these same moralizing pundits would argue: what innocent person of true decency wouldn't gladly throw themselves onto a pile of burning coals if that might prevent even a single child from getting "abused" in the future or insuring that the problem stays in extreme public focus?

Too many people not directly involved in these scandals have a lurid psychological need for these boogeymen to (allegedly) exist, and for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it enables people afflicted with the Savior Complex to have plentiful Victims to "rescue" and thus bolster their needy egos, so they feel good in both their own eyes and in the eyes of the public, even if what they are actually doing is fear-mongering and bullying of numerous innocent people.

For those who want to have financially lucrative, well-funded careers in treating "victims," widespread belief in these moral panics have obvious fiscal benefits; this includes agenda-ridden members of the mental health industry, politicians seeking a combination of "feel good" brownie points and electoral votes from the public, career-oriented administrators of NGO's, talk show personalities who garner a huge combo of ratings and "hero points" by constantly tackling this topic, and members of law enforcement task forces whose power and financial prosperity depend upon having plenty of "victims" to rescue and "victimizers" to hunt down.

Finally, we have the many helicopter parents who have rationalizations for the police state mentality that grants them exponentially greater control over their kids' lives; along with further opportunities to externalize the perceived threat so the majority of the real abuse that goes on within the walls of the insular, totalitarian nuclear family unit is overlooked as much as possible.

And, well, if the reputation of the large number of fully law-abiding MAPs are needlessly thrashed in the process, well, so what, since we're a bunch of disgusting creeps for our feelings alone, right? That simply makes progressives all the more reluctant to stand up for us as human beings, and all the more likely to simply spit on their own principles by joining in on the hysteria to keep the conservatives from calling them names.