It’s ironic. ‘Child porn’ is the go-to excuse that the Feds use all the time in conspiracy roleplaying games when the government wants to explain away an op: “A federal search warrant reveals that Sunspot Solar Observatory was shut down as FBI agents conducted computer forensic searches for child pornography.” Nobody has any sympathy for the victim, nobody gets upset if the investigation isn’t as tight as it’s supposed to be, and nobody wants to look into the matter further. From a gaming perspective, it’s perfect.
Mind you, I don’t believe that there’s a conspiracy going on there. But if this was a game, my players wouldn’t buy this excuse for a moment. Which may say more about the way GMs do games than anything, frankly.
Was that “investigators are searching for *Roll* child porn”, or just “investigators are searching for child porn”. Hmmm, either way I probably wouldn’t accept that there wasn’t a conspiracy in a game if this were to happen.
X-Files used that as the excuse in the movie from a couple of decades ago, as well. It’s the go-to in everything that touches on conspiracies, and not just games. And it’s used exactly for the reason that you describe. And because everyone immediately understands that the real thing is so horrible that the public at large will accept it.
IIRC, in the old video game Alpha Protocol, you even get to accuse someone else of it in an attempt to get them detained by the local (Singapore, iirc, though I could be misremembering) authorities.