For Former Community Of Jesus Members, Suit Allegations Ring True

ORLEANS – Kimberly Nash remembers being in high school and driving through the Community of Jesus compound. It had been a few years since she and her family severed ties with the Community, but the memories of her time there were still fresh.

 “I would get in my car and just drive through the compound, because it wasn’t gated, and I would just curse the place, because I was just so angry at them and how destructive they were to me,” said Nash, who now lives with her family in Southern California.

 Nash is one of several Community members who shared their stories of life inside the Orleans-based religious community with The Chronicle in the wake of a federal lawsuit filed last month that alleges the Community used child labor and trafficking to help build its performing arts center in Brewster.

 The civil suit, filed by former Community resident Oliver Ortolani in U.S. District Court in Boston, alleges that children were forced to perform hard labor constructing the center without pay, and that they were verbally and sometimes physically abused if they resisted or complained. It also details Community members’ alleged efforts to disguise their labor as educational, and their attempts to hide child workers from government inspectors. 

 Those interviewed by The Chronicle said that the allegations brought forth in the suit align with the things they experienced as children in the community.

 “This suit is verbatim of [any former member’s] testimony of their experience, and not one single member will tell you differently,” said Shawn DeLude, who left the Community when he was 15 and has lived in Orleans since then.

 Born in Ohio, Nash moved when she was young to the Cape, settling primarily in Dennis. She said it was through her maternal grandmother, who had close ties with the Community’s founders, Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen, that her family became involved with the Community. 

 “I knew them,” she said of the late founders. “We actually would make them gifts and give them to them.”

 Nash’s family lived outside of the Community’s Orleans compound, but she recalled time spent as a child in the Community’s “summer camp,” where children were separated into work groups and placed together in homes in the Community.

“It was a horrific environment,” she said. “We were slaves there. Summer camp was to go and work on the grounds and weed in the gardens.”

 Nash attested to other things alleged in Ortolani’s lawsuit, from instances of intense interrogation and verbal punishment from Community leaders to the practice of separating children from their families to live with other Community members. All of this was done, she said, in an effort to assert control over the Community’s members.

 “People will just go there for church, but they prey on the weak,” she said. “So if you’re broken, if you’re weak, they prey on you. Then you get sucked in, and that’s when the abuse begins.”

 But Nash’s family and others living outside of the compound began questioning the Community’s practices, and ultimately made the decision to distance themselves from the organization. Nash was in the sixth grade when her family left, she recalled.

 “Everybody was very scared,” she said. “I remember my mother saying, ‘this could come with a lot of repercussions.’” Nash said her mother eventually went as far as to drive up to Grenville Christian College, a religious boarding school in Ontario, Canada, with close ties to the Community, to help free two Community members that had been sent there and return them to the Cape. 

DeLude said his family first got involved with the Community upon relocating to the Lower Cape from their native Connecticut.

 “Our folks were themselves seeking to find themselves in religion and found other couples that were of similar, like-minded behaviors and experiences,” DeLude said. “Somehow that group got infiltrated, and next thing you know we started attending events at the Community.”

 DeLude said for children, life in the Community outside of school is consumed by work. For boys, that includes moving rock and sand piles, cutting down trees and “heavy gardening and intensive landscaping.” During the winter, snow days were spent hand-shoveling driveways and walkways throughout the community. No one was exempt, he said.

“They were able to find work for everyone,” he said.

Both Nash and DeLude said children were punished verbally and sometimes physically for even minor transgressions. Nash recalled being disciplined one day during summer camp for eating a piece of fruit while walking on the compound. 

 “They play the mind well, let’s just put it that way,” she said. “They know the mind. They know how people think, they know how people process, and they play it well.”

 “Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone who has faith in God, a belief in following what God wants for them and being a religious or Christian person, so to speak,” DeLude said. “You want to listen to God. Now what you have is higher powers, people within the Community, the hierarchy, telling you that they speak through God, that they hear God’s word. And they command you to do his will. And through your fear of disobeying God or not doing something holy, you listen to whatever they say.”

The lawsuit alleges that the Community has zero tolerance for disobedience, and the penalties for any form of resistance can be severe, said Bonnie Zampino, another former member who lived in the Community during the 1980s. She said that during her first summer there, she was locked in the basement of the home she was staying in for extended periods, being allowed out only for meals and services.

Zampino, who spent three years living in the community, said the allegations set forth in the federal lawsuit “absolutely 100 percent” reflect her experiences.

“I would say that those three years left a pretty big scar on my life,” she said.

Zampino’s parents moved from Florida to Maryland, where her father, an episcopal minister, purchased land on which to build his own religious community. She said her father had help in that endeavor from members of the Community of Jesus. In exchange, she said, she was sent to live with the Community in Orleans.

