It’s a repression thing, they can’t face having sexual fantasies of their own so their mind tricks them into thinking they’re super interested in every news story about wild sex things - suddenly they’re up all night imagining wild and perverted things that are probably happening, but not because they like thinking about those things they reassure themselves, they’re a good moral person trying to protect civic morality…
Read interviews with satanic panic people, endless vivid details right out of an extreme romance novel. Tiktok human trafficking panic is another example, those videos with obviously made up warnings about sex rings and kidnapping methods - it’s all structured just like it’s porn equivalents.