How the QAnon Conspiracy Can Lure Women into Belief, Expert Says: They 'Want to Help Children'

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The conspiracy theory QAnon is perhaps most infamous for claiming Donald Trump has actually been fighting a secret society of maniac pedophiles at the highest levels of power and influence.

But QAnon, like an octopus, has many tentacles encompassing a broad set of beliefs about missing children, human trafficking and more.

The conspiracy has attracted greater and greater attention and more and more followers since the first 2017 forum postings by the so-called "Q" (who was recently the subject of an HBO docuseries).

Law enforcement officials also say the theories have been linked to violence.

"Social media has become, in many ways, the key amplifier to domestic violent extremism just as it has for malign foreign influence," FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in April, describing QAnon as a possible "inspiration for violent attacks."

"The same things that attract people to it [social media] for good reasons are also capable of causing all kinds of harms that we are entrusted with trying to protect the American people against," Wray said then.

Experts say parts of QAnon can have a particular appeal to women — who then find themselves sliding down a slippery slope, however well-intentioned they might have been to start out.

"You don't start off the top with the blood-drinking cabal," Mia Bloom, an academic and the coauthor of the forthcoming book Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon, tells PEOPLE. "You start with the trafficking."

Bloom says this subsection of women are not exactly the same as the people who flew "Q" flags during the U.S. Capitol attack. They might describe themselves as socially liberal; some might be upper class. They might already be interested in criticisms of vaccination or in certain alternative or counter-cultural movements.

"It would be a huge mistake to easily dismiss QAnon as a bunch of kooks who aren't educated and don't know anything," Bloom says. "It's more complicated than that. It has gotten into anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, mommy blogs — it's brought together an amalgam of people with varying levels of education and varying levels of wealth."

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As Bloom explains, some were first wooed by QAnon when the group started promoting the #saveourchildren hashtag as a kind of Trojan horse using the very real — if misstated — problem of human trafficking as a cover.

"It appeals to women at their most basic maternal instinct: to want to help children," Bloom says, "but it's actually hurt the charities [working to address the problem]."

"A lot of the real child trafficking groups now have to correct this misinformation campaign," Bloom continues. "The authorities, too — they're trying to track down real traffickers, but now they're busy chasing down fake tips."

One law enforcement consultant who works on human trafficking cases told Insider last year that QAnon "misrepresents" the true problem of child trafficking. "It tends to be represented in a very sensational way, and it tends to default to that dominant narrative of 'the little girl kidnapped out of a suburban area,' something that's the complete opposite of what trafficking looks like," Erin Albright told the outlet.

Citing statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Insider reported that the vast majority of missing children cases in 2019 were runaways, though NCMEC believes about 16 percent of runaways are "likely victims of child sex trafficking."

Bloom says that for many women, believing in QAnon's trafficking theories serves as an introduction to more far-right concepts — and that's when the messaging can become more dangerous.

Becoming more and more entangled in the conspiracies (leapfrogging from a fear of human trafficking to more outrageous, more macabre QAnon claims) "cuts you off from your family and friends," Bloom explains, "because you start talking about things and your family says, 'Oh my god, cousin Ruth is crazy.' "

More than that, it can endanger public health: Many followers of aspects of QAnon have shared memes and videos online claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic is somehow fake — or, even wilder, that vaccines are an attempt to get microchips into as many people as possible.

"Plandemic was the gateway drug," Bloom says, referring to a conspiracy-laden 26-minute video that was removed last year from major platforms like Facebook and YouTube, but not before it had been widely shared and seen millions of times.

"That's where the mommies came in," Bloom says.

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Ironically, the spread of COVID-19 may have compounded the spread of QAnon, Bloom says: She notes that more people have been using the internet in their social isolation and may have been drawn to the conspiracy, which encourages believers to see a secret order behind much of ordinary life, as a coping mechanism or way to connect with others.

"The pandemic put more people online, made people more vulnerable — and people take comfort in believing there's a master plan," she says, "even if it's an evil plan."

While most QAnon believers aren't dangerous people, according to Bloom's research, they can prove dangerous to themselves (and, if they decline to get vaccinated or wear masks, to others).

Bloom, who served as a fellow at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State, says that QAnon isn't a radicalization problem in the way of a cult or terrorist organization.

Instead, "it's a mental health problem."

But that doesn't mean those who believe its lies should be altogether dismissed. And even as many of its claims have been disproven, the movement keeps finding adherents and continues, like a virus, to mutate and incorporate new conspiracies.

"This has become so important to a wide swath of people," Bloom says. "There are millions of people who believe in QAnon and it has spread to 85 countries. Even if we stamp it out in U.S., it has jumped the shark."

Bloom says that, in an effort to aid the families of those whose loved ones have become enamored of QAnon, she is working on a website that would allow people to search conspiracies in order to generate a flyer on how they can seek help.

As the FBI director noted before Congress, QAnon could fuel further violence. Several advocates of the theory are now facing charges related to the breaching of the Capitol in January.

Outreach, Bloom says, is therefore ever more important in order to ensure people who get sucked in don't go too far down the rabbit hole.

"We're not talking about just stupid people, or people who are easily duped — especially if they came in as well meaning," Bloom says. "Once you're involved in it, it's really hard to get out."