On a warm day in August, Bonnie Zampino spoke to a small crowd gathered on the Orleans Village Green detailing what she says was abuse she suffered at a nearby religious community.
The 57-year-old woman had traveled from West Virginia to tell her story — again — about growing up at the Community of Jesus, where she said she spent three years as a young teen.
"I was kept in a basement, denied food, forced to work without pay, denied sleep, moved multiple times," she said, her hands shaking but her voice strong. She said she was "subjected to virginity exams and constantly told that I was a horrible sinner who would never be able to be good enough for even God to love."
Zampino is one of dozens of former residents now speaking out against this close-knit Christian community overlooking Cape Cod Bay — a group of an estimated 275 people living in homes surrounding a towering church and monastery. Allegations include claims that residents were physically, mentally and sexually abused, forced to work and removed from their parents at a young age, according to a year-long investigation by CAI.
Though stories have been surfacing for decades, a high-profile suicide death of a former resident in 2024 has spurred an increasing number of people to come forward to detail what they say happened to them. The 25-year-old U.S. Airman, Aaron Bushnell, set himself on fire to protest the war in Gaza in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Former residents of the group said when they read about Bushnell's death, they saw a story beneath the surface — a person struggling with his mental health after growing up in a place they say discourages family bonding and self love.
This prompted former residents, including Zampino, to reach out to each other to talk about their time in the commune. They started a nonprofit called Rock Harbor Truth to raise awareness about their concerns that current residents may be subject to the same abuses they said they endured.
CAI talked to 17 former residents for this story, 15 of whom spoke on the record. Many of their concerns are borne out in court records. One former resident filed a civil lawsuit in 2025 claiming he was a victim of labor trafficking. In 2020, a Canadian judge ruled in favor of a group of students who claimed they were victims of abuse in a boarding school in Ontario with links to the religious organization. Court records include repeated mentions of the Canadian school's connections to the Community of Jesus, including allegations that community founders trained school staff on its practices that contributed to abuse.
Jeffrey Robbins, longtime attorney and spokesperson for the Orleans group, denies any wrongdoing. He said allegations about what happened decades ago "were never verified and cannot be verified.'' He said claims of abuse are made "almost always anonymously, and/or with extremely vague details, if any."
Robbins said the Community of Jesus had no established ties to the Canadian school, the now-closed Grenville Christian College. He said some children and parents lived apart at the Community of Jesus on some occasions, for personal reasons. The organization is fighting the current lawsuit in court.
The Cape Cod religious community declined to offer any current residents to speak about their experiences. Robbins said this is because, "with all due respect to journalism, these are private matters. Nobody should be forced to answer questions about religious beliefs. It's simply un-American."
While former residents told CAI they have some fond memories of living in the community, including doing visual art and playing musical instruments, they worry the problems are too troubling to ignore.
Shawn DeLude, who lives on Cape Cod, is a former community resident who serves as president of Rock Harbor Truth. Now 55, DeLude says he struggled with homelessness after leaving the community at age 16. He's working on raising funds and helping others with his experience who have nowhere to go.
"The mental abuse, the physical abuse, the intense labor and intense indoctrination methods they had were almost normalized," he told CAI.
At a June event for Rock Harbor Truth, he said the organization's work is "all about bringing information and survivor stories to the front so people can learn about what's going on, what has gone on, within the Community of Jesus."
Origin story: the 'Mothers'
The Community of Jesus was founded by two women named Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen, who met at the Episcopal Church in Orleans in 1958, according to the group's website.
The women, now deceased, formed a bond after Sorensen's prayer cured Andersen's chronic illness, according to the site. They spoke at churches and prayer groups along the East Coast and gained a following who joined them in Orleans.
The women eventually moved their families together. They were called Mother Cay and Mother Judy, according to a book published by the Community of Jesus. Many simply referred to the pair as "the Mothers."
But critics detail a darker story, where the women were abusive, urged residents to take vows of celibacy and shamed them for thoughts of sex.
