ROME – Former members of a Peru-based women’s lay group have described a legacy of psychological and physical damage resulting from what they describe as a pattern of abuse within the group, saying a strikingly high percentage of members ended up visiting psychologists and taking medication.
One member committed suicide during her initial years in formation, though it remains unclear the extent to which the community, and the abuses women said they endured inside, were at fault.
Nearly all of the roughly 30 ex-members of the Fraternidad Mariana de la Reconciliacion (FMR), or the “Marian Community of Reconciliation” (MCR), with whom Crux has been in contact, said they experienced depression or anxiety, and around half said they were medicated.
They also said physical illness among members was widespread, with many developing conditions later attributed by doctors to emotional trauma and high levels of stress.
One former member told Crux that, “The system makes you sick. It’s not normal that so many of us developed major depression. We couldn’t take it anymore, and when we began to question everything, what we had built collapsed, [and] we began to see.”
The MCR is one of four different ecclesial entities founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari, including its male branch, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), the Servants of the Plan of God (SPD) and the Christian Life Movement (CLM).
Some 15 members of the SCV have been expelled from the group in recent weeks, including Figari, amid an ongoing Vatican inquiry. As the investigation into the SCV has continued, attention has turned to Figari’s other foundations, which have reported similar forms of abuse.
Psychologists and medication
Most ex-members Crux spoke with said psychological and emotional abuse were common within the MCR, with members being obsessively critiqued and berated by superiors and other members for trivial matters, ranging from their clothing and physical appearance to the way they prayed.
They said schedules were demanding, and that constant scrutiny and pressure to be a perfect “Fraterna,” as members are called, combined with working from dawn to dusk with no breaks, took a significant toll.
Many of those Crux spoke with said they experienced crippling anxiety and panic attacks at some point during their time in the MCR. When they became anxious or depressed, they said they were sent to a psychologist inside an SCV community, or with ties to the SCV.
A recent online survey conducted with nearly 100 former members of all branches of the SCV spiritual family – the SCV, the MCR and the Servants – revealed that nearly half experienced depression and anxiety disorders, and 10 percent were diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Most former members spoke to Crux on condition of anonymity, in some cases employing pseudonyms.
Some said members often were medicated without visiting a professional and without a diagnosis, or they were given an erroneous diagnosis leading to inappropriate treatment that had long-term negative effects.
Another said, “They never gave me a psychological exam, and I was medicated for 11 years. Later I consulted with a specialist, and they told me that I never should have taken the medication.”
Yet another said a fellow member began suffering from panic attacks and anxiety, and she was medicated without her family’s knowledge. However, she “was allergic to a component [of the medicine] that caused her to have hallucinations.”
That member left and had to detoxify, the former member said, saying, “It was very hard for her, but the message I received in formation was that she had problems, that she was fragile, and not ‘Fraterna material.’”
“Samantha”, who met the MCR while attending youth activities led by the CLM as a teen, said that both she and her husband, who is a former member of the SCV, were pressured to break up and enter community, then medicated after developing depression, and that her husband was wrongly diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Inside the community, Samantha said she was constantly criticized and belittled, and that sisters were run into the ground mentally and physically.
“I saw them all exhausted, tired, but tired of living. Not tired of working, but tired of living,” she said.
After struggling with continual doubts over lingering feelings for her ex-boyfriend, Samatha said she spoke with the same psychologist in the MCR with whom she’d spoken previously and was diagnosed with anxiety and depression. She was also told to start seeing a different psychologist, who was also affiliated with the SCV family.
When she did not improve, the second psychologist diagnosed her with obsessive compulsive disorder, which she said, was erroneous. When she eventually decided to leave, Samantha said she spoke with an MCR psychologist who apologized for pushing her into the community, saying she believed at the time most of Samantha’s doubts would be resolved inside.
However, this psychologist, Samantha said, asked her not to disclose what happened and how she was manipulated into joining the community, adding that if Samantha didn’t speak, “We won’t discuss your things,” referring to her psychological struggles.
Samantha believes the comment was tantamount to “blackmail,” and amounted to “a violation of professional secrecy.”
Similarly, Samantha said her now-husband, “David,” was also given a false diagnosis of bipolar disorder and manipulated into joining the SCV, where he served for several years as a private secretary to Figari before leaving with depression and a slew of health issues.
Another former member said she also was pressured to join the MCR, but felt a consistent call to married life, instead of community, and experienced anxiety. When she mentioned it to her psychologist, who had ties to the SCV family, she said she was given medication to lower her libido.
“I don’t think I was the only one they did that to,” she said.
“Carmen” said she was stripped of external tasks and isolated in community after attempting to raise an alarm over the behavior of a former SCV member who was later accused of sexually abusing minors. She said that because she spoke out, she was medicated.
