The Madwoman of Turin

There is a certain cruelty in the way they say it.
“The Madwoman of Turin.”
It’s not merely a taunt... it’s a deliberate construction.
A label.
A verdict.
A trap.

It was never enough for them to simply disagree with me. That would have required them to actually engage with the evidence, acknowledge the archive — and my existence. Instead, they reached for the oldest, ugliest weapon in the arsenal of abusers: claiming I am insane.

Over the years, their weaponization of sanity has taken many forms. They’ve claimed I stalked them. That I “started it all.” That I bullied them. But to them, all of this was because I was medicated — fit for a psychiatric ward.

They spread the word that I was obsessed, delusional, and — most disturbingly — that Renato, my husband and collaborator, was exploiting my supposed mental illness. That he somehow forced me to speak, to write, to record podcasts.

It is a cruel lie, and they know it. It was always intended to be cruel.

Renato was many things — brilliant, loving, maddeningly meticulous — but he was never a manipulator. He encouraged me because he believed in me. He saw what I endured, what I uncovered, and what I built in the face of organized attempts to erase me. He stood beside me in the fight because he saw the truth.

And make no mistake — this is a fight about truth.

To call someone insane is to attempt to discredit everything they say — not by disproving it, but by invalidating the speaker. It is the lazy smear that makes facts irrelevant and puts the accused on endless defense.

This is not merely defamation.
It is gaslighting.
Designed to make me question my own memory, my own history — my very sanity.

It is also projection.
For who but a deeply disturbed individual builds their entire identity on impersonating a long-dead silent movie star?
Who but a gross manipulator demands to be worshiped, deletes evidence, and then cries foul when challenged and confronted with documentation?

They have been at this for more than a decade.

A few examples:

• On January 5, 2017, one cult platform headline taunts me, saying I am about to be, “carried off by the men in white coats.”

• On my birthday in 2020, the cult leader himself posts asking, “Is Evelyn Zumaya in control of her faculties?” He goes on to claim Renato was “checking the medicine cabinet to see what went wrong,” etc.

• I am called a “senile-demented old hag,” and in the same post:
  “Evelyn Zumaya clearly has mental problems. Action should be taken to have her medically assessed, if for nothing else than to assure OUR safety. We are incapable of knowing what she might do next. She very clearly is a dangerous old woman.”

• As far back as 2010, the cult was spreading the claim that I was, “looking for an asylum.”

• And the cult member I referred to in a previous Substack note as the “Two-day Defector” told the world:
  “Zumaya has some unfortunate mental problems that have manifested into delusions.”

But the primary tagline — the moniker that clings — has always been:
“The Madwoman of Turin.”

As in the post, made on the platform provided by the cult leader under my book’s title Affairs Valentino:

“The Madwoman of Turin has almost gotten her court documents on public display…”

This on the blog that boasts a home page featuring the movie poster used to illustrate this post — Woman From Hell.

It’s no coincidence they chose an image from an old film of a “madwoman.”
It’s theatrical — meant to ridicule, reduce, and dismiss.
Classic patriarchal playbook:
Deny her work.
Mock her voice.
Pathologize her resistance.

It’s an old story.
Ask any woman who’s dared to challenge power.

They want to define me by the label they gave me — to portray me as a dottering lunatic, drugged and delusional, exploited by my husband and lost in fantasy.

Nothing — nothing — could be further from the truth.

And what better way to silence a woman than to call her hysterical, emotional, unstable?

But they failed.

I have not been silenced.
I am not broken.
I have not stopped.

If they thought ridicule would derail me, they’ve misunderstood what sustains me:
Love.
Truth.
Intellectual honesty.

I have always been transparent.
I published the receipts.
I filed court records.
I included transcripts. Annotated images. Footnoted facts.

They respond not with evidence, but with desperate and cowardly mockery. Because they know they can’t win a factual argument — so they reduce the battlefield to character assassination.

My so-called madness?
It is my refusal to forget.

My obsession?
It is the act of bearing witness.

My voice — the one they claimed Renato “forced” me to use?
It is still here. Loud. And clear.

The more they attempt to control the story, the more determined I am to write it myself. In full. With the archive intact.

There is a peculiar kind of power in being called insane by liars.
It means they fear you — they fear what you know.

So let them sit hunched over their keyboards, sneering as they recycle their tired old insults.
I’ll be over here — writing, archiving, succeeding.

And this time, I’ll be signing it all as:
The Madwoman of Turin.