Ken McCormick, 70, who now lives in the Berkshires, said Andersen and Sorensen tore apart his family after his mother had spent time with them at one of their religious retreats.
He said the women stayed at his parents' house in Connecticut when they were preaching at nearby churches. His parents would give up their bedroom for the women to share when they visited, he said.
He said his parents "really believed that they [the Mothers] had a direct line to God, that God could speak to and through them."
When McCormick's family followed the women to Orleans, it wasn't what his parents expected, he said. His siblings were separated from the rest of the family. He said his mother was "working her fingers to the bone" until the family left about a year later.
Before then, McCormick said Andersen and Sorensen shamed him about his sexuality — coaxing him into an admission of masturbation — when he was 16. Later he said he was shocked to read in a newspaper article in the 1980s that the women were allegedly having an affair. McCormick now can't remember which story he read, although several surfaced at that time.
"To have to find out that they … had a sapphic existence that no one knew about blew my mind," he said.
Two adult children of the two founders also told CAI about their concerns about the two women's treatment of residents.
John Sorensen, Judy's 73-year-old son, told CAI he spent several years after boarding school at the commune.
"For a while it seemed nice," he said. "It was a group of Christian people that actually acted Christian and tried to live out their faith in honesty, and supported each other."
But he increasingly grew concerned about strict discipline for adults and children. When he left, he said he was ostracized. He said he later reconnected with his mother in the 1990s after Andersen died, where he learned his mother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
"She began to develop some insight once she started her psychiatric treatment," he said. "She'd realized that she acted in ways raising the kids and in the commune inappropriately and then treated people badly."
Peter Andersen, 80, who lives in Europe, also told a reporter in a 2007 article in the Canadian publication The Globe and Mail that his mother and Sorensen were in a sexual relationship. Andersen declined a formal interview with CAI, writing that he no longer gave interviews about his mother.
"I feel that at some point telling the story should be taken on and examined," he wrote to CAI. "If for no other reason than to give the hundreds or perhaps thousands of victims of my mother's abuse an understanding of the aetiology of it all."
/ Gilda Geist/CAI
Claims of abuse
Zampino said she was a victim of sex abuse at the commune where she lived for three years starting at age 13.
She said the organization's doctor, William Velie, performed a gloveless vaginal exam on her when she was a minor in an attempt to check her virginity, something she said has left her with lifelong trauma.
"I can't get my annual well-woman exam without being drugged because of the abuse that was done in the community's doctor's office," Zampino said. "This is the case for many of us, and we know that not going could mean death, and that's still not enough to overcome the absolute panic and shame we feel."
Another woman, who declined to provide her name to protect her privacy, told CAI that she too was sent to Velie for a "virginity exam." She said she was brought in after being caught experimenting with a boy, considered a sin by the community.
It was "basically like a gynecological exam but the doctor would sort of yell at you and tell you how horrible you were while he didn't wear gloves and there was nobody on standby in the room and he would check out your genitals to see if you had had sex," she said. "Many, many girls were subject to that."
Velie died in 2021 at the age 89. According to his obituary, he spent more than 35 years at the Community of Jesus. Robbins told CAI last week he had never heard of Velie or the exams.
Zampino said she tried to report her experience to Orleans police around 2005, but was told it was too late for her to seek legal recourse due to the statute of limitations.
Zampino is now trying to change state law. She joined advocates in a demonstration outside the State House in July to show their support for a Massachusetts bill that would allow survivors of child sex abuse to take legal action for two years following the bill becoming law.
Kelly Guagenty, a partner with the Justice Law Collaborative, is helping Zampino and others push forward the legislation.
"The science tells us that survivors of child sexual abuse often take decades to disclose," she said. "To deny those survivors access to the courts based on an arbitrary statute of limitations — it's unfair."
Zampino also is hoping to protect other young people still living at the Community of Jesus. The Orleans group's website features a video claiming a population of 275 members, including 140 adults, 25 brothers, 60 sisters and 50 youth.
Zampino, who is the director of communication and outreach for Rock Harbor Truth, hosts a podcast for the nonprofit called "The Cult on the Cape," where she interviews former residents. She said she started as a volunteer and became a paid employee last year.
