Fox News Host Called Story of 10-Year-Old Rape Victim Seeking Abortion ‘Fake’ — The Rapist Just Confessed

Sarah RumpfJul 13th, 2022, 2:56 pm
 

A 27-year-old Ohio man has been arrested after confessing to raping and impregnating a 10-year-old girl who was at the center of a viral story after she traveled to Indiana to get an abortion — a viral story that multiple Fox News commentators and other conservative media figures questioned as fake and crafted to promote a pro-abortion agenda.

As first reported Wednesday by the Columbus Dispatch, Gerson Fuentes was arrested the day before and charged with raping the girl, a felony of the first degree in Ohio. According to Columbus police, the girl’s mother reported the rape and pregnancy to Franklin County Children Services on June 22, and that organization notified law enforcement. Police say Fuentes confessed to raping the girl at least twice.

Due to Ohio’s abortion restrictions that came into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the girl reportedly faced trouble getting an abortion in Ohio and traveled to Indiana, where she obtained a medical abortion on June 30.

Detective Jeffrey Huhn testified at Fuentes’ arraignment on Wednesday and confirmed the details of how the police were made aware of the alleged crime, Fuentes’ arrest and confession, and the girl’s abortion in Indiana. According to Huhn, the clinic preserved evidence from the girl’s abortion and will DNA test it to compare to Fuentes and the girl’s siblings to confirm paternity. Before Fuentes was taken into custody, the police obtained a saliva sample from him that will be used for this testing.

Franklin County Municipal Court Judge Cynthia Ebner ruled that Fuentes — who is “believed to be undocumented,” according to the Dispatch — was a possible flight risk. For that reason and for the safety of the child victim, the judge set Fuentes’ bond at $2 million. He is currently being held at the Franklin County jail. More information about the case and Fuentes’ arraignment is available at Mediaite’s sister site, Law & Crime.

The disturbing story of the 10-year-old girl’s rape and pregnancy was originally reported on July 1 by The Indianapolis Star and quickly went viral, with President Joe Biden commenting on the case and pro-life lawmakers being grilled about whether they truly supported banning abortion in situations like this.

Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) was one such lawmaker, who faced tough questioning from CNN’s Dana Bash on July 3 about the story. Noem tweeted on July 9 that Bash had “tried to trap me” and now it “looks like the story was fake to begin with.”

The story also attracted aggressive skepticism from multiple conservative media outlets. Fox News host Jesse Watters devoted nearly 17 minutes to “investigate this alleged child rape” at the beginning of Jesse Watters Primetime on July 11. Watters declared that his show hadn’t “found any evidence that this child rape was reported to law enforcement or any child welfare system” and that the story “doesn’t make any sense.”

The investigation his show conducted, according to Watters, included calling Gov. Mike DeWine’s (R-OH) office, the State Attorney General Dave Yost (R-OH), and calling all of the abortion providers in Ohio to ask if they could provide any information about this rape victim.

Watters focused much of his criticism on Dr. Caitlan Bernard, the Indiana abortion doctor who shared the story with the media, referring to her as a “press darling” who “never shied away from a story on abortion,” but who was refusing to provide additional details. The Star reporter who broke the story also declined to comment.

“The facts and sourcing about people crossing state lines into Indiana, including the 10-year-old girl, for abortions are clear. We have no additional comment at this time,” said Bro Krift, the paper’s executive editor, in a statement.

“So we’re having no luck confirming this story,” said Watters. He brought on PJ Media’s Megan Fox, who said that she found “10 red flags” that made her doubt the story, and then Yost, who questioned the story because he heard “not a whisper anywhere”  about the case and he had not heard about any rape kit being submitted.

A crime like what allegedly happened to this girl is a matter for the county criminal court system, and would not normally be a matter for the governor or state attorney general. Privacy laws would prevent any clinic from releasing information to a media outlet, assuming the girl even visited an Ohio clinic. In other words, the lack of information from these specific sources was not necessarily proof it did not happen. And as far as a rape kit goes, that type of evidence is unlikely to be available weeks or months after the alleged rape occurred, so a rape kit might not have been collected for a legitimate reason.

On Tuesday, Fox News Outnumbered host Emily Compagno directly used the word “fake” to attack the story and characterized it as being made up to promote a pro-abortion agenda. She mentioned her past work in criminal law and said there were sadly “so many monsters” who were out there raping children of all ages.

