Ex-members of women’s branch of troubled Peru movement say abuse was widespread

ROME – Former members of the women’s branch of a Peru-based Catholic movement currently under Vatican investigation have described an internal culture in which the movement’s male founder was “obsessed” with sexuality, and in which varying degrees of abuse were tolerated and explained away.

While similar allegations against the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, founded by Peruvian layman Luis Fernando Figari in 1971, have generated wide publicity and so far culminated in the expulsions of 15 members, this is the first time the spotlight has been trained on the companion women’s group also launched by Figari.

Crux has been in contact with roughly 30 former members of the Fraternidad Mariana de la Reconciliacion (FMR), which translates into English as the “Marian Community of Reconciliation” (MCR). These former members report having been routinely scrutinized and demeaned by Figari about their bodies and appearances. They also said Figari and other high-ranking members of the SCV would ask probing and inappropriate questions about their sexuality, and would make unwelcome advances.

Some former members, such as Fernanda De Andrade Duque, have lodged allegations of sexual assault against SCV members, as well as charges of coverup by both SCV and MCR authorities.

In total, the MCR has reported five cases of the sexual assault of members by high-ranking individuals in the men’s community, with former members saying more subtle forms of inappropriate conduct were commonplace, often with the women getting the blame.

Established in 1991, the MCR is one of four entities of the “Sodalit spiritual family” founded by Figari. The other communities include the SCV, a group of nuns called the Servants of the Plan of God, and an ecclesial movement called the Christian Life Movement.

Figari, who was expelled from the SCV in August as part of the Vatican’s ongoing inquiry, served as superior general of the MCR until stepping down in 2011, as allegations of various forms of abuse against him grew.

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.”

Misogynistic roots

Former “Fraternas”, as members of the MCR are known, called Figari a “misogynist,” saying his derogatory views of women seeped into the daily treatment of sisters by their own internal authorities, as well as by members of the men’s branch.

Former member Rocio Figueroa, a founding member of the MCR and former general coordinator of the group, said early members were vetted on their sexual lives before entering community, and that “only virgins could enter the community.”

Early on, Figari and other top-ranking members of the SCV, including its longtime vicar general, German Doig, who has been accused of sexually abusing members of both the men’s and women’s communities, were in personal charge of the MCR’s formation.

Ex-members say the pair would lead yoga exercises and seek to activate chakras, referring to various focal points in the body used in ancient meditation practices in traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, to manage one’s energies and control sexuality.

It was during these yoga exercises, Figueroa said, that both she and her brother, who was a member of the SCV, were sexually abused by Doig, though they did not realize it until many years later.

Another former member of the MCR, identified here by the pseudonym “Macarena,” who entered in 1994, said she also had inappropriate experiences with both Figari and Doig.

She first had contact with the SCV family, she said, while in high school after attending a youth event organized by the Christian Life Movement (CLM), during which she attended a session led by Doig, who she said befriended her and initiated a “grooming” process that included invitations to participate in group meetings at 10p.m. on weekdays, when she was still a minor.

Macarena said she and Doig developed a close friendship, and that when she entered the MCR, he invited her to use his private library and offered to personally mentor her.

“I started having weekly meetings with him. In the very first meeting I think I was 19 or 20, and he comes and he sits very close to me. He was talking about history and everything that we could do together. Then he started touching my leg and my arm.”

Macarena said she felt extremely uncomfortable and started to choke and cough, prompting Doig to pull back and get her a glass of water before ending the meeting prematurely.

When she came back to the community house and told her fellow sisters how uneasy she had been, she said her concerns were dismissed, that Doig was simply “affectionate,” and she had a “problem of blocking your affection and your emotions.”

Macarena also described encounters with Figari, saying that he would have new recruits stand in front of him, wearing their standard attire of a blouse and a skirt, and spin around in front of him to ensure their clothing wasn’t too tight.

“It was horrible,” she said. “I was 20 and I thought, ‘Do I turn around?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I was looking at all the other Fraternas and they were all like, ‘Come on!’ I was so humiliated. And then, he was like ‘Sit down, sit down! It’s enough!’ As if I had done something wrong.”

