14 Ex-Residents Detail Coercion at Orleans Commune

Published September 18, 2025 By admin

ORLEANS — In his lawsuit filed in federal court on July 16, Oliver Ortolani, 18, described the Community of Jesus (COJ), a religious commune in Rock Harbor with about 200 members, as a group that demanded “absolute obedience,” separated children from their parents, subjected children to forced labor, and broke down its members emotionally using “psychological coercion.”

LAWSUIT FALLOUT
14 Ex-Residents Detail Coercion at Orleans Commune
After legal filing, others describe similar experiences at Community of Jesus
By Jack Styler Sep 17, 2025

ORLEANS — In his lawsuit filed in federal court on July 16, Oliver Ortolani, 18, described the Community of Jesus (COJ), a religious commune in Rock Harbor with about 200 members, as a group that demanded “absolute obedience,” separated children from their parents, subjected children to forced labor, and broke down its members emotionally using “psychological coercion.”

Tim DeLude, left, and his brother Shawn grew up in the Community of Jesus. Both left as teenagers. (Photo by Agata Storer)
Jeffrey Robbins, the COJ’s lawyer, has said that Ortolani’s lawsuit is “not only frivolous” but “borderline fraudulent.”

Fourteen other people who spent time at the COJ from its founding in 1970 to as recently as 2018 told the Independent that Ortolani’s characterization of the community is consistent with their experiences there.

“There wasn’t a single thing that I read that I thought was excessive,” said Todd Lynch, 50, who left the COJ in 1997.

“Obedience is the highest virtue, not kindness, not anything — it’s obedience,” said Dianne Wentworth, 77, who left the COJ after 35 years in 2010.

Ortolani claimed in court documents that beginning when he was 11, the COJ’s leaders forced him and other boys in the community to perform unpaid labor in grueling conditions “for almost two years” to help build a performing arts center in Brewster for Arts Empowering Life, a COJ-affiliated nonprofit. The boys often worked six days a week, 9 to 16 hours per day, and were deprived of a proper education, the lawsuit claims.

Ortolani also claimed that he was encouraged not to have contact with his biological parents and was subjected to group sessions designed to shame and humiliate those who broke the rules “to the point where they break down and beg for forgiveness.”

Robbins has said that both Ortolani and his mother signed release forms that clearly affirmed that Ortolani was volunteering his labor, and that his father, Dave Ortolani, was supervising his work at the construction site.

The 14 ex-residents described experiences similar to Ortolani’s, including ritual humiliation, family separation, and a community-wide program of constant labor. Ten of the 14 claimed they were forced to work as children.

Robbins, the COJ’s lawyer, declined to answer specific questions from the Independent about the accounts of those people or to allow COJ leaders to be interviewed.

“The Community does not intend to dignify allegations of this sort,” Robbins wrote. “Nor does it intend to be ‘interrogated’ about its religious faith or principles. This is un-American stuff, unworthy of a society which, thank goodness, respects religious freedom and the right to worship without harassment, even where the harassment is dressed up as journalism.”

“We live in a time when viciousness, hatred, and bullying are peddled 24/7,” wrote Robbins, who added that that the Independent’s questions were “of a piece with this sad phenomenon.”

The ‘Light Sessions’

Ortolani alleges in his lawsuit that he was involved in humiliating “light sessions” before starting work each day at the Arts Empowering Life site. During those sessions, he says, community members demanded that the targeted person confess sinful actions or “impure” thoughts until he broke down.

Twelve of the 14 ex-residents said that children at the COJ were often targeted during light sessions.

“I never trusted anyone my entire childhood because your best friends would be made to turn against you,” said Tim DeLude, 44, who left the COJ at 18 in 1999.

Resistance could lead to further discipline.

“There were a couple of times when I was put ‘on silence’ — I couldn’t look at anybody or talk to anybody,” said Wentworth. “You never really knew when this was going to happen, and you didn’t know what you had done to make it end. And that could go on for a couple of months.”

Ortolani’s lawsuit alleges that an adult community member beat his brother at the Arts Empowering Life worksite after deeming his behavior “disrespectful.” After the assault, Ortolani’s brother, who was 13, was put in “near-total isolation” for six months, during which community members were instructed not to speak to him, according to the complaint.

