By Denise Coffey
Cape Cod Times
Apr 29, 2026
See Community Walk for Truth organizers speak in Orleans
Community Walk for Truth organizers Daneen Law and Anne Buchs speak about why they decided to hold the April 3, 2026 event at Rock Harbor in Orleans.
[ Link to original article toward bottom of this page]
Key Points
- Former members of the Community of Jesus on Cape Cod allege they experienced abuse, including forced labor.
- A demonstration called the “Community Walk for Truth” was held to raise awareness and offer support to current members.
- A spokesman for the Community of Jesus stated the allegations are from decades ago and do not reflect the group’s current practices.
- A new nonprofit, Rock Harbor Truth, has been formed by ex-members to support survivors of spiritual abuse.
ORLEANS — Bonnie Zampino admits she was a handful in 1983 at age 13 when her parents dropped her off at the Community of Jesus compound. Her parents felt she needed discipline and that the Community would provide it, she said.
Zampino thought she would be staying for the summer and then return home. She ended up staying for three years, enduring what she described as a variety of abuse.
She talked about her life at the Community to a crowd that gathered April 3 at Rock Harbor for what organizers called a Community Walk for Truth, the first public demonstration calling attention to the religious organization’s philosophy and practices.
Zampino said she was moved from one family to another during those three years. At one point she and two other girls lived in the dark basement of the Jerusalem House, where she said she was made to listen to tapes made by Community founders Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen.
“I had to listen over and over to the mothers’ tapes about what was wrong with me,” she told walkers. “What breaks a person down is not holy.”
About 50 people had gathered in the parking lot at Rock Harbor for the walk, organized by members of an area book club after they read “Exquisite Torture” by Carrie Buddington, an ex-member of the Community of Jesus. Buddington and other ex-members came to speak with the book club in the fall of 2025. After reading the book and hearing their stories, the club members decided to hold the Walk for Truth. “The passion came from the mothers who said, ‘This was horrible,’” said book club member Anne Buchs in an interview on April 23.
In her book, Buddington alleges Community members were deprived of food and sleep, worked long hours without pay and had to endure so-called “light sessions,” in which a group of people would confront someone with their sins and tell them they needed to confess and repent.
Zampino said that mirrored her experience.
“I can’t say kids are being kept in basements because I’m not there, but I do know all the rest of my experience is summed up in these more recent experiences; forced labor, long days working, sleep disruption, being denied food, being put on discipline, being silenced,” she said.
The Times attempted to contact Community of Jesus Prioress Karen Moore but calls and emails were not returned. The Times was referred to attorney Jeffrey Robbins who is the spokesperson for the group.
Community of Jesus response: ‘It’s not what the Community is about’
Robbins said members of the community are trying to live peaceful, simple lives, based on teachings universally recognized as the teachings of Christ.
Robbins said he understands how people could have emotional reactions to things they remember happening when they were young. But responding to allegations dating back to the 1980s is difficult without knowing the context, the dates of events, or the people involved, he said.
“It doesn’t sound like appropriate conduct,” he said in an April3 interview. “We don’t know what the original founders did or did not do as a matter of firsthand knowledge. It’s not what the Community is about. Certainly not now.”
Daneen Law, an Orleans resident who organized the demonstration, said she wanted the walk to be a sign for existing Community members that there is support on the outside. She wants them to know people are there to help them should they decide to leave. Standing in the back of a pickup truck, with the statue of an angel towering above the Community’s Church of the Transfiguration behind her, Law asked walkers to spread the truth in a peaceful way.
Law has not been not associated with Community of Jesus but has lived in Orleans for many years.
“I live and work in this community,” she said. “How come this hasn’t been in the news?”
Founded in 1970. A commitment of love, service to God and others
The Cape Cod Times and other media outlets have many published stories about the Community, including abuse allegations in the 1980s, its relationship with Grenville Christian College in Canada, and more recently a lawsuit alleging forced labor, trafficking and illegal racketeering by the Community and two other nonprofits.
The Community has fought back by filing its own lawsuit. There was no forced labor, trafficking or illegal racketeering, Community lawyers claim.
According to its website, the group is an ecumenical Christian community in the Benedictine monastic tradition. About 200 professed members from different faith traditions, children and young people live as households in privately owned multifamily homes on the grounds, according to the website. Religious brothers live in a friary and religious sisters live in a convent on the grounds.
