Anorexia, Despair and Thoughts of Suicide: inside the Legion of Christ High School Where Young Girls Were Forced to Live like Teenage Nuns
By Kerry McQueeney
Dozens of young women have claimed they developed severe psychological problems after being forced to live like teenage nuns at a high school run by a disgraced Catholic religious order. Former pupils of the Legion of Christ high school, in Rhode Island, say the psychological abuse they endured led to multiple cases of anorexia, stress-induced migraines, depression and suicidal thoughts. They have called on the Vatican to shut down the controversial programme to spare others from a similar ordeal. This weekend, the women sent a letter to the Pope's envoy denouncing the manipulation, deception and disrespect they say they suffered at the hands of counsellors barely older than themselves at the school. Some of them say the trauma they suffered required years of psychological therapy that cost them tens of thousands of dollars. The letter was signed by 77 young women and a handful of them agreed to tell their stories in a bid to warn parents against sending their children to the program's schools in the U.S., Mexico and Spain. One former pupil, named only as Mary to protect her identity, said: 'I have many defining and traumatic memories that I believe epitomise the systematic breakdown of the person.' She says she developed anorexia after joining in 1998 and weighed less than 85 pounds when she left, dropping to 68 pounds before beginning to recover at home. She added: 'The feelings of worthlessness, shame and isolation that are associated with those memories are still vivid and shocking.' Mary blamed her eating disorder on acute loneliness - girls were prevented from making close friends or confiding in their families - and the tremendous pressure she felt as a 16-year-old to perfectly obey the strictest rules dictating how she should walk, sit, pray and eat. It's the latest blow to the troubled, cult-like Legion, which was discredited in 2009 when it revealed that its founder was a paedophile and drug addict who fathered three children. The Legion suffered subsequent credibility problems following its recent admission that its most famous priest had fathered a child and the current Legion superior covered it up for years. The Legion saga is all the more grave because its late founder, the Reverend Marcial Maciel, had been held up as a living saint by his followers and a model of holiness by Pope John Paul II because of his ability to recruit men and money to the priesthood. This was in spite of the fact that Vatican knew for decades that he had sexually abused his seminarians. Pope Benedict XVI took over the Mexico-based order in 2010 and appointed envoy Cardinal Velasio De Paolis to oversee a whole-scale reform of the Legion and its lay branch Regnum Christi. But the reform hasn't progressed smoothly, with defections from disillusioned members and criticism that some superiors remain locked in their old ways. The all-girl Immaculate Conception Academy, located in Wakefield, Rhode Island opened two decades ago to serve as a feeder program for the Legion's female consecrated branch, where more than 700 women around the world live like nuns making promises of poverty, chastity and obedience, teaching in Legion-run schools and running youth programs. Because of dwindling enrollment - 14 seniors graduated last month - the school recently merged with a Legion-run school in Michigan; in Mexico two programs merged into one that produced 10 graduates this year. The school's current director said things have changed dramatically recently and many of the spiritual and psychological abuses corrected. But she acknowledged the harm done, apologised for the women's suffering and asked for forgiveness. Margarita Martinez said: 'For any errors made by our order in the past, we do apologise, We are sorry these young women have suffered and been harmed in any way.' In an email response to AP, Martinez noted that not all students experienced the same 'level of negativity' as those who wrote the letter, and that regardless the movement was listening to everyone's experiences as it undergoes a process of Vatican-mandated reform. One woman, 30-year-old Megan Coelho revealed how - as a child - she was regularly visited by pairs of consecrated women at home in northern California, where she was home-schooled. She said the women told her tales of a 'wonderful' high school in Rhode Island where she might find a vocation and grow closer to God. Coelho, who wanted to be a nun, left home when she was 14 to join. However, by junior year, the occasional migraines she had suffered became frequent and debilitating as pressure to conform to the rules and highly structured schedule increased. The migraines would paralyse one side of her body, making her collapse at times, and she developed facial tics. Her eyesight became blurry. Revealing how the movement would do anything to keep members, at almost any cost, she added: 'As sweet as they (her consecrated directors) were I was counseled not to tell my parents about it because then my parents would take me home. 'No one contacted my family. Nobody took me to the ER or got me a doctor's appointment.' 