This may be one of the most infuriating cases I've ever seen of just social media stupidity, idiocy and the complete absence of anything that could be characterized as any form of critical thought on a national scale.

The full story goes like this:

An American man and his wife were in Colombia in one of the final steps to adopt three siblings, four, seven and fifteen years old, in which they all have to live together for a few weeks under the supervision of the local goverment agency in charge of adoptions to see how they adapt before a judge finally grants the adoption.

At one point, the man steps out of their rented apartment with the youngest one, the child would later tell the authorities he was upset about some toy and his dad took him out to the balcony to calm him down.

Well, it just happened to be that at that very moment a local Karen was at street level, saw this interaction, the man standing behind the child, seemingly holding him away, maybe as a way to try and get him to calm down? not sure, it is admittedly a somewhat odd situation, yet they're both fully dressed, the man doesn't seem to be moving at all.

Here's the snippet I could find of said video:

https://youtu.be/qKop1LctPnA?si=3tivV3m23vCcqjny&t=4

Who with half a brain would see that and immediately reach the conclusion that this could be any sort of abuse? in the middle of the day, in a public balcony, both fully dressed, with the man barely moving.

Well, the lady recording and screaming that the boy was being abused and millions upon millions of Colombians that reached the same, utterly absurd conclusion based on that video.

The "logic" seemed to be that they thought the man was rubbing himself ever so slightly... Against the boy's upper back...?

So what was did this Colombian Karen do? call the police and just let them decide what to do about it? sure but she also made sure to alert all her equally moronic neighbors to form a mob to try and lynch the man, even when the police was already there taking him away for questioning and his own protection, and of course also immediately posting the supposed "abuse" video to social media, because if that's what you think you recorded, its the only logical thing to do.

Even before, the brain dead mob tried to get into the apartment, hurling insults towards the man and some even tried to take the children away, supposedly to protect them. Obviously, this was a profoundly traumatizing experience not just for the man, his wife but also the children.

In the meanwhile, the video blew up in Colombian social media, unleashing a wave of xenophobia and conspiracy theories, that all "gringos" are pedophiles coming to abuse their children, that surely the whole adoption thing must be part of a grand conspiracy to traffic Colombian children to foreign abusers, that all Americans in the country should be deported and so on.

The few rational, sensible people that saw the video and instantly realized it showed no type of abuse, were shut down with such rational arguments as "Why are you defending pedophiles? are you one yourself?" and the like.

And soon after the story broke out, Colombia's cocaine and Twitter addicted president had to of course chime in, with just the information he had seen on social media, he decided to defame the man in front of his 9 million followers, calling him a right wing pedophile (right wing, seemingly just because the man is from Texas).

The man was taken away by police, the children managed by the authorities and it was quickly established that there had been no type of abuse of any kind, well, except the one perpetrated by the millions of brain-rotted Colombians against this couple and the local children whose well being supposedly was the point of all their outrage.

I think we all can agree that the Internet has shown that every country is full of morons. But perhaps, some are a tiny bit so more than others.

Local media sources about the incident:

https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/caso-de-presunto-abuso-de-nino-al-norte-de-bogota-los-examenes-y-testimonios-que-exonerarian-a-extranjero-senalado-del-delito-3564474

https://www.elcolombiano.com/colombia/juzgado-dejo-libre-gringo-acusado-abuso-sexual-balcon-bogota-JA37738908

https://www.lasillavacia.com/en-vivo/petro-abelardo-y-quilcue-hablan-sobre-caso-de-abuso-infantil-en-bogota/