The Community of Jesus (CoJ) was founded in 1958 by laywomen Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen in Orleans, Massachusetts. It was originally formed as a prayer and Bible study group and was formally incorporated as a community under Massachusetts state law in 1970.
It describes itself as an ecumenical, monastic community “in the tradition of St. Benedict,” which if you don’t look too closely, sounds Catholic, or at least Episcopalian.
There’s an emphasis on the Divine Office, traditionally chanted by actual Benedictine monks and sisters several times a day. There’s a huge ostentatious church — the Church of the Transfiguration — that celebrates “communion” exactly once a week.
There are sisters and brothers in robes who take “vows” pursuant to a self-designed Rule of Life, viewable on their website and printed in medieval-type script, that at first glance looks legitimate.
A closer look reveals a document that establishes an absolute dictatorship over the bodies, spirits, and souls of those who enter the community. The dictator is a prior or prioress (to date, it’s always been a prioress) who has no religious authority and no religious training whatsoever.
In fact, the Community of Jesus has been described by dozens of defectors as a coercive, high-pressure cult.
Loving one’s children is considered idolatry, so families are routinely separated, without explanation, without warning. Sin must be rooted out by means of “light sessions,” in which community members gang up and hurl accusations of sin until the accused collapses or breaks.
Members can be put on “hard times” or “on silence”: forced to eat alone, forbidden to speak to anyone, sometimes for months. Fasts consisting of say, grapes, raisins, and water might be imposed for the whole of Lent, or longer.
Meanwhile the female founders, both married, lived together in luxury and, by several witness accounts, slept in the same bed. Waited on hand-and-foot by what were basically indentured servants, they flew around the world on expensive vacations and ate choice foods.
They maintained iron control over their subjects by appointing themselves proxies of God.
Everything must be flawless, so the subjects were put to work from dawn often to midnight, sewing, cooking, cleaning, gardening, flower arranging, digging, building, obligatorily praying the Office in chapel several times a day.
The community fostered music and established several arts-based nonprofits. They opened a publishing arm called Paraclete Press.
Not knowing any of the above, I published a book with Paraclete in 2012. My contract provided that I could stay at their compound for a week. The experience was so unsettling I left — fled might be a better word — after a few days.
The atmosphere of oppression and surveillance was palpable, and the food, furnishings, and grounds were so unnaturally “perfect” I knew the place could not possibly be Catholic. After a brief online search confirmed my suspicions, I refused even to enter the “church.” I’m not sure what is celebrated on its altar, or by whom, only that it was not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Leaving a cult is notoriously difficult. Those raised in the CoJ typically have no higher education, no money, no contacts in the outside world, and no idea how to function outside of the community. Traumatized socially, emotionally, and mentally, they lack trust and shy away from human interaction — even with fellow survivors. They’ve all been victims and — encouraged to rat out and shun their fellow members — most have also been perpetrators.
All these years later, enter Rock Harbor Truth, a survivor-led nonprofit founded by two CoJ survivors: President Shawn DeLude, who escaped at 15, and Bonnie Zampino. The organization acts as a kind of clearinghouse, offering education, survivor resources, and advocacy.
On Feb. 25, 2024, a young man named Aaron Bushnell self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., pleading for the freedom of Palestine. Aaron had been raised in the Community of Jesus, and his death (there have been others) galvanized Zampino.
The daughter of an Episcopal priest (later bishop) and his wife, Bonnie was sent by her parents to the CoJ as a 13-year-old, ostensibly for a month. She was held there for three years. The scars remain.
So does the vital, resilient spirit that allowed her to make her way when, at 18, her parents threatened to send her back to the community or drop her off at a homeless shelter — and she chose the latter.
Now the mother of a 22-year-old son poised to graduate from college, Zampino is a longtime lobbyist, advocate, and writer.
“People ask why community members don’t just leave but it’s very complicated. Many have been born into it, or they’ve been there 50 years. They don’t know anything else. Many own a house or part of a house but they can’t sell it because who wants to buy into a cult? Also, if you leave, you’re shunned. You no longer have access to your family.
“The Mothers’ teaching tapes would be, ‘You’re a whore, you are jealous, you are rebellious, you’re a sinner.’ Over time you’re shamed, beaten down, broken: The message is that nothing you do is right.”
What’s the motive? “Sheer lust for power, apparently, and money.”
Still, while most survivors are justice-driven, they’re not out for revenge. “You can’t live on hate. Most of us want to make all that horror mean something to the good. We want to make our suffering matter. We want to educate the public as to the long-term effects.”
Heartbreakingly — if understandably — many have turned their backs on God.
A class action suit filed by former students against a CoJ-influenced boarding school in Canada (now closed) resulted in a 2023 judgment of $10.875 million for negligence, battery, and the intentional infliction of mental suffering.
In July 2025, an 18-year-old former member filed a federal lawsuit in Massachusetts alleging forced child labor and human trafficking.
And in November 2025, Rock Harbor Truth launched a podcast, hosted by Zampino, called “The Cult on the Cape.”
So far she’s aired roughly 33 episodes, many of them from former members telling their deeply compelling stories. At least three of those members have written memoirs.
Bit by bit, the truth is coming to light. Could it be that people simply bearing witness will be the David that brings down the power of a multi-million-dollar high-control Goliath?
