LISTEN: Cult expert discusses social phenomenon around ‘Queen of Canada’

Romana Didulo and her followers set up camp nearly a month ago at a decommissioned school in the small village of Richmound, located two hours west of Swift Current.

Tensions between the group and residents gradually built up until Didulo’s arrest on Sept. 3. She’s currently facing charges of intimidation of a justice system participant and failing to comply with an undertaking. The owner of the former school was also charged with breaching an undertaking.

Read more:

• Self-proclaimed ‘Queen of Canada’ to be released on conditions
• ‘Queen of Canada’ and 15 others arrested in Richmound, no charges laid
• Two people, including self-proclaimed ‘Queen of Canada,’ facing charges after RCMP raid in Richmound

Christine Sarteschi is a professor of criminology at Chatham University who researches and monitors cults, and has followed Didulo’s case closely. She joined the Evan Bray Show this week to share her thoughts on the social phenomenon surrounding the woman who claims to be the ‘Queen of Canada.’

Listen to the full interview here:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: What has your interest been in Romana Didulo?

CHRISTINE SARTESCHI: I primarily became interested in her after learning about the number of people who followed her, and trying to understand why they follow her and how they believe such ridiculous things, and to blindly follow her without asking for evidence of her outrageous claims.

You wrote a book on sovereign citizens. Didolo has many beliefs that align with the sovereign citizen movement. What does that mean in practice for her and her followers?

SARTESCHI: She does not believe that the law applies to her. As she mentioned in court the other day, she wants to be tried under “natural law,” which really is anything that’s valid. She tells her followers they don’t have to pay their bills. Some of them have lost their homes because they haven’t paid their hydro bills and things of that nature. They lose a lot by listening to her and her “royal decrees,” which she claims are valid, but are not valid at all.

Do we have any sense, Christine, of how many followers she has? We know 16 people were arrested in the Richmound compound a week ago, but how far does her influence go?

SARTESCHI: It’s really hard to tell, because some of the ways in which we could determine that would might be by counting how many people follow her social media. Over time, she’s probably purchased bots to make it look like she’s had a lot of followers. There’s also people like myself who are who are monitoring the movement. It’s probably more in the hundreds or low thousands. Potentially, I know at one point she had up to 80,000 followers. But in terms of numbers, it’s really hard to get exact figures.

Is there a risk that these types of groups continue to grow and gain traction?

SARTESCHI: I definitely think so. In this day and age, we’re seeing nothing is slowing down these ideas. Nothing is preventing them from getting out there. We’re seeing more adoption of sovereign citizen outrageous ideas and willingly adopting them without requiring any evidence. I can’t imagine what a breeding ground it is. Now, with just social media, you think about cults from 20 years ago, for example, the ability to get their message out has drastically changed, and that has to be a game changer for these types of movements.

There is no policing of social media, and so it is completely unregulated at this point. What is it about Romana Didulo that has people willingly follow her?

SARTESCHI: I’ve heard that from many people who say they don’t see her as charismatic, but I would say that I do think her followers see her as charismatic. They really are attracted to her ideas. I think they see her as someone who’s very special that they’re attracted to.

Compared to other cult leaders that you’ve studied, is there anything that you right away land on that is unique about her, that stands out?

SARTESCHI: Not exactly. She lines up with many of the ones I’ve studied. I think the group in itself is just uniquely bizarre because of the many ideas that they endorse. Trying to categorize Romana can be quite difficult, because she believes in so many bizarre ideas (like) thinking that she’s a shape shifter, that she could enter someone’s dreams at night. She just says it whenever it’s convenient for her to say something.

In terms of the psychiatric aspect, a number of people on our open line show ask why is she not being taken in and given some sort of an assessment?

SARTESCHI: From a mental health perspective, we know that has happened at least once, if not twice. Yet clearly she’s been deemed fine. I think it probably has to do with the laws and how forced treatment is under the law. It’s highly unlikely that that would happen, unless you were to articulate very dangerous things she was going to do to other people or herself. Even if they brought her in to do an evaluation, they probably couldn’t keep her very long. She doesn’t present that imminent danger. She might be evaluated, potentially, through this court process. We might actually get to learn more about the psychiatric history.

We do know that, whether it’s been Romana Didulo herself or her group of followers, in the small community of Richmound, Saskatchewan, have been very threatening, have been very aggressive in how they are dealing with everything from city administration to people that just live in the community. And yet, the number of criminal charges doesn’t seem to correspond with what we’re hearing. Is it that a leader like this insulates herself to protect herself? Is it that people are scared to come forward and lay the complaint?

SARTESCHI: I think it’s probably that she has insulated herself well. So I suspect it’s other people who are just motivated by supporting their queen, which is the danger, I always think, when it comes to Romana Didulo. It isn’t just herself. It’s the other people who are inspired to do things, inspired to threaten people, on her behalf. It’s just the difficulty in nailing down who is doing the actual threat.

In the research you’ve done on cults, and you’ve studied many through the years, is this “harassing behavior” that we’ve seen and heard about with this group typical?

SARTESCHI: I think we’re seeing it more now with the Internet, in this day and age. You might think it would be easier to get caught with all the technology we have, but it still can be difficult to track down who, precisely, is sending the threats and so forth.

A couple of years ago, Romana Didulo made a stop in a small community called Kamsack, where she and her followers were run out of town. They ended up in Richmound. What is it about a community like Richmound that makes them vulnerable to this takeover?

SARTESCHI: I think, potentially, being a very small town had something to do with it. But she was invited by one person in that town, and so it just made it easy for them to move in. They had this big compound where they could stay. They can bring all their people, all their RVs.

It didn’t seem like Richmound folks were able to get the help they asked for. They were begging and pleading for help, and weren’t taken as seriously as they should have been. RCMP officers were constricted through law by what they could do. Is this a wake-up call for Canadian law and the legal system, to find ways to better protect communities? How can we prevent it from happening in the future?

SARTESCHI: Well, I always say this is completely uncharted territory. It’s hard to know and predict what will happen next. When she got arrested and learning the charges, I just was thinking about how big of a blow this is to the movement, and it’s hard to know what’s going to happen. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.