It was overlooked because “if you’re a star, they let you do it”, which rightfully pissed everyone off, was simply the truth. Kedis was a star and everyone let him do it.
Personally, as someone who remembers this time, I knew it was illegal, but there are many things that are “illegal” wink wink, and if you don’t play along you will get got. Because they are only illegal as a show.
As an anecdote, in the 90s there was a trove of publicly accessable CSAM stored legally at every university in America, for the express purposes of sexual gratification. This went on for at least twenty years that I know of, but probably more. I’m not being hyperbolic. The worst imagery you can imagine. This is what finally sent me over the edge into “my god people, how much do we take?” territory.
Because I can’t express this enough, everyone overtly seemed to be very against pedophilia. Even though in my own experience as a minor, and the experience of others, it was common and completely acceptable as long as the perpetrator didn’t talk about it openly. Stars ofc being the exception.
Well, I barely escaped trying to ring the alarm bell on that university CSAM. Everyone, and I’m telling you literally everyone, not just officials responsible for the storage of it, or those responsible for the prosecution of criminals, jumped on me for pointing it out. I had to stop, at risk of grave harm. I’m telling you, no one was an ally.
It was terrifying. To this day I personally believe that there is like 10% of us who don’t find children sexually attractive. The rest of the population is lying. Though I think most of those can totally help themselves and see it as a “choice” that they don’t indulge.
Yeah, it was then that I realized that it’s not that people don’t believe victims, it’s that they don’t care and don’t want to get popped for it themselves if they ever do it. It was also then that I understood why no one did anything to known pedos except warn their own kids to stay away from them.
This current climate, or at least the one from ten years ago, was an anomaly. The backlash for it has been so big that America elected a very open and well known child trafficker to the presidency, to take care of it.