He became a focus for a lot of people, men and women, for a myriad of reasons. People attached their lockdown-era, anti government feelings towards this case. In the local facebook community comments you'll see people saying he took the kids away so they wouldn't be vaccinated by force, would not be subjected to "woke" education, etc etc. Men who felt wronged by family court actions in the past. Plus a LOT of fierce anti-police sentiment.
It does not help that, in the absence of any news articles, the gap has been filled by awful AI-generated "stories" that are now posted on Facebook as "news" but are being reacted to, and shared, as if they were real information.