Facts were sparse on Ohio rape case; attacks were not

Report now confirms 27-year-old man arraigned on child sex assault charges

For nearly two weeks, the story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and crossed state lines to get an abortion became a flash point in the national abortion debate. President Joe Biden and other Democrats argued that it showed the harm resulting from the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.

But the facts were sparse, with reporters struggling to confirm a report in the Indianapolis Star that relied on a single named source.

Conservative news media questioned whether the girl existed. Jesse Watters, a host on Fox News, suggested that the story could be a “hoax” meant to buttress the abortion rights position. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial Tuesday with the headline: “An Abortion Story Too Good to Confirm.”

People on the left were quick to jump on and criticize any media report that noted how little was known about the girl and the circumstances of the crime. On July 9, Glenn Kessler, a reporter at the Washington Post, wrote he had been unable to confirm any of the details. “This is a very difficult story to check,” he wrote, a conclusion that led to a flurry of angry comments on the Post’s website. The case became an example of how, with a highly partisan issue, a single article can become the focus of a heated debate.

The facts became clearer Wednesday when the Columbus Dispatch reported a man in Ohio had been arraigned in the rape.

The Indianapolis Star first brought the case to the public’s attention in an article July 1 that examined restrictions on abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. The article referred to a case of Dr. Caitlin Bernard’s. Bernard, an Indianapolis OB-GYN, treated a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio who traveled to Indiana for abortion care because she was past the newly imposed six-week abortion limit in her home state.

The horrifying story drew international attention. A week later, Biden cited it in a White House speech in which he criticized the Supreme Court’s decision as “so totally wrongheaded.”

But conservative politicians raised doubts about whether the victim was real. They pointed out that reporting had relied on a single source, a doctor who had treated the patient. They noted that Bernard was not answering questions from other news organizations about the case, and that there did not appear to be any public records to confirm it. Some declared it “fake news.”

Ohio’s attorney general, Dave Yost, fanned doubts about the case this week when he said in an interview on Fox News that he had found no evidence of such a victim and told the USA Today Network Ohio bureau: “Shame on the Indianapolis paper that ran this thing on a single source who has an obvious ax to grind.”

In its article about the case Wednesday, the Columbus Dispatch reported Gerson Fuentes, 27, had been arrested and charged in Franklin County Municipal Court in Columbus with the rape of a child under 13 years old after confessing to the police. Fuentes has not yet entered a plea.

In the court hearing, a police detective said the Columbus police had been made aware of the crime in late June and confirmed that the victim had an abortion in Indianapolis on June 30.

Amalie Nash, who oversees local news for the USA Today Network, which operates the Indianapolis Star and the Columbus Dispatch, said newsrooms across both states had worked together to confirm details of the case, including searching for records that could be publicly reported.

“I don’t think that it’s a huge surprise that when a story of that nature comes out that can be used by either side of the political spectrum to advance its causes that you’re going to have something like that occur, that it’s going to be questioned,” Nash said.

Some publications that had weighed in on the case updated their articles with the new information. Kessler of the Washington Post wrote on Twitter: “Now, a rapist has been charged and the story has been updated. Getting lots of angry emails but journalism is an accumulation of facts.”

The Wall Street Journal noted the new facts in an editorial Thursday. But it argued the way to help the country find a consensus on abortion is to “make sure that stories about abortion, from either side of the debate, can be readily confirmed.”