by Our Readers
January 21, 2026
‘A Childhood of Abuse’
To the editor:
In your Sept. 18, 2025 article “14 Ex-Residents Detail Coercion at Orleans Commune” about the Community of Jesus (CoJ), lawyer Jeffrey Robbins says, “The Community does not intend to dignify allegations of this sort, nor does it intend to be ‘interrogated’ about its religious faith and 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.”
Would the CoJ dignify allegations from 20 of us who were born, brought up, lived, or worked in the community and its affiliate, Grenville Christian College, and who stand in support of Oliver Ortolani and his accusations of abuse?
Robbins mentions the principles of the CoJ. Here are the community’s principles as written in its Book of Vows: “Living in the Light, Admonish, Chastise, Conversion, Correct, Discipline, Sanctify, Submission, and ‘Yieldedness.’ ” Adults in the CoJ are “vowed” members. If the parents have vowed obedience to these principles at all costs, what might life be like for the children?
Each of us can attest to a childhood of abuse: “light sessions,” punishing work, separation from friends and family, days of forced silence, being called from bed for meetings of “admonishment” in the chapel. We suffered public humiliation for the smallest of acts, such as coughing during a meeting. Our earliest memories are ones of trauma.
Robbins calls this “religious freedom.” It is time to stop justifying child abuse so adults can “worship.” We have spent decades trying to free ourselves from the authoritarian dogma that the CoJ calls “religion.” Religious freedom ends where abuse begins.
We are now a community of survivors willing to speak of abuses that started the day the Community of Jesus began.
Mel McDaniel
Harleysville, Pa.
The writer lived at the Community of Jesus in Orleans from 1995 to 1997 and visited annually for 20 years before that while living at Grenville Christian College, its Canadian affiliate.
https://provincetownindependent.org/opinion/2026/01/21/letters-january-22-2026/
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