Dozens of women who attended a high school run by the disgraced Legion ofChrist religious order have urged the Vatican to close the program, saying thepsychological abuse they endured trying to live like teenage nuns led tomultiple cases of anorexia, stress-induced migraines, depression and evensuicidal thoughts.
The women sent a letter this weekend to the pope's envoy running the Legion todenounce the manipulation, deception and disrespect they say they suffered atthe hands of counselors barely older than themselves at the Rhode Islandschool. For some, the trauma required years of psychological therapy that costthem tens of thousands of dollars.
A copy of the letter was provided to The Associated Press by the letter's 77signatories, a dozen of whom agreed to be interviewed about their personalproblems for the sake of warning parents against sending their children to theprogram's schools in the U.S., Mexico and Spain.
"I have many defining and traumatic memories that I believe epitomize thesystematic breakdown of the person" in the school, Mary told TheAssociated Press in an email exchange. She developed anorexia after joining in1998, weighed less than 85 pounds when she left and dropped to 68 pounds beforebeginning to recover at home. "The feelings of worthlessness, shame andisolation that are associated with those memories are still vivid andshocking."
Mary, who asked that her last name not be used, blamed her eating disorder onacute loneliness — girls were prevented from making close friends or confidingin their families — and the tremendous pressure she felt as a 16-year-old toperfectly obey the strictest rules dictating how she should walk, sit, pray andeat.
It's the latest blow to the troubled, cult-like Legion, which was discreditedin 2009 when it revealed that its founder was a pedophile and drug addict whofathered three children. The Legion suffered subsequent credibility problemsfollowing its recent admission that its most famous priest had fathered a childand the current Legion superior covered it up for years.
The Legion saga is all the more grave because its late founder, the Rev.Marcial Maciel, had been held up as a living saint by his followers and a modelof holiness by Pope John Paul II because of his ability to recruit men andmoney to the priesthood, even though the Vatican knew for decades that he hadsexually abused his seminarians.
Pope Benedict XVI took over the Mexico-based order in 2010 and appointed envoyCardinal Velasio De Paolis to oversee a whole-scale reform of the Legion andits lay branch Regnum Christi. But the reform hasn't progressed smoothly, withdefections from disillusioned members and criticism that some superiors remainlocked in their old ways.
The all-girl Immaculate Conception Academy, located in Wakefield, Rhode Islandopened two decades ago to serve as a feeder program for the Legion's femaleconsecrated branch, where more than 700 women around the world live like nunsmaking promises of poverty, chastity and obedience, teaching in Legion-runschools and running youth programs.
Because of dwindling enrollment — 14 seniors graduated last month — the schoolrecently merged with a Legion-run school in Michigan; in Mexico two programsmerged into one that produced 10 graduates this year.
The school's current director said things have changed dramatically recentlyand many of the spiritual and psychological abuses corrected. But sheacknowledged the harm done, apologized for the women's suffering and asked forforgiveness.
"For any errors made by our order in the past, we do apologize," saiddirector Margarita Martinez. "We are sorry these young women have sufferedand been harmed in any way."
In an email response to AP, Martinez noted that not all students experiencedthe same "level of negativity" as those who wrote the letter, andthat regardless the movement was listening to everyone's experiences as itundergoes a process of Vatican-mandated reform.
Megan Coelho, 30, recalled how pairs of consecrated women would visit herregularly as a child in northern California where she was homeschooled; theytold her tales of the wonderful high school in Rhode Island where she mightfind a vocation and grow closer to God. Coelho, who wanted to be a nun, lefthome when she was 14 to join.
By junior year, the occasional migraines she had suffered became frequent anddebilitating as pressure to conform to the rules and highly structured scheduleincreased. The migraines would paralyze one side of her body, making hercollapse at times. She developed facial tics. Her eyesight became blurry.
"As sweet as they (her consecrated directors) were I was counseled not totell my parents about it because then my parents would take me home," shesaid, referring to the movement's goal of keeping members at almost any cost."No one contacted my family. Nobody took me to the ER or got me a doctor'sappointment."
Eventually, Coelho got so sick she returned home, and the migraines stopped.Feeling better she returned, only to suffer a migraine her first day back. Sheleft for good six months before graduation.