“What I find so deeply offensive, they had to make up a fake one!” she declared. “There are countless real ones that I would love for them to use as advocacy for law and order, for actually commitment to prosecutions, to finding the perpetrator, but the fact that this alleged situation was created…to further their position on abortion by a sort of sensationalist physician.”

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler critiqued the reports about the 10-year-old girl on July 9 as a “one-source story” and made similar efforts as Watters’ show, contacting DeWine’s office and child services agencies across the state. Kessler stopped far short of calling the story fake, concluded “[t]his is a very difficult story to check.”

Yost dug in his heels doubting the story Tuesday July 12, telling the USA Today Ohio bureau that the more time went by, the “more likely that this is a fabrication.” As the Dispatch quoted from that report:

“I know the cops and prosecutors in this state,” Yost said. “There’s not one of them that wouldn’t be turning over every rock, looking for this guy and they would have charged him. They wouldn’t leave him loose on the streets … I’m not saying it could not have happened. What I’m saying to you is there is not a damn scintilla of evidence. And shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious axe to grind.”

A July 11 FoxNews.com article said the story was “facing increased skepticism and hasn’t been verified by even left-leaning fact checkers.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page called the story a “fanciful tale.”

After the Dispatch report, Kessler updated his article with a note about news, and concluded with a comment about the “limitations” in reporting this type of story:

This is an interesting example of the limitations that journalists face in corroborating this type of story without evidence confirmed by law enforcement. Should Bernard have disclosed the case before the police charged a suspect? Should the IndyStar have published her account without a second source? Should other news organizations have repeated the story without doing their own reporting? Those are questions beyond the purview of the Fact Checker, but worthwhile for readers and media pundits to consider.

Yost issued a one-sentence statement in response to the Dispatch’s reporting: “We rejoice anytime a child rapist is taken off the streets.”

Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley questioned the story in an article for The New York Post, with the original headline “Activist tale of a 10-year-old rape victim’s abortion looks like a lie,” as shown by the URL and social media screenshots. (The current headline says the story “leaves a number of glaring questions.”)

Outkick founder and Fox News contributor Clay Travis was another commentator who loudly questioned the story, as noted by CNN fact checker Daniel Dale. Travis originally attacked the story by saying there was “zero evidence this actually happened,” that everything Biden said about it “appears to be a lie,” and the media reports “appear to be completely made up,” but then shrugged off the Dispatch report with a tweet commenting, “Updating this viral story.”

Several Fox News’ Tuesday evening programs, including Special Report with Bret Baier and Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream, reported on “a source familiar to this situation” who confirmed the story for the network, and then Wednesday programs  reported on the Dispatch’s report about the alleged rapist’s arrest and confession.

Fox News correspondent Aishah Hasnie told Bill Hemmer, who was guest anchoring for Baier on Tuesday, that she had a source who had confirmed the story of the girl’s alleged rape and also found out that Dr. Bernard was “facing repercussions for this tory getting out the way that it did.”

Bernard’s employer, Indiana University School of Medicine, has filed a HIPAA violation against her related to her disclosure of the girl’s story, reported Hasnie. Bernard reportedly was discussing the girl’s case while at an abortion rights rally and the Star reporter overheard her.

This article has been updated with additional information. The spelling of Gerson Fuentes’ name was initially misspelled by the Ohio Dispatch, but has since been corrected, and we have updated the spelling as well.

UPDATE 3:44 pm ET: Fuentes is an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, a source with  Immigration and Customs Enforcement told Fox News Digital. According to the report, the ICE source also said that the agency had placed a detainer on Fuentes, which is the initial step for requesting that his custody be transferred to the agency for deportation proceedings.

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Sarah Rumpf - Contributing Editor

Sarah Rumpf joined Mediaite in 2020 and is a Contributing Editor focusing on politics, law, and the media. A native Floridian, Sarah attended the University of Florida, graduating with a double major in Political Science and German, and earned her Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the UF College of Law. Sarah's writing has been featured at National Review, The Daily Beast, Reason, Law&Crime, Independent Journal Review, Texas Monthly, The Capitolist, Breitbart Texas, Townhall, RedState, The Orlando Sentinel, and the Austin-American Statesman, and her political commentary has led to appearances on television, radio, and podcast programs across the globe. Follow Sarah on Threads, Twitter, and Bluesky.