A Mom Stopped Paying Her Bills Because of the QAnon Queen. She Lost Her Home.
Shortly after police forcibly removed her from her home, Bonnie sat in her car, surrounded by her animals, and frantically posted in a Telegram chatroom for the QAnon Queen of Canada.
“They don’t care,” she wrote. “They threw us out with no clothes, no food, nothing at all. The cats, birds, and my daughter are in the vehicle. My other daughter is at school. Please, we need your help!”
“Please, Queen! They just removed me from our home. We have no place to go.”
Over a year ago, Bonnie stopped paying her mortgage and other bills because Romana Didulo, a QAnon figure who has named herself the queen of Canada, declared all utilities and mortgages free under a “royal decree.” So Bonnie ignored all warnings that her payments were due and her home was being foreclosed upon. She thought the pedophilic cabal—the evil group Didulo’s followers believe she’s secretly battling—was just trying to scare her.
Then on Feb. 17, a bailiff knocked on her door alongside multiple Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers and forcibly removed Bonnie and her family. In an area where temperatures routinely drop to -20 degrees Celsius, they couldn’t even bring winter gear with them, she wrote. More than a month later, Bonnie and her family remain without a home.
Her queen, in return, has done nothing.
Bonnie is not the woman’s real name. VICE News will not be naming her or identifying the town she lived in. Bonnie did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, and when VICE News first reached out to her, she called the reporter a “traitor.”
But court documents reviewed by VICE News and interviews with people familiar with Bonnie’s situation confirmed that her home was indeed seized and that she hasn’t been allowed back.
Didulo is a conspiracy figure who arose from the QAnon movement. She’s not only convinced hundreds of people across Canada—and even some internationally—that she’s royalty, but also an interdimensional being in contact with aliens. Until recently, Didulo was on a year-long cross-country RV trip with several of her followers, hosting meet-and-greets in small towns along the way. Now, the group is holed up on one of her follower’s properties in Nova Scotia, apparently building a compound.
While experts and former members (some of which have raised serious allegations of abuse) worry about those living with Didulo, Bonnie is a clear example of the damage the queen’s rhetoric and teachings are causing on the internet as well.
“She doesn’t seem to really care. She claims to be benevolent, but she seems to be anything but,” Christine Sarteschi, a professor of social work and criminology at Chatham University, who closely follows Didulo. “It’s a shame. It’s sad. People are being harmed by somebody who is a fraud.”
Followers of Didulo, including Bonnie, have had their electricity shut off because of Didulo’s preachings. Others have disclosed to their fellow supporters that they, too, are being foreclosed upon. One woman whose home is set to be taken over by the bank imminently sent a cease and desist notice in Didulo’s name as a last ditch effort.
It did not work.
In the same Telegram chat where Bonnie begged for help after she was evicted, she chronicled the events leading up to her losing her home. For months she wrote about how banks attempted to get her to pay, and she repeatedly asked Didulo for advice. In the end, however, she outright refused to pay. And when she was foreclosed upon, she refused to give up her property. At one point in December, she was called to go to court to dispute the foreclosure.
“I never attended because Queen Romana said it’s nil and void [sic], but they foreclosed anyhow and threatened to evict me by force if I don’t comply,” Bonnie wrote in the Telegram chat. “They let a realtor in my home (threats as usual).”
“I stood strong because Queen Romana is the real deal and the Kingdom of Canada is amazing,” she added later.
Didulo and those traveling with her not only ignore the suffering she inflicts on her most diehard believers, they constantly pester her followers for money. In the past two years, they’ve raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Didulo.
Didulo’s latest gambit involves gathering donations for what she calls “loyalty money.” The currency—comically large pieces of paper with Didulo’s purple flag on them—is supposedly worth 100,000 (of what, no one knows). But it’s, obviously, not usable anywhere. Her followers, however, celebrated the livestream releasing the currency. One of Didulo’s followers, who’s currently unhoused, even hopes to use the loyalty money to put a roof over their head. Bonnie has also since requested the loyalty money but has yet to receive it.
In the days following Bonnie’s removal from her home, Didulo’s followers asked what happened to her and if their queen would intervene.
“This is a tragedy,” wrote one supporter. “Queen Romana needs to deploy the military.”
The comment, however, and many others, including some of Bonnie’s, were removed from some of the chats. Sarteschi said that isn’t unusual; the queen’s moderators will typically clean up anything that even remotely questions Didulo’s power.
“I remember the day that Bonnie was posting all those messages about losing her home and her family being out, they did a live stream later that day. They never mentioned her,” Sarteschi said. “There was never any apology or ‘Let us help you.’ There’s never anything like that.”
“I do think there’s a lot of families affected who we never hear from,” she added.
Still, Didulo has such a strong grasp on her followers that even terrible occurrences won’t break it. Since being removed from her home, Bonnie remains sporadically active in the chat. She doesn’t mention specifically what’s going on but says it’s “awful.” And despite everything that has happened, she remains in service to her queen.
“I want to help you as much as I can as soon as we are back in our home,” she recently wrote to Didulo. “It’s been a long month dealing with our situation.”
As always, the message went ignored.
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