Lawsuit Claims Sect Exploited Children’s Labor
Published By admin
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.
Content retrieved from: https://provincetownindependent.org/local-journalism-project/2025/08/20/52311/.
