ORLEANS — Known for its grand church just steps away from Cape Cod Bay, the Community of Jesus (COJ), a small, tight-knit religious commune, has grown since its founding as a Bible study collective in the 1970s to include a 60-acre campus encompassing church buildings and members’ multi-family houses, as well as an 18,737-square-foot performing arts center in Brewster.
But beyond the Rock Harbor compound’s hedges and the church’s stunning facade, much less is known about how the COJ and its affiliated entities operate — though public accusations of abuse by former members have dogged the organization for decades.
A lawsuit filed on July 16 in U.S. District Court in Boston levels new abuse allegations against the COJ and offers details of the group’s inner workings. It accuses some COJ members of forcing children to work in unsafe and unhealthy conditions and operating as a criminal organization to enrich itself.
The plaintiff, 18-year-old Oliver Ortolani, who grew up in the enclave, alleges that the Community of Jesus, Inc. and two of its associated business entities built the performing arts center in Brewster “on the backs of children forced to labor without pay” for almost two years.
The lawsuit claims that Ortolani and all other “able-bodied” boys ages 9 to 16 in the COJ were forced to do “grueling manual labor,” including digging the building’s foundation, carrying “90-pound bags of concrete, laying rebar, and framing the building’s walls.” Ortolani was 11 years old when he was forced to start working at the construction site, which was “in the middle of a forest, encircled by barbed-wire fences and a locked gate that the boys could not unlock,” according to the complaint.
In the court document, Ortolani estimates that the children’s work saved the COJ and its associated businesses at least a half million dollars in labor costs.
In interviews with the Independent, four other people who lived at the COJ campus in Orleans said that Ortolani’s claims are consistent with their experiences there, which go as far back as the 1980s.
“This is a lawsuit which is not only frivolous, but it is borderline fraudulent,” said Jeffrey Robbins, a Boston lawyer representing the COJ. “This is the kind of lawsuit that gives lawsuits a bad name, and in particular — where there is real trafficking that goes on in this world, real child trafficking — it makes a mockery.”
Much of Ortolani’s complaint goes into detail about the strategies of psychological abuse and manipulation he says were employed by some COJ members on children and on each other, including separating children from parents, using ostracism and isolation as punishment, pulling kids out of public school, and restricting access to the outside world.
The COJ has previously been linked to abuse in lawsuits and other public accusations, perhaps most notably in its alleged association with the Grenville Christian College in Ontario, Canada. A class-action suit brought by 1,360 former Grenville boarding school students alleged that the school and its administrators subjected them to years of physical abuse and humiliation. In 2020, Ontario Superior Court Justice Janet Leiper wrote in her decision for the plaintiffs that the school “created a place to mould students using the precepts and norms of the COJ.”
In its 2021 investigation into Grenville Christian College, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. cited deeds, corporate documents filed with the Canadian government, and letters from Grenville administrators to support the connection between Grenville and the COJ. Robbins, the COJ’s lawyer, however, denied any relationship between the two.
Oliver Ortolani’s grandparents were teachers at Grenville Christian College, according to Ortolani’s lawyer, Carol Merchasin.
In 2021, CBS in Boston detailed similar allegations of emotional abuse and family separation policies against the COJ in Orleans. In 1993, Channel 5 Boston ran a special called “Community or Cult?” that aired similar claims.
The COJ was thrust into the national spotlight last year after U.S. Air Force member Aaron Bushnell lit himself on fire, shouting “free Palestine,” in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. Bushnell was born into the COJ and continued to live at the Orleans commune until 2019.
No members of the COJ made themselves available for an interview with the Independent.
Bible Group Beginnings
The COJ’s founding members, Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen, met in 1958 and began holding bible studies at the Rock Harbor Manor, which eventually led to retreats throughout New England in the early 1960s as their popularity grew. In 1968, Andersen and Sorensen publicly took vows, which included celibacy, to create the Sisterhood of the Community of Jesus. Two years later, the community was “formally constituted” with 25 people and five homes in Rock Harbor, according to the COJ’s “history” webpage.
The community continued to attract new members, peaking at 300 to 400 in the 1980s, and Andersen and Sorensen began calling themselves “the Mothers.”
Though the group claims to be part of the “Benedictine monastic tradition,” it is not formally recognized by the Catholic Church. Rather, it calls itself an “ecumenical” Christian community in which members come from Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Congregational, Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist, and Roman Catholic backgrounds.
There are conflicting figures for the COJ’s current membership. Some COJ literature states that the community has almost 275 people, including monks in the “Zion Friary” and nuns in the “Bethany Covenant.” The COJ’s website, however, says there are about 230 members, and one ex-member of the community told the Independent that the population has been on the decline for years and may be below 200 now.
In addition to the Church of the Transfiguration in Rock Harbor, COJ members run a number of businesses and nonprofit organizations in Orleans and Brewster, such as the Christian music and book publisher Paraclete Press. The COJ is also affiliated with a center for art and spirituality called Mount Tabor Ecumenical Centre in Barga, Italy, according to its website.
Safety and Consent in the Forest
According to the complaint he filed in federal court, Ortolani and the other boys working on the construction site would be awakened between 4:30 and 5 a.m. to complete an intense exercise regime or be brought directly to the worksite, which was located “in a remote, wooded area.”
