Conspiracy Theories – Missing Mom

Melvin Quinney

I heard the story about this man (who could be any white person’s kindly grandfather) on NPR last night. He is a San Antonio man wrongfully convicted in 1991 during the so-called Satanic Panic hysteria. In court last Monday, Melvin Quinney had his charge dismissed by 227th District Court Judge Christina Del Prado. The state exonerated Melvin Quinney of his conviction of indecency with a child back in February but Monday’s hearing made the exoneration official. “It’s like the beginning of the end of a very long nightmare,” Quinney said.

I wish I could say these kinds of “miscarriage of justice in the name of religion” cases were only in the past but unfortunately, even today, I know evangelicals who still believe these kinds of things. Satan and evil in this world especially related to child trafficking (QAnon certainly is on that page). It’s not that I don’t think that such things happen and I do feel that anytime a child is sexually abused – it is a travesty. But under religious fervor, these heartfelt feelings, can do a lot of harm. A friend said to me once, “It has everything to do with pagan rituals and actual Satanic influence in many places. It’s because of my love for children that I will fight with all I have to rid this world of those things. If I had not studied Biblical Prophecy and Pagan rituals I probably wouldn’t understand what I am seeing now.” Sigh. I understand it is heartfelt for her.

Today, I found this blog – Friendly Atheist by Hemant Mehta LINK>A victim of the “Satanic Panic,” Melvin Quinney has finally been exonerated. The “Satanic Panic” was a conspiracy theory that really took hold among a certain kind of Christian in the 1980s. Perfectly innocent people were accused of ritualistic child abuse, bad behavior was blamed on the devil, and the modern-day witch hunt ruined countless lives. No evidence ever proved this organized abuse was occurring—certainly not the way accusers insisted it was—but as with so many conspiracy theories, its power had nothing to do with the facts.

Melvin got trapped by this when he and his wife were going through a divorce in 1990. It was she that accused the 43-year-old Quinney of leading a Satanic cult that murdered people. His kids were soon taken into custody by Child Protective Services. John, his 10-year-old son, accused Quinney of sexual abuse. After weeks of coercion from therapists, their mother and other adults, Sarah and John developed “memories” of abuse and occult rituals. John came to believe that their father was the leader of a satanic cult that had committed murder and sexually abused him and his sister Sarah as part of satanic rituals. Melvin was arrested in 1990 and charged with indecency with a child. John testified at trial about his “memories” of his father’s abuse of himself and Sarah.

Melvin was released from prison in 1999, an early release for good behavior. However, even then, he was forced to register as a sex offender. This deprived him opportunities to get his life back on track. It wasn’t until 2012, that he finally attempted to get back in touch with his kids (who had grown up believing their father abused them). His children had grown up in foster care. Finally, in 2020, his children testified that there was no evidence that their father ever did those things he was accused of. His son told the court he realized much later, that those stories were entirely fictional. They had been fed to him by his mother, her evangelical friends, and other adults working against his father as a way to override the “good memories” he had of him.

His ex-wife was unable to care for the children not long after he was imprisoned and so, they were pushed into the state’s foster care system. His wife mother passed away in 1999. Her son says that she was clearly mentally ill. He says, “Instead of getting help with the real mental problems she was experiencing, she was persuaded and kept mentally ill with pseudoscience and superstition.” For years, the children thought they would be targeted by satanic cult members. He has since forgiven her.

The blog ends on this thought – the Satanic Panic has always been that no matter how many bad faith actors use Satan as a metaphor for what they hate, there are many pastors who spend every week convincing their congregations that Satan is real and needs to be eradicated from their lives. They’ll never admit they’re lying because they genuinely don’t believe they are. As long as that belief perpetuates in churches, it’s next to impossible to convince people that Satan and the abuse associated with Satan are entirely fictional. That means, much like sin itself, conservative Christians have invented their own problem out of thin air, while presenting themselves as the only solution.

Marilyn Monroe’s mother went into a mental hospital and left her to orphanages and foster care. In My Story, Monroe wrote that she recalled seeing her mother “screaming and laughing” as she was forcibly taken to a State Hospital.

At age 11, Norma Jeane was declared a ward of the state. She lived in a total of 11 foster homes throughout her youth; when there was no foster home available, she sometimes ended up at the Hollygrove Orphanage in Los Angeles. As if moving from one foster home to another wasn’t difficult enough, Norma Jeane recalled being treated harshly in several of them. Even worse, she was abused including sexually in at least three of her foster care placements.

Here is one story from the Daily Mail, “The magic red sweater that turned ‘Norma Jeane, string bean’ into Marilyn Monroe” –

She told of being whipped by one foster mother for having touched ‘the bad part’ of her body. Another more serious incident occurred when she was eight. One evening a lodger she called Mr. Kimmel (Marilyn said later that this was not his real name) asked her to come into his room and locked the door behind her. He put his arms around her. She kicked and struggled. He did what he wanted, telling her to be a good girl. (In a later interview Marilyn stated that the abuse involved fondling). When he let her out, he handed her a coin and told her to buy herself an ice cream. She threw the coin in his face and ran to tell her foster mother what happened, but the woman wouldn’t listen.

“Shame on you,” her foster mother said. “Mr. Kimmel’s my star boarder.” Norma Jeane went to her room and cried all night. Marilyn said she felt dirty and took baths for days after it happened to feel clean. Such repeated attempts to feel clean through showers or baths are typical behavior for victims of assault. Marilyn also said she began to stutter after the incident and reverted to it at times of stress. When she told one interviewer about the abuse, she began stuttering. The evidence points to the fact that she was an abused child whose early sexualization led to her inappropriate behavior as an adult.

One of the reasons she chose to marry at 16 was simply to escape her foster care takers. She never knew who her father was. After getting married at 16, she later divorced and became a new persona. She went from Norma Jeane Baker to Marilyn Monroe in order to fit in, be accepted, and wanted…what she never wanted was to become a sex object.

Not many seem to have recognized that she was dealing with abandonment trauma her entire life. She overdosed at the age of 36. According to an article at a site called Vigilant Citizen, behind Monroe’s photogenic smile was a fragile individual who was exploited and subjected to mind control by powerful handlers. Through trauma and psychological programming, Monroe a became high-level puppet of society’s elite, even becoming JFK’s paramour.

One “conspiracy theory” asserts – “Some children live in foster homes, or with adopted parents, or in orphanages, or with caretakers and guardians. Because these children are at the mercy of the non-related adults, these types of children frequently are sold to become mind-controlled slaves of the intelligence agencies.” ~ Fritz Springmeier, The Illuminati Formula to Create a Mind Control Slave. Not saying that I believe conspiracy theories but often there are some facts that are foundational to them.

Industry insiders convinced Norma Jeane to undergo aesthetic surgery, to change her name to Marilyn Monroe and to change her hair color to platinum blonde. Monroe’s sensual, “dumb blond” persona allowed her to land roles in several movies, which began a clear culture shift in Hollywood.