"We've really just kind of honed our mission to protecting children from institutional abuse, educating the public about coercive control groups and truth-telling from survivors of high control groups," Zampino said. As the podcast continued, she said, "survivors and others kind of started coming out of the woodwork."
Separating families
Emily MacMillan says she survived a serious case of meningitis as a baby in 1976. The Connecticut woman, now 50, said her parents believed the cure had been the prayers of people living at the Community of Jesus.
Her parents picked up everything and moved the family of four from Boston to Orleans, she said.
MacMillan described her experience at the commune as horrific: She said she was whipped and hit by other residents. At the age of eight, she said Community of Jesus leaders separated her from her parents and placed her with other adults to enforce the group's values of discipline and obedience.
"I lived in other people's homes the majority of my childhood, and when I wasn't living with my parents, they didn't necessarily tell me why or where they went," MacMillan said. "I was incredibly traumatized from that."
Robbins denied that family separation is a practice. He said there have been cases in which parents in the community have chosen to have their children live outside their homes, but he didn't specify how many.
Ten former residents told CAI their stories of separation from parents, siblings or both.
Among them, Shawn and his brother Tim DeLude said they were separated as children when their parents moved to the commune in the early 1980s.
Tim DeLude, who now lives in Harwich, said he was a toddler when his older brother left the house.
He said the separation was aligned with community beliefs that a parent's love for their children was "idolatrous," getting in the way of their relationship with God. Parents who loved their children too much couldn't discipline them properly, they said.
"Idolatry was this really evil thing, and that's part of why they would move kids away from their parents,'' he said. "Parents are idolatrous in that unconditional love with kids, and so other people are going to raise their kids better because they're not going to be clouded by this unconditional love."
Another story of separation appears in a lawsuit in 2025 filed against the Community of Jesus by a former resident, Oliver Ortolani.
Ortolani claims in the suit that he lived in an estimated 20 different homes before the age of 16.
He also says he and other boys were denied a proper education and forced into manual labor — working nine to 16 hours a day, unpaid, for nearly two years, between 2019 and 2020, to build a performing arts center in Brewster.
The Community of Jesus denies the child labor claims, describing the work as "volunteer" and the classes as home schooling. A judge rejected the community's efforts to dismiss the claims in June.
Organizers filed a countersuit claiming even if any of Ortolani's claims of abuse were true it was his parents' fault, because they organized and oversaw the program. The lawsuit includes copies of release forms that appear to be signed by Ortolani's parents, giving permission for their son to participate in the work and pledging not to file any legal claims. That case has been consolidated into the original legal suit against the Community of Jesus.
Ortolani and his parents, all three of whom live in Idaho, could not be reached for comment. The case is now winding its way through the courts.
Canadian connection
Several former residents said they were sent to a Canadian boarding school that has made headlines for allegations of sexual, physical and emotional abuse.
Shawn DeLude said he felt from a young age that the practices at the Community of Jesus were wrong, and he had been collecting evidence in hopes of one day exposing the group's alleged transgressions.
Instead, he said he was thwarted after an adult found his stash of evidence and as punishment, he was sent away at the age of 15 to Grenville Christian College in Ontario, which closed in 2007.
At Grenville, DeLude said he was "placed on discipline." This meant he lived in staff quarters instead of student dorms, he was not allowed to speak, and no one was allowed to speak to him, he said.
DeLude said he ran away from the school, and when his parents wouldn't take him back, he sought the help of a former guidance counselor who helped him emancipate from his parents at 15 years old.
"In hindsight, I wish the guidance counselor or the lawyer I talked to had thought of bringing charges," he told CAI in a phone interview. "Unfortunately, for many of the survivors, myself included, we've run out of time and we've told our stories. No one's done anything about it."
The Canadian school became the focus of a class action lawsuit filed in 2008 by students who claimed they were abused at the institution. A judge ruled in their favor in 2020 in a ruling that linked the school in multiple ways to the Community of Jesus and Sorensen and Andersen.