“He was a very crazy guy,” she said.

Macarena said that as a superior, she had to attend frequent meetings with Figari and other superiors in which they were made to take the batteries out of their cell phones, and during which he would insult them while also using paternal language, calling them “daughter.”

“It was schizophrenic. I was scared all the time. I didn’t want him to talk to me, I wanted to disappear,” she said, saying Figari would tell the women “completely inappropriate things” about the sexual lives of members of the SCV, and would also press them for sexual details such as whether they masturbated.

Other former MCR members said they were critiqued by superiors about whether their skirt or shirts were too tight, or whether they were being “sensual.” They also claimed there were cultural biases, with women from some countries, including Brazil, being stigmatized as being overly sensual by nature.

“Samantha” said the women couldn’t leave the house with wet hair, “because this was considered sensual,” while Gianna said that Brazilians, in particular, were considered “whores.”

During one outing, after waiting in line to buy some bread at a bakery, Gianna said she was chastised by a superior “because I touched my hair in a very sensual way, and that men were looking at me because I was a flirt.”

“That was it. I didn’t even know how to stand in line anymore,” she said.

Silence on sexual abuse

Perhaps the most notorious case of sexual assault inside the MCR is that of Fernanda De Andrade Duque, who has spoken out publicly about being assaulted by an SCV member before entering the community, and ultimately developing a slew of health issues she attributes to suppressed trauma.

Speaking to Crux, Duque said she joined the CLM in the mid-90s, when she was in her late teens, and would attend groups led by members of the SCV, including former member Raúl Masseur, who served as a spiritual guide for her and several other young women.

Masseur, who was later expelled from the SCV, she said, was “very affectionate,” and also emotionally manipulative, creating a bond of trust and an emotional dependency that left her vulnerable.

A year or two before she entered the MCR in 1997, when she was around 18 or 19, Duque said Masseur convinced her to undress and take her bra off before caressing her body. After that incident, she said she called MCR authorities, who at the time reported it to the SCV, and that after being informed, Doig said he would handle the situation.

Masseur was prohibited from giving spiritual direction to other young women, who were also barred from going to the community house where he lived, but Duque said she still saw Masseur regularly because he served as pastoral coordinator at the school where she worked.

He was later transferred to a different community house but was still involved in youth activities, before being sent to Canada, where he lived on his own but was still involved with young people, Duque said.

At the time, what happened to her was considered inappropriate but not abuse, and Duque said she was told to simply move forward and to try to leave the incident in the past.

However, Duque said that as the years went by, she became depressed and developed a slew of illnesses, including panic and anxiety disorders, that she believes are a result of repressing her trauma over the abuse, and which she said gave her a stigma in community as someone who was lazy and problematic.

At times, she said, she could barely get out of bed, and the medications she was on never seemed to make a difference.

It was not until 2011, she said, after allegations of sexual abuse broke publicly about Doig – who had since passed away, and a cause had been opened for his beatification – that she finally spoke about what happened with FMR authorities.

Asked in a conversation with the then-superior general how she was coping with the news about Doig, Duque said she was not surprised and recounted what had happened to her for the first time in 15 years. She said the authorities were shocked, and had no idea she was a victim.

Around that time, MCR authorities reported five cases of sexual abuse of members by men belonging to the SCV, including Doig, Masseur, and Figari, to the Archdiocese of Lima, which at the time was led by Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani.

An investigation was conducted, after which Cipriani gave the MCR a series of recommendations and said he would handle the matter.

Duque said she never heard anything more after her case was sent to the archdiocese, and it remains unclear whether the allegations were ever sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which oversees religious communities.

After sharing her story, Duque said she began to suffer increased illnesses and eventually, in 2015, was asked by authorities to leave the community because she was so sick.

She said she went back to her parents, who were elderly, with no money and no work, and was so sick that she did nothing but sleep for three months. She said she became desperate and contemplated suicide, but was able to get back on her feet thanks to friends who gave her a house and provided financial support until she could start working.

After scandals involving Figari and the SCV went public in 2015 following the publication of the book Half Monks, Half Soldiers by journalists Paola Ugaz and Pedro Salinas, himself a former member of the group, two separate commissions were established to meet with victims and issue recommendations.

