Dear Bishop,
Again, thank you so much for seeing my husband and I and helping us bring our son home from the Legionaries of Christ Apostolic School. We have been enjoying every moment with our son. He is so precious.
I just wanted you to know that our son has finally starting speaking about life at the school and is now open to the truth about Fr. Maciel. Last night he approached me and asked me to tell him the truth, which I did- and he handled it very well.
During our discussion he mentioned some very disturbing things like the psychological mind control, the guilt games and psychological prison he was in. He told me that he would lay in bed in the morning and say to himself, this is going to be my life for the rest of my life. Hopefully, I’ll just wake up in Heaven someday. He said it was beyond despair, that he was in crisis (I didn’t know all that until last night).
I had always told him don’t worry about the vocation just enjoy yourself, enjoy your friends and get a good education. I thought he was happy and having a good time. Even his spiritual directors would confirm that I was telling our son the right things. However, our son said that what they told him was the opposite, that they would get these talks all the time and that it was all about the vocation (Legionary of course), that they were being called to be Legionary Priests and that souls counted on their fidelity to their vocation. I am just sick to my stomach that my son, for 3 1/2 years was in that prison, the mind games, the control, screening the letters.
I just want this to stop. The more I have my son with me and the more we are all out of the Legion and Regnum Christ, the more I realize that they had turned my son into a zombie (and the rest of our family too). I used to pretend like he was dead in order to cope. My poor daughter has lost the faith, suffered from severe depression, was cutting her wrists and became bulimic and I didn’t get the connection. I feel like such an idiot and a horrible mother. The reason why I am writing you is because I think you need to know just how damaging the whole experience has been for our family so that other families can, hopefully, be prevented from making the same mistake we did. Only time will tell the extent of the damage to our son. He seems ok now but I worry. I would love to bring our son in to see you and to tell you for himself just what it was like.
If you are able to meet with us we would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you and God bless you,