The center of the community is the 70,000 square-foot Church of the Transfiguration. The community is supported by gifts from members and friends, sales from a bookstore, the publishing and distribution of books and recorded music through Paraclete Press, and ticket sales for performances by the Gloriae Dei Cantores choir and Elements Theatre Company. Some members hold jobs outside the community.
The Community was founded in 1970. An elected superior and The Rule of Life, a 53-page compilation of principles and procedures, govern Community of Jesus members. A commitment of love and service to God, each other and the world is at the heart of their mission, according to the website.
At the April 3 walk: Ken McCormick
Ken McCormick said his parents were followers of founders Andersen and Sorensen in the 1960s. He was a teenager when his parents sent him to Orleans. They thought it would do him good, he said.
“I needed to learn how to obey, have my will broken so they sent me there,” he said. “I lived in the basement with three other guys. You don’t assume you have right to live with your family.”
He hasn’t had contact with anyone in the Community since the 1980s, but he’s heard stories. He’s read about the Community. He said he came to the walk to learn more.
“I just know the amount of time and energy I’ve dedicated to be a whole person after the broken person they tried to make me,” he said during the walk. “I feel its important to do something. Let’s be a resource to people who want to leave.”
A new nonprofit, Rock Harbor Truth
Zampino is now the director of communications and outreach for [Rock Harbor Truth https://rockharbortruth.org/], a nonprofit founded in 2025 by people who were once members of the Community. Its mission is to support survivors of alleged spiritual abuse, coercive control, and institutional exploitation through advocacy, education, storytelling, and access to care, according to the website.
Shawn DeLude, former owner of Nauset Disposal, is the president of the nonprofit. DeLude was sent to Grenville Christian College for three years but ran away when he was 15 years old.
In 2020, an Ontario court ruled that the college had engaged in decades of abuse nearly 50 years earlier. The Community of Jesus was not named in the suit, but Judge Janet Leiper of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice wrote, “I have concluded that the evidence of maltreatment and the varieties of abuse perpetrated on students’ bodies and minds in the name of the (Community of Jesus) values of submission and obedience was class-wide and decades-wide.”
“I knew there were a lot of horrible things that happened to me and others,” DeLude told the walkers. “For the last 40 years I’ve been outspoken about my abuses and those I witnessed.”
With Rock Harbor Truth, DeLude is trying to create an environment for people who want to get out of the Community. The nonprofit is working on building relationships with health and legal organizations. DeLude wants to raise money to help members leave the community. He is working with state legislators to change the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. He wants to eliminate the state’s charitable immunity cap of $20,000 for child sexual abuse.
Community of Jesus spokesman Robbins claims Grenville was totally separate from Community of Jesus, was in a different country, wasn’t named as a defendant in the lawsuit, and was not sued.
“There was no claim against the Community of Jesus, no finding against the Community, no finding that employees or representatives of the Community ever engaged in misconduct and no claim that any wrongful conduct ever took place at the Community” — those being the most significant facts of the matter, he said in a statement to the Times in 2020 after the decision was released.
An author’s story: Buddington
Buddington left the Community of Jesus after her husband and three children left. She’d lived there for 40 years, she said in an interview on April 8. In those later years, she was very unhappy. Three times she asked for a leave of absence and three times she was denied, she said. After her third request, Buddington recalled that she was told to leave the Community. She was given a small suitcase, $1,000, and a bus ticket to South Station in Boston, according to her recollection.
Robbins said members who join as religious sisters and brothers take vows of poverty, volunteering to own no property and to live from the generosity of others. At the end, Buddington said she was asked to leave. Robbins disputed that.
In an April 17 email, he wrote “she made the decision to leave the Community, not the other way around. She did receive various things that she requested, as well as funds. I am unaware of any claim by her that she was not afforded everything she asked for.”
“At 63 years old, 20 years a vowed sister, they felt no other obligation than to give me $1,000,” Buddington said. “A thousand dollars! After a life lived there. I had no assets; I had no savings. I had nothing.”
“I struggled,” she said. “It took years to rebuild my life.But over the years my life has done nothing but get better.”
https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/news/2026/04/29/community-jesus-orleans-abuse-rally/89389808007
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