After being driven by COJ adults from Orleans to Brewster, the boys were locked into the construction site, which was encircled by a barbed wire fence, with a gate controlled with a code. They worked nine to 16 hours per day, even during the winter, with few breaks for meals, according to Ortolani’s account.
During government inspections, the adults would hide Ortolani and the other boys or remove them from the site “so that the inspectors would not see a worksite full of children,” according to the complaint. Ortolani also claims that there were numerous occasions when children were injured or almost injured while working at the site: Ortolani’s brother Jake was nearly shot in the forehead by a nail gun; another young boy suffered an eye injury after being accidently hit with a piece of rebar; a forklift nearly dropped a crate on a group of minors working below, he alleges in his lawsuit.
The lawsuit also alleges that the boys were deprived of any real education while they built the performing arts center for Arts Empowering Life, a nonprofit associated with the COJ that is “dedicated to the pursuit of beauty, truth, and faith in the Arts,” according to its website.
The Arts Empowering Life’s two-floor performance arts center, off Route 6A at 95 Southern Eagle Cartway in Brewster, was designed “based on the natural elements of Fire, Earth, Air, and Water,” according to its website. The organization regularly offers artist talks, performances by musicians associated with the COJ, and concerts by outside groups. A jazz ensemble from the Juilliard School and a director of music from the Interlochen Center for the Arts are scheduled to come to the arts center in the next month, according to its schedule of events online.
While some events at the center are free and open to the public, many require paid tickets.
“As we understand it, the Community of Jesus is benefiting, profiting from the building,” said Carol Merchasin, Ortolani’s lawyer. “They profited from unpaid child labor, not the parents.”
Lawyer Robbins disagrees. He told the Independent that Ortolani’s mother was in charge of the volunteers for the project and that Ortolani’s father was the principal foreman on the site.
Robbins also provided four documents that purport to be waivers signed by Ellen Ortolani, Oliver Ortolani, Noah Ortolani, and Jacob Ortolani. The document that appears to be signed by both Oliver and his mother states, “I want my child to participate in the construction of the new performing arts facility for AEL. I understand that construction will involve power tools, ladders, hydraulic equipment, moving vehicles, and other danger, is [sic] and could result in injury.”
In a later paragraph, the document reads, “I understand that this is on a volunteer basis and there will be no payment for services.”
“This is a case,” said Robbins, “which raises extremely disturbing questions about whether or not those responsible for filing this lawsuit did the required amount of due diligence before filing a lawsuit in federal court because the facts are that the parents basically directed the project — helped to direct the project — and specifically stipulated that they understood this was voluntary.”
Robbins continued: “If this plaintiff has issues with his parents because, in retrospect, he didn’t like the volunteer work that they volunteered him for, that he volunteered for, that they oversaw, then he should take it up with his parents and not file frivolous allegations in a federal court.”
“It wasn’t possible for Oliver to have consented,” said Merchasin, the plaintiff’s lawyer. “The law recognizes that when there is coercion, it can negate consent. In other words, coercion can make a person believe that if they don’t comply, they will suffer. Being a child made Oliver more vulnerable to that coercion.”
After retiring from corporate law in 2005, Merchasin began taking pro-bono cases related to abuse at religious or faith-based communities in 2018. After four years of pro-bono work, she joined the U.K.-based firm McAllister Olivarius as the head of its sexual misconduct in spiritual communities division. Altogether, Merchasin estimates, she has worked on 40 cases in this field.
Light and Punishment
Ortolani’s lawsuit states that all members of the COJ are routinely involved in “light sessions,” in which community members question, shame, and humiliate each other “to the point where they break down and beg for forgiveness” for “deviating from expected norms” of the community. If the person subject to the light session does not repent, he could be physically hurt by community members, according to the court filing.
All the ex-members of the COJ interviewed by the Independent for this article said that they had been involved in “light sessions.”
“I was involved with them constantly,” said Carrie Buddington, who lived in the community for 40 years. “One person would be picked on, and everybody in the circle would tell them how bad they were, how wrong they were. They’d swear at them, and they’d often get angry and yell and shout, say things like how disgusting they were, and nobody wanted to have anything to do with you.”
“If you didn’t start the conversation, you were potentially the person who could be the subject of the conversation,” said Shawn DeLude, another former member of the COJ who lives in Orleans. “At any given point, you could be subject to one. They’re going on right now, I can guarantee you.”
He said those “conversations” involved manipulation of people, “breaking them down to the point of deeper control.”
A section of the COJ’s “Rule of Life” called “living in the light” states that “the integrity of our fellowship with God and with each other is dependent upon our commitment to ‘walk in the light as he is in the light.’ ‘Living in the light,’ therefore, means living according to the truth — the truth about God and the truth about ourselves — from which we are often blinded by human sin and frailty.”
If a light session failed to reform a community member’s perceived bad behavior, the person could be placed on “hard times,” during which family, friends, and others in the COJ were “directed not to speak to them, other than to criticize.” “Hard times” could last anywhere from a few days to a few months, according to the suit.
In the lawsuit, Ortolani also described physical punishment including being forced to run laps for four hours in steel-toed boots in July. DeLude told the Independent that before he ran away from the community at 15, he was subject to similar punishment, such as being forced to cut a yard with hand clippers.
Ortolani’s story is “consistent with what happened when I lived there — we all worked all the time in ways to benefit the community,” said Bonnie Zampino, who lived at the COJ for three years in the 1980s. “It’s not just children. It’s everyone.”
