Athol Daily News
April 10, 1985
ORLEANS, Mass. (AP) – Defectors claim a Cape Cod religious community has forced congregants to kick, slap and not speak to one another for breaking rules, but the order denied the accusations in a report published today.
John T. Sorenson [Site note: Sorensen], 32, a former member of the Community of Jesus and son of founder Judy Sorenson, reportedly told the Cape Cod Times of Hyannis that he and other members had kicked two men in the buttocks during a punishment session in the mid-1970s.
He said the men were accused of rejecting the community’s guidance.
Margaret Guyer, 59, who left the Rock Harbor community last month with her husband, Arthur, 69, told the newspaper that other members urged her to slap her husband, the Times said.
She did so, she said, although she had never slapped him before.
She said she was forced to remain silent—except to visitors—one day a week for six months when she was sent for “rebelliousness” to a Bermuda organization linked to the community.
“We do not know of any physical, emotional or threat of physical abuse,” Barbara B. Manuel, the community’s executive secretary, said in a statement reported in a Times two-part series ending today.
“No one has ever been forced to do anything in the Community of Jesus.
“Of course, it causes us concern to be misunderstood and misquoted. However, negative criticism does not make us bitter or self-defensive, nor does it veer us from the path that God is calling us to walk.”
Last Friday, the Times said, it interviewed the Guyers, Sorenson and other defectors, including several who declared they were more concerned about emotional than
physical abuse.
“There’s so much guilt,” the Rev. Steve Haig, 30, an Anglican priest who left the community five years ago. “Physical abuse at the community is the least of the problems, as far as I’m concerned.”
Sorensen claimed “an incredible amount” of emotional abuse existed at the community.
“They don’t need to do physical violence there,” he said. “They have a very sophisticated system of peer pressure and psychological pressure.”
The Times said a Cape Cod support group, including 15 people who left the community in November, has been formed to help ex-members.
The Community of Jesus was founded in the late 1960s by Cay M. Andersen and Judy H. Sorensen of Orleans, two faith healers and charismatic preachers.
The Guyers began attending community services in 1972 and lived in the community from 1978 to 1981.
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