Like Nash and DeLude, Zampino, who now lives in West Virginia, spoke of a domineering culture in the Community that left little time for anything but school and work. She recalled working in the Community’s vegetable garden and making stained glass ornaments and art, which she said were then sold. 

 “We were performing work for free that was benefiting them,” she said.

 Even seemingly lighter work, such as participating in band or choir, involved strenuous practice, said Zampino, who was a member of the choir. For children who grew up in the Community, the regimented way of life was highly normalized.

 “It was just what you did,” she said. “You get back from school and you get assigned to your work group. You get done with that, have dinner and then you do something else. Then you’d have choir practice and you’d have study hall and you’d go to compline. Then they’d wake you up at one or two or three to go to the chapel and pray for an hour, and the nightwatchman would come and get you. You’re a kid and this is how you live.”

 Zampino’s parents brought her back to live with them once their community was up and running, but she said the reunion was short lived. She was sent back to the Orleans Community in 11th grade, and refused to stay when told she would be staying there for her senior year.

 “So they dropped me off at the homeless shelter in the town that we lived,” she said.

 DeLude said the beginning of the end of his time in the Community came when he was caught gathering training tapes and other materials that he planned to use to “expose” the Community. He was sent to school in Grenville, and eventually was told by the Community that they intended to keep him there instead of bringing him back to Orleans.

“They didn’t want me to come home, so I ran away,” he said. 

After hitchhiking back to his family’s home in Orleans, DeLude said his father gave him an ultimatum of either returning to Grenville or staying away from home for good. He emancipated himself from his family, staying with friends until he got on his feet.

 Nash said for many former members, the impacts of their time in the Community linger long after they leave. Her mother, who still lives on the Cape, is still impacted by her time in the Community, she said. Other former members she knows struggled with addiction, she said.

 “You start to question yourself. You start to wonder ‘What was truth? What is truth? What is a lie?’” she said.

 Former members say that the allegations brought forth in the federal lawsuit are not a surprise to many in the broader community. In 2024, the Community came under scrutiny after a former member, Aaron Bushnell, recorded himself yelling “Free Palestine” after lighting himself on fire outside of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. In the video, Bushnell, an active duty airman in the U.S. Air Force who briefly attended Nauset Regional High School, called the act “an extreme act of protest” and said he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” He died soon after in a D.C. area hospital.

Others have made efforts to expose and bring attention to the alleged abuses occurring within the Community. On Facebook, a group called Rock Harbor Truth describes its mission as being “specific to persons that want to leave the Community of Jesus, those that want to help them, and the truth about it.” The group has over 1,000 followers.

DeLude described Rock Harbor Truth and its website, RockHarborTruth.com, as “one-stop shopping” for people who want to learn about what happens in the Community. While he said he’s familiar with the group and website, he would not comment on what involvement, if any, he has in its efforts.

Despite attempts to bring the things alleged to be happening within the Community to light, accountability continues to skirt the Community due to its considerable wealth and influence, former members say.

 “The Community of Jesus is too strong,” DeLude said. “It has influence on the town. When you have four or five hundred people living in one place that shop and buy items in town, no businesses will speak up for fear of losing that business.”

 “This has been public for years and years and years,” Nash said. “They have money, and money talks. What do you think our government does? They just pay people off to shut up. And that’s exactly what this does.”

 Zampino said at one point, she and a group of other former members tried to talk to local police about alleged sexual abuse that had occurred in the Community, “but it had been too long.” She said for many, the statute of limitations on alleged offenses pass by the time victims can bring themselves to come forward with their experiences.

 Today, Nash works as a special education teacher about 90 minutes outside of San Diego. She’s married with two grown daughters, one who works in a law office and another who is a mechanical engineer.

“My kids are off living their own lives,” she said. “They’re great kids. They’re amazing kids. They have tattoos. It’s like, ‘you can grow up and be your own person,’ and I didn’t grow up with that mindset.”

But while many have built lives for themselves beyond their time in the Community, DeLude said inside the compound overlooking Rock Harbor, the behavior and practices that have been alleged for decades continue. 

“This is what goes on within the walls,” he said. “So while you’re down there watching the sunset or you’re out on a fishing boat or out with your family on the beach, behind you this is taking place. As we speak, this is going on.”

Reached by phone Monday, Jeff Robbins, the attorney representing the Community in the federal suit, called the allegations made by former members “the same old recycled story,” and said that the allegations have no bearing on the impending civil case. 

Procedurally, Robbins said that official service of the lawsuit is in process, and that he anticipates there will be a “filing and response” in early December.

Calls made to the Community’s prioress, Karen Moore, for comment were not returned as of press time.