G. Thomas Ryan, a former president of the Cape Cod Council of Churches who worked as a consultant for the COJ from 1992 to 2010, told the Independent that “light sessions” are rooted in a long monastic tradition, and that the COJ’s disciplinary tactics “must be seen in the context of and comparison with parents disciplining their kids.”

“Some teens end up angry with parents for years,” said Ryan, who compared the COJ’s punishment methods to being grounded. Ryan is also an investor in the Provincetown Independent.

Family Separation

The COJ’s internal leadership structure includes elected “deans” as well as informal “enforcers,” all of whom report to the prioress, according to Susan Wilkins, 60, who grew up at the COJ and left after 35 years in 2005. The COJ is made up of “Sisters,” “Brothers,” “Members,” and their children. Those living at the COJ must ask permission to start a romantic relationship, go on vacation, pursue higher education, or move away from the community, according to several former residents.

Sisters, Brothers, and members all take vows of “worship, obedience, and love,” but Sisters and Brothers also relinquish the “right to own, to marry, and to choose,” according to the text of their vows in the COJ’s “Rule of Life.”

When Ortolani was nine, he and his family were moved into the first of a series of multi-family homes. He ultimately was moved 20 times in 16 years, according to his lawyer, Carol Merchasin.

“While Ortolani lived with other families, he rarely saw his own parents,” according to his lawsuit, and he was “encouraged not to seek them out or interact with them at all.”

All 14 ex-residents told the Independent that COJ leaders separated parents from their children during their time in the community.

Wilkins said that when she was six, the community determined she was “a brat,” so she was put “on discipline” and moved into another community member’s house. During her early high school years, her parents were moved to a church in Rochester, N.Y. that had a relationship with the COJ while she was shuffled between community members’ homes in Orleans, said Wilkins.

By the time she finished high school, she had almost forgotten she had parents, she said. “My parents weren’t there, and even if they were there, I wouldn’t have talked to them because I really didn’t know them,” she said. “They were like strangers to me.”

“As a child, you were surrounded,” said Wilkins. “You were told how to think. It feels like life and death because they make your life either wonderful or miserable.”

According to several ex-residents, the two original COJ leaders or “Mothers” — Cay Andersen, who died in 1988, and Judy Sorensen, who retired in 1992 — had preached that parents’ unconditional love for their children was “idolatrous” because they placed their children above God.

In a 1993 interview with the TV show Chronicle, Betty Pugsley, who led the community after Sorensen’s retirement, said that the COJ did not remove children from parents except when children asked to live with friends in the summer.

Todd Lynch said that his mother and stepfather decided to move permanently to the COJ in 1988 after three summers of attending retreats. When he was 13, Lynch said, he was called into a meeting with his mother and two other women. “I was told to turn to my mother — my mother was to remain silent — and I was instructed to tell her everything that I was angry at her for,” said Lynch.

“I broke down,” he said. “My mother was crying the entire time, completely humiliated, being told that she was not a good enough mother for me.”

“After that, I was no longer under the care of my mother,” said Lynch.

In her self-published memoir, Carrie Buddington, who lived at the COJ for 40 years, wrote that COJ leaders separated her from her daughter, who was one and a half at the time, in 1975, and discouraged Buddington from visiting her.

Bryan Catlin, Betty Pugsley’s grandson, said that he was first separated from his family around 1994, when he was about eight, and was then “bounced around to different houses to live in with different people in charge of me.”

COJ attorney Robbins did not respond to questions about whether children had been separated from their parents or whether that practice continues today.

Constant Work

Ortolani’s lawsuit alleges that his work on the Arts Empowering Life center in 2019 and 2020 was so intense that it led to “constant joint and back pain” and “cost him the better part of two years of schooling.” He did not get enough food or sleep during that time, the lawsuit says.

Many ex-residents interviewed by the Independent said that work at the COJ was a tool to deprive people of time to decompress, which strengthened the control that community leaders had over them.

“Their modus operandi is to keep you so busy you have no time to think,” said Wilkins.

Some ex-residents said that they worked on major construction projects or in building maintenance. Bryan Catlin said that as a minor he was part of the crew that laid the bluestone and prepped the plaster at the Church of the Transfiguration in Rock Harbor. Lynch said he poured concrete and constructed fences as a child. Wentworth said she helped stain and sand wood on the chapter house building and cleaned the homes of the prioress, Betty Pugsley.