Robbins denied that the Community of Jesus has any relationship with the Canadian school.
Although the Community of Jesus was not a defendant in the case, Judge Janet Leiper of the Ontario Superior Court wrote in her decision that the group's influence on the school was a major driver of the abuse. The organization and its founders are mentioned more than 50 times in the judge's decision.
"The evidence of maltreatment and the varieties of abuse perpetrated on students' bodies and minds in the name of the COJ [Community of Jesus] values of submission and obedience was class-wide and decades-wide," she wrote in the court decision.
The judge cited testimony from former Grenville staff, who said staff who joined the Community of Jesus paid a portion of their salaries to the group. She also wrote a list of disciplinary actions that were used for adults at Grenville and in Orleans, including being assigned "exhausting" physical activity, deprived of privacy for months, ordered to gain weight and berated in front of other people.
The judge also detailed how the school adopted the Orleans community's way of life after the founders visited. This included principals emphasizing obedience and openness, which involved what were called "light sessions," also common at the Community of Jesus, former community residents say.
These sessions involved groups of people ganging up on one person, shouting at them about their perceived infractions, often until they broke down crying and confessed, according to CAI interviews.
Emily MacMillan, a former Community of Jesus resident, said she too went to Grenville. She said while she was there she was disciplined by being made to work without pay, including once where she had to scrub the kitchen floor with a toothbrush while she was supposed to be recovering from oral surgery.
MacMillan said she was frequently berated and called names by staff after being caught kissing a boy. She said a school leader would call her into his office and yell at her, saying if she left she would end up on the street as a sex worker. He would then hug her and touch her "inappropriately," she said.
MacMillan said she ran away from Grenville at age 17 because she couldn't take the alleged abuse any longer. She said she was part of the class action lawsuit and received a payout in December of about $22,000 in Canadian dollars, or about $16,000 in U.S. currency.
MacMillan said the Community of Jesus was the reason she went to Grenville in the first place, and two institutions were "very interconnected." She recalled seeing pictures of Andersen and Sorensen at Grenville.
"I wasn't asked per se anything about the Community [of Jesus], but … they absolutely 110% were involved," she said.
'What are the facts?'
Organizers with Rock Harbor Truth say they worry about other young people growing up in the community that they believe harmed them.
Every few months, they hold demonstrations in the parking lot just outside the compound grounds, carrying signs with phrases like, "Compassion over control," and "We are here for you."
Local legal officials either declined to comment about protesters' concerns or said they had no information that would cause them to take immediate action.
In April, Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois attended one of the demonstrations.
"I'm just here in support and not really making any statements," he told CAI at the event.
A spokesperson for the Cape and Islands District Attorney's office later told CAI they couldn't comment.
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families did not return multiple requests for interviews. Orleans police records show two instances — one in 2013 and one in 2016 — where DCF staff called Orleans police to report allegations of child neglect at properties owned by Community of Jesus residents.
The heavily redacted records do not show any findings of abuse or neglect, but some of the details overlap with what other former residents said happened to them as children. For example, the incident in 2013 involved a report to police that children were allegedly "routinely denied food and locked in the basement." Zampino said the same thing happened to her.
Orleans Police Chief Scott MacDonald said he was aware of the allegations against the Community of Jesus, but the department is still untangling claims. He encouraged those with information to report it to the police department.
"What are the facts? What is true? What is not?" he said. "That's a difficult process for us to go through and try to vet through all of that information."
On the Orleans Village Green in August, Zampino said she was proud of the work she and others are doing to get the word out.
She said she had connected and reconnected with other former residents — helping to make her feel less alone. She's hopeful for change.
"Rock Harbor Truth and the many concerned citizens who have rallied around this cause will absolutely make it easier for the next person to leave," she said. "If someone inside hears us today, I want them to know there is life after leaving."
This story was reported by CAI reporter Gilda Geist and edited by GBH investigative editor Jenifer McKim. Community of Jesus and some of their affiliate organizations are underwriters for CAI.
Copyright 2026 GBH News Boston