Cults to Consciousness: Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary: Separated ChiIdren, Married Couples Ordered to Celibacy
From the age of six through her high school years, Patricia Walsh Chadwick was raised in The Center, an isolated, rural community of 100 members, including 39 chiIdren, led by Father Leonard Feeney, an excommunicated Jesuit priest, and managed with an iron fist by his spiritual alter ego, Catherine Clarke. Together, they created a monastic environment that demanded obedience, silence, chastity, and detachment from family, achieved by separating parents from their chiIdren and forbidding members to read newspapers, watch television, listen to the radio, or communicate with outsiders. Patricia defied Sister Catherine’s mission to mold her into a compliant, submissive nun. At 17, in the middle of the turbulent 1960s, she was expelled from her home in Still River, Massachusetts, without a hint of how to survive, much less thrive, in an unfamiliar and frightening world.
Today, Patricia has had a successful 30-year career in the investment business, culminating as a Global Partner at Invesco, as she he sits on a number of corporate boards and blogs on economic, social, and political issues. Patricia is author of BREAKING GLASS: Tales from the Witch of Wall Street, as well as a previous memoir, Little Sister, where she recounts her time in the cult.