Coehlo's story is the first on a blog she and other former pre-candidates, asthe girls were known, started this past spring, a seemingly catharticexperience since many had never shared their pain with their onetimeclassmates. The blog, www.49weeks.blogspot.com , is an astonishing read —testimony of a twisted and cruel methodology applied to girls at their mostvulnerable age, when even under normal circumstances girls are prone toself-esteem issues, peer pressure and bouts of depression.
Instead of finding support from friends and family, these teenagers wereisolated from their families 49 weeks a year, told to unquestioningly trusttheir spiritual directors and confide only in them. Obedience to the minutestof rules, they were taught, reflected their acceptance of God's will.
They write about their feelings of inadequacy, humiliation and loneliness, andof idolizing their smiling consecrated counselors. They paint the depths oftheir depression when seemingly overnight they were told they didn't have avocation and should go home.
"Looking back, I was suicidal," said Sarita Duffy, now a 28-year-oldmother of three in Fort Cambpbell, Kentucky. "I never took a bottle ofpills or slit my wrists, but I was fully content with the possibility of neverwaking up again."
In a phone interview, Duffy said she equated being rejected by the movementwith being rejected by God, and lost her Catholic faith for years as a result.She acknowledged she can't blame the movement for all her problems but said the"zero self-worth" she felt after being rejected precipitated herdescent into depression and rebellion.
"Why do you hate me God? I hate me," Duffy wrote in her journal onJune 10, 2002, four years after she entered as a freshman and about a weekbefore she received the final "no" to work in the movement'smissionary program.
One of the blog entries was written by Lourdes Martinez, a former counselor orformator at the school from 2000-2005. She admitted that she and herconsecrated colleagues would classify the girls into potential leaders,"normals" and those who should be sent home. This would enable the directorsand counselors under them to manipulate the girls and prey on theirvulnerabilities, giving special attention to those they wanted to keep aspotential consecrated leaders and devise strategies to get rid of those theywanted to send home, she said.
Often, information from the weekly reports written about each girl'sdevelopment would be shared with the priests who heard her confession — astriking violation of privacy. The priests could then reinforce the directors'decisions in confession with the girls, she said.
"So she's hearing this from everyone and thinks it's the Holy Spirittalking. And we would say 'Yes, of course,'" Martinez told the AP in aphone interview from Monterrey, Mexico.
Martinez described an almost "Lord of the Flies"-like situation inwhich the counselors were barely older than the girls under their care, with noexperience in adolescent development. The counselors themselves lived with thefear that they must obey the rules and their superiors or risk violating God'swill.
Martinez signed the letter to De Paolis because she wanted to show solidaritywith those who suffered. But she stressed that she believes the reform willwork because she knows and trusts the new leadership and is working with themto improve.
Not everyone suffered so much, and not everyone has joined the call to closethe program; of the 270-odd people on a closed Facebook group that served asthe basis for the blog, 77 signed the letter.
And by many indications, things have changed dramatically for the better at theschool, with girls allowed more time with families and much less emphasis onsticking to the rules.
"People who are going into the pre-candidacy and are starting out will notfind the same experience as those people did," said Sasha Jurchak, 25, wholeft consecrated life in May because she simply decided it wasn't for her — notbecause of any problem with the program.
In an interview, she noted that De Paolis has instituted new regulations thatforbid consecrating girls as young as 18 after a six-week candidacy program.The new rules require a years-long process of assessment similar to that oftraditional religious orders. Recruitment is no longer the primary aim, shesaid. The girls' mail is no longer screened and they have more free time. Girlscan wear shorts and pants for athletic activities instead of long skirts andstockings.
Margarita Martinez, the school director, said other changes include betterreflection from counselors on when to invoke "God's will" inrequiring something of the girls.
She disputed claims that the school failed to provide adequate medical care forsick girls, saying the policy has always been to notify parents and get propercare.
Asked if Regnum Christi was prepared to provide financial assistance to women whoneeded psychological counseling when they left, she said each case would needto be considered individually.
"The reform process has taken time. It has been a learning process foreveryone involved. And we still have a long way to go," she wrote."But I strongly believe we are moving in the right direction, with theHoly Spirit as our guide."
The letter to De Paolis from alumni said it's too risky to wait and see how itall turns out.
"Today's girls deserve more than to be guinea pigs during the experimentalstages of the reform process which may or may not prove in the end to beauthentic," it concluded.