“They drugged me without having visited a psychiatrist,” she said, saying that when she wanted to leave, Figari made it difficult, and “they slandered me, they defamed me.”
“I was disorderly, crazy, rebellious, a whore, etc. To this day I have nightmares,” she said.
Another former member said the psychologists and psychiatrists members saw would talk about their diagnosis with others, as well as with their superiors, saying, “that was another form of control.”
“Many had erroneous diagnoses. Outside the community we realized that they were not true, and that the anxiety and depression we had was due to the oppression of a sectarian system. Leaving was what healed us,” she said.
“Alison” said she developed “severe depression while in community” and was sent to a psychologist affiliated with the SCV. She had a background in medicine, so she was not given an erroneous diagnosis or improper pills, and that while she improved, “I still recognize a very strong spiritual abuse that has affected me and continues to affect my spiritual life.”
Another former member said that while receiving psychological treatment in community, “my gallbladder exploded due to excessive use of medicines as well as inflammation of the liver,” calling the medical practices of psychologists affiliated with the SCV “irresponsible.”
Former member “Catarina” said she struggled with anxiety as a teenager prior to entering the MCR but had not had any problems with it again until after entering community. She said she felt pressured and controlled, including what she could read, what music she could listen to, and by being forced to share deeply personal experiences with the entire community.
Catarina, who entered in 2009 and left in 2012, said she developed physical illnesses including chronic nausea, nervousness, and panic attacks. She said she was hospitalized twice for gastritis, and began experiencing headaches due to exhaustion. Even now, Catarina said she still suffers with feelings of inadequacy and needing approval, and often feels that she is being scrutinized by superiors at work.
One former member said psychologists from the FMR put the instruments of therapy at the service of “a perverse system of abuses,” pointing out dictators such as Mussolini and Franco often used mental hospitals for dissidents.
“Like fascists, they produced mental illnesses, then dumped us in the street and defamed us as traitors and infidels,” she said, saying, “I don’t consider what they did to be psychology.”
Sara
Almost all former members Crux spoke with pointed to the tragic case of Sara Cobaleda, who committed suicide in 2005 after suffering a mental crisis during her second year of formation.
A native of Medellin, Cobaleda met the MCR in Colombia and felt a strong call to join, so she left her career in chemical engineering and traveled to Lima, Peru, where she began formation in 2004.
During her second year in formation, in 2005, she attempted to take her life and was admitted to a specialist facility in Lima, where she spent around a month before returning to Medellin to be with her family.
Though living at home, Cobaleda, who wanted to return to the MCR, stayed close to the community in Medellin and would visit daily. During that time, she was being treated by a local psychologist in Medellin, but was also in conversation with a psychologist in the MCR who treated her previously.
Despite experiencing improvements, Cobaleda killed herself at her family home in September 2005, overdosing on a bottle of pills.
At her family’s request, her death was attributed to a heart attack, with only those closest to Cobaleda being informed of the truth, which emerged several years later when her case was covered in the media.
“They never should have let her leave before she was better,” one former member said, saying the common practice in the MCR and all of Figari’s communities at the time was to “kick out” anyone who showed signs of weakness or mental fragility.
Crux spoke with several superiors involved in Cobaleda’s case, who said they followed the instructions of doctors and of her family at every step of the process.
Cobaleda, they said, was sent back to her family at her doctor’s instruction after being hospitalized in Lima. She was never told she could not return to community, but that her time in Medellin was simply a time of rest and recovery.
One person who was close to the case said there were indications that Cobaleda had similar issues prior to entering the MCR, and that her attempt on her life in community was not the first.
This was not previously known, the person said, because when Cobaleda entered, the MCR was receiving many new recruits and did not have proper entry procedures, with many joining without undergoing a psychological exam – a practice some former members charge was due to a desire to increase numbers.
Sara, however, according to others with knowledge of the case, reportedly had undergone a psychological exam prior to her entry.
While former members could not say with certainty whether Cobaleda’s death was a direct result of her experience within the MCR, they agreed the psychological pressure likely exacerbated the problem, with one former member saying community life was designed “to break people.”
Another member in formation at the same time as Cobaleda also experienced a serious mental crisis and left at the same time on the brink of suicide but later recovered, former members said.
Those close to the case remain impacted by it to this day, with many unable to speak without bursting into tears. One person who was close to the case said they tried their best to help, and that the question that will forever be in her mind is, “What more could I have done?”
Physical ailments
In addition to psychological stress, many ex-members also reported experiencing physical illnesses they attribute to their time in the MCR.
One former said that when she had emergency surgery to remove part of her colon and part of her intestine in 2015, “The doctor asked me, ‘What happened to you? You are too young for this to happen.’”