Duque said she met with the second commission and that the SCV offered $50,000 in compensation, as well as two years of treatment with specialists, on the condition that she not speak about what happened.

“It was an agreement to shut your mouth, you couldn’t say anything,” she said, adding she finally decided to break her silence because she no longer fears repercussions.

The SCV, she said, did not write the term “sexual abuse” in the settlement, referring only to generic “damages” she suffered.

“They didn’t do it because it compromises the institution,” she said, calling the situation “revictimizing,” but something she accepted at a time she was dependent on others financially and did not want to be a burden.

Not an isolated case

Other former members of the MCR told Crux that sexual abuse and misconduct within Figari’s spiritual network were widespread.

“Samantha” said that while she was working at a parish in the Peruvian neighborhood of Camacho around the year 2008, two girls approached her to say that a priest who was expelled from the SCV by the Vatican and has been accused of abusing a minor, had made inappropriate advances to one of them and the other was a witness.

“He harassed her and hugged her” in a way that was inappropriate and “very uncomfortable” for the girl, Samantha said, saying she went to her superior in the MCR, who in turn spoke with authorities in the SCV.

When Samantha confided the incident to another SCV priest in confession, she said he tried to solicit information from her, “But I didn’t let him.” She said she later received a call from that priest outside of the confessional in which he warned her not to listen to the girl who made the complaint, “Because she’s schizophrenic.”

In response, Samantha said she “played dumb.” She said the girls later thanked her for at least bringing the issue to her superiors, but “nothing happened, and I never heard from the girls again. How embarrassing.”

Another former member of the MCR said she knew of a situation in which a SCV member made advances to a young woman involved in CLM groups and projects, who tried reporting the conduct to SCV authorities.

“They never believed her,” the former member said, saying instead the young woman was blamed and was made to feel responsible.

Similarly, another former member said that prior to entering the MCR, she was involved with the CLM and a group of SCV members would pick her and several other young women up and drive them to events and drop them off after.

Once after dropping the girls off, she said, a SCV member accompanied one of the girls and made advances. When she resisted, the SCV member made threats and told her not to say anything.

“She was very traumatized,” the former member said, saying the girl had later told her about what happened, and didn’t know what to do.

The former MCR member said she tried to speak with the SCV member in charge of the movement at the time, but instead of acting against the man who made the advances, he called the girl “crazy” and she was essentially kicked out of the movement.

Former member “Carmen” said her attempts were ignored to raise concerns about the conduct of notorious SCV abuser Jeffrey Daniels, who was found guilty of sexual abuse by an internal SCV commission and was charged with sexually abusing 12 minors by Peruvian authorities in 2017.

Peruvian authorities asked that Daniels, who by then was living in the United States, be incarcerated. U.S. authorities launched an investigation, but Daniels was never sent to prison.

Carmen said that while Daniels was still a member of the SCV, she observed inappropriate behavior with children, often putting them on his lap and taking them on exclusive outings to the park or somewhere else.

She said that at one point, she grew concerned and confided her observations to Doig, who she said dismissed the allegations, telling her to “stop gossiping about brothers.”

Carmen said Doig urged her to give him information and to call if she had more concerns, but shortly afterwards she was removed from her apostolic activities and Figari prohibited her from leaving the community house, “Because I was misbehaving.”

She said she was increasingly isolated and mistreated before eventually leaving the community.

When another SCV member, Daniel Murugia, was arrested in 2007 for sexually abusing minors, Carmen said she realized that they were not isolated incidents, but “this is collective.”

“This is not one or two, there are many. And what’s worse, the same German [Doig], who I didn’t know about at the time,” was also later accused of sexual abuse by Figueroa, her brother, and others.

Today’s MCR leadership has expressed “sorrow” for victims’ suffering.

“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, adding, “We also would like to recognize the women who, in recent days, have shared their testimonies of abuses of various kinds.”

“We assure them that we want to seek the truth and we are convinced that the truth sets free; this applies to all those involved, whether former or current members,” they said, and condemned “all abuses committed.”