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The Most Active Threads since Friday
The threads with the most engagement since my last post included a child sexual abuse arrest, a mother-in-law who takes over as host, ruining neighborhoods by not choosing the local school, and things that a young person wouldn't recognize.
Because I took the weekend off from writing blog posts, today I'll review the most active threads since Friday. The most active thread during that period was titled, "Mother of 2 from VERY prominent Richmond family arrested by FBI for child p@rn, exploitation, etc" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. In brief, the thread discusses the arrest of Eleanor Hunton Hoppe for distributing child pornography and charges related to child sexual abuse. Hoppe is a member of a prominent family in Richmond, Virginia and known by the original poster and several other posters in the thread. In addition to being horrified by the charges, many posters are concerned about the lack of media attention to this case. There appears to have been no news about the case for three weeks after the arrest and then very little. This led several posters to conclude that Hoppe's prominent family was suppressing information. The original poster linked to court documents about the case, including a "Statement of Facts" which is quite explicit. The document details how an FBI undercover officer corresponded with Hoppe to arrange a meeting at which Hope was planning to participate with a purported father while the father sexually abused his 8-year-old daughter. Hoppe was arrested when she arrived at the planned meeting. Several posters noted that it is unusual for women to be involved in such offenses and there are many posts seeking to understand what might have led to Hoppe's actions. There is a quite a bit of speculation, much of it informed by posters who claim to know Hoppe personally (at least two posters even claim to have had sexual relations with her). While I understand the interest in this thread, I am concerned about how long it will be able to remain on the site. Google has already flagged several pages and I am doing my best to keep it within the advertising terms of service. But the nature of the topic makes that difficult. Several posters are convinced that Hoppe's family are applying financial and/or legal pressure to suppress the story and would likely blame the family for the thread's demise. But, in the eventually that I remove the thread, it will likely to be due to advertisers.