Boston Herald
Gayle Fee
Sunday, July 28, 1985
PLUMP and grandmotherly with quick smiles and sharp wits, Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen don’t look like the tyrannical leaders of an autocratic religious cult ex-members of the Community of Jesus describe.
As she bustles through the community compound, proudly showing the rooms crammed with heirlooms, the antique wood-burning stoves, the perfect flower arrangements, Sorensen could be any Cape Cod housewife guiding visitors through her home.
“This is a picture of Cay and I with former Anglican Bishop Genders at the Cathedral in Bermuda,” she says chattily, stopping in front of a massive oil painting hanging in a hallway outside the chapel.
“One of our favorite things was to have the healing services there.”
Turning quickly, she leads the group of community leaders and a Herald reporter into the chapel where a group of community members are finishing up a regular Gregorian chant service.
“Every three hours, approximately, we chant for 10 or 15 minutes in here,” she explains.
“And of course there’s the 24-hour prayer vigil that goes on all the time.”
The beamed chapel is a repository for an impressive collection of community treasures—the antique pipe organ, intricate carvings made by the sisters and brothers, hand-sewn lace, stained glass and the bust of a suffering Jesus sent from a monastery in Argentan, France.
“We can hold 350 people in here,” Sorensen explains. “And the pews are removable so we can convert to a television studio.
“Our programs are all along the lines of what we are called to do, so there is no infringement on the chapel.”
Beneath the church is the undercroft, a huge basement that houses a restaurant-sized kitchen, crafts workshops, and a large fellowship hall that on this day is retreat headquarters for a gathering of eight Catholic nuns led by a smiling Mrs. Andersen.
Sorensen stops to chat briefly with the group then makes her way down a hallway leading to the outside. Abruptly, she stops before a closed door.
“This is the boiler room,” she says smiling mischievously, “This is where we keep them chained up.”
For a fleeting second, the entourage of community members appears stunned. Then they begin laughing uproariously.
“You have to laugh,” Sorensen said, wiping a tear from her eye. “Otherwise you’d go crazy.”
Sorensen’s sudden joke was her first and only spontaneous reference to the controversy that began several years ago and intensified in recent months after 20 members defected and began publicly criticizing the Community of Jesus.
“I know their motivations, but I can’t tell you. I won’t,” Sorensen said determinedly.
“I’ll just have to take it on the chin because I won’t violate the confidences they are violating.”
Over the past four years, Andersen and Sorensen have denied all press requests for interviews to discuss allegations about the practices at the Community of Jesus.
But that policy was abruptly reversed three weeks ago after months of ex-members’ intense criticism of them and their church.
They hired Boston lawyer Bob Popeo, the man who won an acquittal in the bribery trial of former state Rep. Vincent Piro, and agreed to answer questions, arrange interviews and offer “free, open access to the community.”
In a recent session at Popeo’s office, 11 community leaders met with The Herald to discuss the former members’ allegations.
On hand were Andersen; community administrators Barbara Manuel and Jill Elmer, who is Sorensen’s daughter; long-time member Sally Kanaga; a community doctor and three community clergymen.
Popeo acted as moderator, but he was not the only lawyer in the room. Four others—including two community attorneys—assisted, taking notes, offering comments and suggestions, and interceding frequently to challenge questions.
During the three-hour session, the community leaders disputed nearly all the allegations raised by their critics—flatly denying reports about brainwashing, physical violence, and forced silences, diets, and fasts.
How do you force someone to keep silent, to fast or to eat something they don’t want to eat, they asked.
How could two former housewives brainwash a group of bright, independent, successful and articulate adults, they wanted to know.
Why would you hold someone against their will, and why would members stay if those terrible things really happened, they wondered.
They concluded that the bulk of the allegations were “absolutely ludicrous.”
“This kind of work can suffer and has suffered from the repetition of charges . . . with no other purpose but to discredit and destroy,” the Rev. Hal Helms said.
“I have no (argument) with people who want to withdraw from the Community of Jesus. I hold no ill will towards them.
“The thing that I find difficult is that they go and make a cause out of badmouthing what they had previously said was helpful.”
Looking distressed, Andersen denied former members’ stories about her lifestyle with Sorensen: There is no excessive drinking or physical violence, she said, and she dismissed any suggestion that the two sleep in the same bed.
“I am not a homosexual and neither is she,” Andersen stated flatly.
“We sleep in separate beds and we would sleep in separate rooms if, when my husband designed the (apartment) and turned it into our study, he had been able to put in two fireplaces and still have two bedrooms.”
Andersen said she and Mrs. Sorensen took vows of celibacy with their husbands’ consent when they formed the celibate sisterhood in the late 1960s. After Sorensen’s cancer operation they moved into the apartment together.
A distinguished-looking community doctor disputed reports that powerful drugs were prescribed for members who could not cope with community life.
The doctor acknowledged that he has prescribed “mild tranquilizers” for patients several times during his seven years at the Orleans compound.
But he vehemently denied that he authorized Heidi Andersen to pass out pills or that medication was prescribed on orders from Cay Andersen and Sorensen.
“I am my own man,” he declared.
All the community leaders loudly denied reports of physical violence.
Cay Andersen said she never saw Heidi Laser Andersen—or any other community member—kicked, slapped, or forcibly restrained from leaving the group.
And all 11 members denied reports that a young man who was in the community brotherhood was placed in a straight jacket after being caught masturbating.
Joining that denial was a community clergyman who, according to two former members, previously admitted that the incident occurred and excused it because it was done with the brother’s permission.
The community leaders termed most of the criticism the product of a “family vendetta” organized, they said, by Mrs. Andersen’s son, Peter, his wife Heidi, and Mrs. Sorensen’s sons John and Doug.
“I can understand why Heidi would make allegations such as these, given her background,” Jill Elmer said.
“Being brought up in Nazi Germany. The trauma and tragedy of seeing people die on the battlefields, having to go out and take chocolate off the bodies of dead American soldiers to survive, having her father die in the war.
“That kind of experience is enough to do someone in for life. I can understand where Heidi is coming from and sympathize with where she’s at.
“As far as Peter Andersen is concerned, he left for Germany in 1967 and for the past 18 years, he has been in the Community of Jesus a total of 10 days.
“As far as my brothers are concerned, I would like to suggest that it is simply a family feud.”
John and Doug Sorensen, who left the community several years ago, have kept silent on the subject of their mother’s church in recent weeks, letting other former members have their say.
“Since April I have refrained from further public criticism of the Community of Jesus,” said John Sorensen, who presently lives in Virginia, where he is studying to become an Episcopal priest.
“It is apparent that my statements as a member of the Sorensen family enabled them to label the criticism as a family vendetta.
“It has been my hope that by personally withholding from this controversy, members of the Community of Jesus will be able to turn their attention away from their critics and back onto themselves and that they will find a way to deal constructively with the sincere concerns that former members have attempted to communicate.”
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