Another said she suffered from panic attacks and developed high blood pressure while in community, “diseases that still take their toll on me.”
Former member “Macarena” said she was forced to keep an intense schedule and had very little time to rest. She became sick in 2001, she said, saying she was anemic and her temperature began to spike every night.
When diagnostic tests revealed she had fibromyalgia and was at risk of a heart attack, she was told by doctors to rest. However, she was told by superiors that she could not step down from any of her duties but could only sleep in an additional 15 minutes every day.
By 2003, Macarena said, she was experiencing increased difficulties and continued to ask in vain for time to rest. One day, she said, she woke up and was unable to move her body for 30 minutes, after which she was able to reach her phone to call for help.
“It was horrible, it was a horrible place. And we thought we were being holy and getting closer to God,” she said.
Similarly, “Marta” said she was diagnosed with an arrhythmia during her time in formation with the MCR after suffering a medical crisis during one of their many sessions of intense exercise.
After being taken to the emergency room and being told by doctors she was too sick to leave, Marta said she was ordered by superiors to leave because they did not have the money to pay for diagnostic tests.
“Every time I tried to get up to leave [the hospital], I fell back down,” she said. She eventually left against medical advice due to her superiors’ orders. She said that instead of doing all her medical tests at once, they were staggered over several days to help with payment, meaning she was repeatedly pricked for blood draws to the point that doctors said they would just test the samples they had already drawn.
It was only when the uncle of a fellow member, who was a cardiologist, helped them do testing for a lower cost that she was diagnosed with arrhythmia. She said during this time, she was still made to maintain a full formation schedule, including intense exercise.
Since leaving in 2008, Marta has had two heart operations and must observe a strict lifestyle to manage her health.
Similarly, “Jenny” called life inside the MCR “a theology of abuse and entrapment in the mind (that) leads to sickness in the body.”
“I never had anxiety or depression, but I was kicked out of the community for a mental breakdown. I couldn’t work for a full year,” she said.
Jenny said that while she was living in one of the MCR’s formation houses, which she said was built to house ex-convicts and was only intended to be a temporary residence, she noticed black mold growing under the floor. When she tried to sound an alarm, she said she was ignored.
Years later, after leaving community, Jenny said she was diagnosed with a lung tumor that doctors believed “was a fungus from living in those cold, damp conditions, and they took out my left lung.”
“It’s not normal,” she said, saying, “anyone who mentions how good the Sodality is, I ask them if their left lung is worth it.”
“I went to five major doctors,” she said, saying their collective opinion was that “living in that house could have killed me.”
Admitting fault
Former members of the MCR to whom Crux spoke acknowledged they were also part of the system, and that while victims, they likely caused harm to others along the way.
Rocio Figueroa, a founding member of the MCR and former superior who left after being discredited for attempting to sound an alarm over allegations of sexual abuse against a former top-ranking member, and who herself is a victim, has admitted to wrongdoing.
The SCV family “is a sect that converts victims into perpetrators, being at the same time victim and perpetrator,” she said, saying she began taking steps to reconcile with former members who she might have harmed in some way after leaving in 2012, and has continued to do so.
Macarena, speaking through tears, said that in community “you want to do so much good, and it’s not only all the harm they’ve done to you, to me, all the trauma, all the humiliation, but also knowing that for so many years I was a part of this, and I also harmed people.”
“There’s no way I haven’t said something hurtful, there’s no way I haven’t done something that might have hurt people, and that is just so, so sad,” she said.
Macarena said she believes members of the MCR “are good people, but some of them have done horrible things, horrible harm. I tried my best, but I feel like they killed a part of me.”
Various former members spoke of feelings of guilt over their actions in community, and the need to acknowledge that “everyone is a victim” of Figari and the SCV system, both those who have left and those who have stayed.
In a statement to Crux, the MCR expressed its “deep sorrow and compassion with the women who have suffered abuse in their experience in our community and in the context of the Sodalit family.”
“We share their sorrow, and we are deeply sorry for everything that each one of them and their families have suffered and are still suffering,” they said.
“We reject all abuses committed and ask forgiveness for our inability to understand the enormity of their pain in a timely fashion, thus revictimizing many of them,” they said, and pledged to reach out to the women who come forward “so that justice may be achieved.”
Both the MCR and the Archdiocese of Lima have opened listening channels for those who wish to make complaints.
“We will assume our responsibility for the wounds of so many, caused by the unhealthy institutional culture which has been present in the Marian Community of Reconciliation, offering reparation for what may be mended,” the MCR said, and affirmed their commitment to “truth, justice, and reparation.”
Follow Elise Ann Allen on X: @eliseannallen
