The People v. Cynthia Abcug: Who Is the 'Conspiracy Theorist'?

TRIGGER WARNING: This story is about child abuse. Today, more than 30 potential jurors unknowingly walked into a horrible day on jury duty because the state of Colorado didn’t care if it traumatized its citizens with a fake story of child abuse. I aim to do better.

This is the first time in three years that Cynthia Abcug has been able to show any evidence in her case to any court or jury. Branded the “Qanon Mom” by every major Big Media outlet from sea to shining sea, Abcug is accused of medical abuse and conspiracy to kidnap her son from foster care after he was taken from her. PJ Media was the first publication to report on Abcug’s battle with Colorado’s Department of Human Services CPS division back in 2019.

Everything written about Abcug after that point should be completely forgotten because all of it is fake news. Don’t even bother reading it now, and if you’ve read it and believed it, prepare to feel lied to. What you’re about to hear this week is all the evidence that, until now, has been suppressed or simply ignored by Big Media. PJ Media printed all of the evidence that came out in the trial three years ago. There’s no excuse for the media to have missed it; they simply ignored it because it didn’t fit the “Qanon bogeyman” story they wanted to tell.

Pre-trial motions kicked off the trial, and prosecuting attorney Gary Dawson and attorney Ara Ohanian on defense battled over allowing the state to introduce Abcug’s legal gun purchase as evidence against her. Ohanian called Dawson’s theory that simply owning a gun indicates a person as a criminal a “huge stretch.”

Judge Patricia Herron ruled that the gun purchase would be allowed in front of the jury.

Ohanian also told the court that the defense has not been allowed any access to the prosecution’s star witness, Abcug’s daughter Hannah, who was a minor at the time of her witness account and is now an adult. “Her guardian ad litem (GAL) will not allow us to talk to her!” said Ohanian. “Her GAL became her lawyer—I don’t know how that happened—and we can’t talk to her but the prosecution has these conversations with her.”

Dawson claimed that in the conversations that were withheld from the defense, “no new information” was obtained. He also said when questioned that he doesn’t know what his star witness is going to say on the stand. “The case is now four years old, so I don’t know what she’s going to talk about,” Dawson said. Ohanian promised to move for a mistrial and a dismissal if Hannah gives any new information under questioning.

Dawson’s great fable began in earnest during jury selection. When Judge Herron read the state’s charging statement, the language was so upsetting to members of the jury pool that three people asked to be excused. One woman, near tears, told the court that she was a victim of severe child abuse at the hands of a woman, and she could not be impartial or even stay in the courtroom any longer due to being triggered. Others in the pool had serious and personal discussions with the judge over their concerns about dealing with a case involving “knowingly and recklessly causing injury” to a child. The mood in the room was dark and heavy.

Considering that Colorado is one of the wokest states in the nation, it was shocking that no one offered those poor people a trigger warning for Dawson’s dramatization of sensational abuse.

After the thirteen brave souls—seven men and five women with one alternate—were chosen to face this terrible trauma, Dawson began his opening statement. The seasoned prosecutor claimed that after raising three other children without interference from the state, Abcug “drugged” her seven-year-old son with Topamax, an anti-seizure medicine (that she could only get through a doctor’s prescription), subjected him to unnecessary tests, somehow talked doctors into putting him under anesthesia, lied about seizures, demanded a spinal tap, refused to hand over protected medical records to the school nurse. The prosecutor said that when she was caught she went missing, along with the gun, and there were Qanon bracelets, an unknown person named “Ryan,” a military sniper, and “gun range” written in black Sharpie on the calendar at her home.

“Ryan is real!” said Dawson, waving his arms like a lunatic. “The diseases she said he had he doesn’t have, and the treatment was unnecessary and potentially harmful!”

The only thing that would have made it weirder is if Dawson had been posting this screed on a message board on 4chan.