Wentworth and Wilkins, who lived in the community as “nuns” who had taken vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty, said there was an understanding that all Sisters would sign over their paychecks to the COJ.

“I felt like an indentured servant there,” said Wilkins. “Basically, you’re slave labor. And it felt like they kept taking away the little things that made life somewhat tolerable.”

“I was financially trapped because I handed them my checks,” said Wentworth. “And it didn’t go into an account earmarked for me.”

Ryan told the Independent that hundreds of thousands of Jesuits, Franciscans, and members of other monastic traditions have taken vows of poverty. “The sisters and brothers, as they become such, at COJ and in all Orders with a poverty vow (generally happily) sign off from all income and expenses,” he wrote.

After Leaving

Some ex-residents interviewed for this article said they started planning their exit early in their time at the COJ; others said they were effectively forced out after bucking the leaders.

Karen Moore has led the community for the last several years, and Betty Pugsley’s son, Richard Pugsley Jr., acts as “sub-prior,” according to Ortolani’s lawsuit. Other than correspondence from Robbins, the COJ has not responded to repeated requests for comment from its current leaders, Moore and Richard Pugsley Jr., or former leader Betty Pugsley.

Shawn DeLude, who is nine years older than his brother Tim, said he hitchhiked back to Orleans after being sent to COJ-affiliated Grenville College in Canada in 1986. After his father told him that his only options were to go back to Grenville or leave forever, Shawn said, he walked to Nauset High School, told a guidance counselor about his situation, and got help that enabled him to become an emancipated minor. He was 15.

Some of the 14 ex-residents said that after leaving the community they struggled with alcohol abuse or eating disorders, spent time in mental hospitals, endured periods of homelessness, or considered suicide.

Dianne Wentworth said she suffered from anxiety and suicidal thoughts at the COJ. “There were a couple of times when I’d be walking down the street, and I could hear a truck coming up behind me, and I just wanted to step in front of it,” she said.

Robbins did not answer the Independent’s specific questions about the claims of the 14 ex-residents. “There are individuals,” he wrote, “who, troubled by their own self-perceived failures, or bearing animus toward their families, or even bearing animus toward themselves, recycle outrageous nonsense about the Community.

“The Community of Jesus has at various times been subjected to vandalism, harassment, threats of violence, actual violence and religious desecration,” Robbins also wrote. “At the center of a fairly ugly campaign against it that recycles the same old accusations of decades ago is a small knot of individuals who have obsessively wished it ill, and who fervently want others to wish it ill as well. The same small group has been doing the same thing for a very long time.

“One individual spewing nonsense like this was successfully sued for defamation a few years ago, with a Barnstable Superior Court jury ordering her to pay a Community representative $100,000 for making intentionally false defamatory statements about him,” Robbins wrote.

In 2019, a jury awarded Orleans lawyer Christopher Kanaga $100,000 in a successful defamation suit filed in Superior Court against a relative of a former COJ member who posted about Kanaga on social media, according to the Cape Cod Times. Robbins represented Kanaga in that lawsuit.

The defendant in that suit is not one of the 14 people interviewed by the Independent for this article.

Lynch — who said that Robert J. Lifton’s book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism had helped him understand his experience at the COJ — has started a nonprofit called the Resource for Life Foundation to aid survivors of coercive control.

Shawn DeLude, who started Nauset Disposal in Orleans and now runs DeLude Communications, said that he often tries to help people who leave the COJ by providing them with jobs or connecting them with counseling.

His brother Tim said he still experiences flashbacks and nightmares from his time at the COJ.

“There was a lot of talk about idolatry and how loving your kids unconditionally was a sin,” said Tim. “That’s there in the back of my head as I’m parenting. I know it’s not wrong to love my kids unconditionally. But there’s an inner struggle with that stuff. It’s tough to talk about, and it makes me angry.”

“For someone who gets raised in a high-control religion and in a group like the Community of Jesus, I don’t think you ever stop recovering,” said Beth Granger, a former COJ member. “It’s the work of your lifetime.”

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Content retrieved from: https://provincetownindependent.org/local-journalism-project/2025/09/17/14-ex-residents-detail-coercion-at-orleans-commune/.