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. She left for good six months before graduation. Coehlo's story is the first on a blog she and other former pre-candidates, as the girls were known, started this past spring, a seemingly cathartic experience since many had never shared their pain with their onetime classmates. The blog - www.49weeks.blogspot.com - is an astonishing testimony of a twisted and cruel methodology applied to girls at their most vulnerable age, when even under normal circumstances girls are prone to self-esteem issues, peer pressure and bouts of depression. Instead of finding support from friends and family, these teenagers were isolated from their families 49 weeks a year, told to unquestioningly trust their spiritual directors and confide only in them. Obedience to the minutest of rules, they were taught, reflected their acceptance of God's will. They write about their feelings of inadequacy, humiliation and loneliness, and of idolizing their smiling consecrated counselors. They paint the depths of their depression when seemingly overnight they were told they didn't have a vocation and should go home. One woman, Sarita Duffy - now a 28-year-old mother-of-three living in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, said: 'Looking back, I was suicidal. 'I never took a bottle of pills or slit my wrists, but I was fully content with the possibility of never waking up again.' Duffy said she equated being rejected by the movement with being rejected by God, and lost her Catholic faith for years as a result. While she acknowledged the movement could not be blamed for all of her problems, she said the 'zero self-worth' she felt after being rejected precipitated her descent into depression and rebellion. Another of the blog entries was written by Lourdes Martinez, a former counsellor - or formator - at the school from 2000-2005. She admitted that she and her consecrated colleagues would classify the girls into potential leaders, 'normals' and those who should be sent home. She said this tactic would enable the directors and counsellors under them to manipulate the girls and prey on their vulnerabilities, giving special attention to those they wanted to keep as potential consecrated leaders and devise strategies to get rid of those they wanted to send home. Weekly reports written about each girl's development would be shared with priests who heard her confession - a violation of privacy. Priests would then reinforce the directors' decisions during the particular girl's confession time, Martinez said. She added: 'So she's hearing this from everyone and thinks it's the Holy Spirit talking. And we would say "Yes, of course".' Martinez described an almost 'Lord of the Flies'-like situation in which the counsellors were barely older than the girls under their care, with no experience in adolescent development. The counsellors themselves lived with the fear that they must obey the rules and their superiors or risk violating God's will. Martinez signed the letter to De Paolis because she wanted to show solidarity with those who suffered. But she stressed that she believes the reform will work because she knows and trusts the new leadership and is working with them to improve. Not everyone suffered so much, and not everyone has joined the call to close the program; of the 270-odd people on a closed Facebook group that served as the basis for the blog, just 77 signed the letter. And by many indications, things have changed dramatically for the better at the school, with girls allowed more time with families and much less emphasis on sticking to the rules. Sasha Jurchak, 25, left consecrated life in May after deciding it wasn't for her - not because of any problem with the program. She said: 'People who are going into the pre-candidacy and are starting out will not find the same experience as those people did.' She said that De Paolis has initiated new regulations forbidding the consecration of girls as young as 18 after a six-week candidacy program. The new rules require a process of years of assessment, similar to that of traditional religious orders. She claimed recruitment was no longer the primary aim adding that girls' mail is no longer screened and they have more free time. Girls can wear shorts and pants for athletic activities instead of long skirts and stockings, she said. Margarita Martinez, the school director, said other changes included better reflection from counsellors on when to invoke 'God's will' in requiring something of the girls. She disputed claims that the school failed to provide adequate medical care for sick girls, saying the policy has always been to notify parents and get proper care. Asked if Regnum Christi was prepared to provide financial assistance to women who needed psychological counseling when they left, she said each case would need to be considered individually. She said: 'The reform process has taken time. It has been a learning process for everyone involved. And we still have a long way to go. 'But I strongly believe we are moving in the right direction, with the Holy Spirit as our guide.' The letter to De Paolis from the women said it was too risky to wait and see how it turns out. They added: 'Today's girls deserve more than to be guinea pigs during the experimental stages of the reform process which may or may not prove in the end to be authentic.'
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