Just when the gallery was starting to wonder if we weren’t actually in a courthouse but had wandered into a Qanon meetup, Dawson sat down, and defense counsel Brian Hall started fiddling with a computer that was uncooperative and refused to project his PowerPoint. Dawson graciously offered to let Hall use his dongle, a move he may have nightmares about for years to come.

When the technology started working and Hall started his presentation, Dawson’s story immediately fell apart.

“This case is a case about a single mom raising a child with a history of serious complex medical issues,” began Hall. What followed was slide after slide of a devastating timeline that blew Dawson’s conspiracy theory to pieces. In direct conflict with Dawson’s claims that Abcug’s son was never sick and has no medical problems (besides whatever trauma the state inflicted on him by tearing him from his mother at the age of seven and denying him her love for three years and counting), Hall laid out a litany of recorded medical incidents witnessed by doctors and family members (a recount of history that one would only know if they actually read the records, which Dawson clearly did not—or did, which is even worse.) Dawson had just finished telling the jury that no one but Abcug witnessed any of her son’s problems.

In 2012, when the child was an infant, he had his first fever-induced seizure followed by multiple other medical events like sleepy episodes, becoming unresponsive in his doctor’s arms, recorded doctors notes on speech delays, missed milestones, swallowing difficulties, and multiple hospitalizations over many years. By 2016, doctors had ordered extensive testing and found multiple abnormalities through EEG testing but still had no diagnosis.

Based on those concerns, doctors at famous children’s hospitals in Florida decided to put him on Topamax after two other drugs did not help him. Topamax has serious side effects that include muscle weakness, learning difficulties, tiredness, dizziness, loss of coordination, tingling of hands and feet, loss of appetite, mental slowness, memory problems, and more. The drug is also hard to get off of and requires slow weaning. Abcug’s son was on the medication for two years.

What followed after that was teams of highly qualified doctors in Colorado attempting to discover what was causing the child’s complex condition. Dr. Abigail Collins began to make progress, identifying that the Topamax was causing the worsening symptoms. It was at that time that the child was diagnosed with epilepsy and possible autism.

Genetic testing, contrary to Dawson’s claims, was not “normal” but showed something called GAMTG. This rare disorder can lead to severe developmental delays and impaired or absent speech, and more than 90% of the people who have it suffered febrile seizures as infants.

When Abcug mentioned the testing the doctors were putting her son through to a physical therapist, he reported her to DHS for “medical abuse,” and an even bigger nightmare began.

The most devastating slide for the prosecution was the letter from Dr. Collins to Abcug that PJ Media printed in 2019.

“Unfortunately, my opinion on the matter is irrelevant to DHS and they have made their decisions on this case without my input… you should be at every medical appointment even if he is not in your custody and we will continue to wean the Topamax.”

DHS did not allow Abcug to attend those appointments, and she is still barred by a restraining order from even speaking to any family member who has contact with her son.

While it may be true that Abcug’s son is not suffering muscle weakness or developmental delays now, Dawson should know that one of the major reasons is because Abcug and Collins had worked together to get him off the medication that was exacerbating those symptoms. Abcug did not make up years of struggle and heartache and sickness. It’s all right there in the hospital records. It makes one wonder what a parent is supposed to do.

We’re all terrified not to listen to doctors for fear of being accused of neglect. But Abcug did everything the doctors asked her to and for her diligence was rewarded with losing her son, five months in the county jail with $250,000 bail, national humiliation through fake news coverage branding her a domestic terrorist, and three more days of listening to Dawson dig himself further down his rabbit hole.

The real conspiracy theory, in this case, is not the desperate grieving mother who trusted the wrong people to help her get her son back from the deaf, dumb, and blind Douglas County DHS workers who refused to listen to the child’s doctors. The real conspiracy is the lengths Dawson and the State of Colorado went to in order to avoid having to face the consequences of what they did to Cynthia Abcug.

Witness testimony begins on Tuesday, and PJ Media will be in the courtroom all week.