It has always been prevalent.
But until the Reagan administration gathered a diverse group of reporters together and showed them pictures of tens of thousands of children being used by pedophiles which had been siezed from an off shore computer bulletin board by Interpol, the prevailing thought was that hushing these things up to prevent a panic was in the best interest of the public.
You might say that the Ed Meese Commission On Pornography (which had broad authority, but was primarily aimed at pedophiles) engineered a change in how these things were handled by journalists and law enforcement.
At any rate, none of this is new. The change is that it has been hauled out of the darkness, into the light of day.
***the prevailing thought was that hushing these things up to prevent a panic***
I remember those days. The talk shows ran with the story. It got so bad that a dad could not take his kids to the movies without being arrested to make sure the kids were his, and every man seen with a kid was considered a potential kidnapper. It was also about the time the “satanic worship” and “child sacrifice” stories were going around.
I wouldn’t characterize it out into the light of the day. I don’t think of myself as overly sheltered or low-information, but I rarely see much of anything on this. That’s why seeing that they can round up over one hundred kids in one op blows my mind, if these are just the ones they can find. :(