Spiritual compound south of GV named in lawsuit; allegations include sex abuse, coercion, forced labor

A woman who claims she escaped from a spiritual compound near Tumacácori after 20 years of abuse has filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in Santa Cruz County that includes allegations of forced labor, sexual exploitation and psychological coercion.

The lawsuit lists as defendants Global Community Communications Alliance; the estate of its late leader and founder, Anthony Joseph Delevin; and four other leaders of the group. 

Delevin, whose aliases included Van of Urantia and Gabriel of Urantia, died in August 2025. The original complaint was filed in October and was amended and refiled Dec. 16. Global Community Communications Alliance has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit and attorneys for the plaintiff are planning to file an answer to that request next week.

The defendant, listed as Jane M. Doe, was 10 months old when her parents joined the community in 1996, and 19 when she fled in 2015.

The suit alleges “two decades of unchecked power, institutional betrayal and systemic abuse inflicted on a child who had no ability — nor permission — to protect herself.”

Among the allegations outlined in the 34-page filing:

• “Defendants engineered a system designed to break children and adults down, isolate them, and make them dependent on the very people harming them.”

• “Children were separated from their parents, deprived of education, forced into hard labor, subjected to sexualized discipline, and denied basic medical care.” “Surveillance” was constant and obedience to leadership “mandatory.”

• “Defendants conspired to operate … GCCA as a criminal enterprise for the common purpose of exploitation, trafficking, forced labor and sexual abuse.”

• Leaders “staged sham inspections and lied to government officials” who visited the gated compound and instructed members to lie to investigators.

• Ten elders made all decisions regarding labor assignments, childcare, discipline, financial management and medical access. They also determined “romantic partner choices” and which food to eat.

• Members were required to surrender “all money and possessions upon joining” and movement on and off the property was tightly restricted.

Separated from parents

The defendant said she was separated from her parents at age 4, and at age 11 was forced to work 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. with only a few hours off on Sunday. There was no compensation.

Separation from family was part of the controlling environment leaders set up to “sever all bonds between persons that might interfere with Delevin and GCCA’s total control of individuals,” according to the complaint. Jane Doe said she lived in seven homes from 2000 to 2015 “under the control of rotating adult caretakers” who subjected her to “verbal degradation, isolation, sleep deprivation, loss of food and clothing, and corporal and sexual punishments.”

She was “denied bonding” with her parents and was not permitted to call her father “papa” or “dad," according to the suit. Her parents are still in the community. 

At age 4, she weighed 25 pounds, according to a medical report following an attempted rescue by her grandparents, the report said. An average 4 year old weighs about 40 pounds.

Jane M. Doe's attorney, Thea Gilbert with Gilbert Law Firm in Tucson, said in the suit they will produce "witnesses who will testify that the defendants orchestrated numerous cover-ups during the custody litigation commenced by her grandparents, including staging false living conditions" and instructing members to lie under oath. The filing said the witnesses will also testify that similar cover-ups "have continued to the present day."  

There are about 100 people currently living at the compound, according to several people who have been on site or know members.

Doe said she was placed in a home with a teenage male 12 years older who had a history of sexual violence and that she suffered “years of repeated sexual assaults, violence, and trauma” at his hands.

She said leaders failed to intervene, concealed the abuse and when state investigators approached, “staged false living environments, manipulated appearances and coerced caretakers into hiding” her condition. The complaint also alleges child victims of sexual abuse “were told their assaults were punishments for being ‘harlots,’ ‘rebellious,’ or sinful in past lives.”

Even after the young man publicly acknowledged abusing her and other children in the compound, the leaders summoned Jane Doe and she was told to “let go of the past.” They failed to report the abuse to law enforcement as legally required, the lawsuit alleges.

Leaving the compound

Jane Doe’s doubts about the group grew after years of “abuse, coercion, forced labor and indoctrination.” A friend “confided that he believed that Delevin was a fraud and that he planned to leave the community,” the complaint said. Her communications were monitored and she was reprimanded for speaking with her friend, “further heightening her fear and mistrust.”

After “reaching a breaking point,” she secretly borrowed a phone and contacted her friend. That night, she “climbed over the wrought-iron fence enclosing the GCCA compound and fled into the Arizona desert,” where her friend picked her up and “drove her to safety,” the complaint states.

Funding the community

Global Community Communications Alliance formed in Sedona in 1994 by Delevin, and began a move to a 158-acre, $4.8 million site in Tumacácori in 2007, east of Interstate 19. The land is along Pendleton Drive, split by a sliver of railroad-owned land and a railroad track, and includes several homes, sheds, warehouses and a 17,000-square-foot gold-domed sanctuary.

The complaint said GCCA is funded through several businesses including Soulistic Medical Institute (hospice), Magic Land Realty, Avalon Universal Enterprises (construction), Sea of Glass Center for the Arts in Tucson and “multiple agricultural and hemp operations.”

It also alleges nobody is paid for their work and that children’s labor includes cooking, cleaning, gardening, childcare, food service, animal care and maintenance.

A history

The lawsuit recounts previous media reports about the group and former members who describe it as “a coercive, cult-like community.”

Internationally known cult expert Rick Ross has been a vocal critic of the group for more than 20 years. In a 2007 interview with the Nogales International just as the group was relocating to Southern Arizona, Ross said the group had many characteristics of a cult.

He cited Delevin’s persuasive, domineering leadership style; the group’s authoritarian structure and what Ross called two sets of ethics; and that “cults tend to be totalistic, or all encompassing, in controlling their members' behavior and also ideologically totalistic, exhibiting zealotry and extremism in their worldview.”

In that same story, five members of the group — including Catherine J. Lilly, who goes by Centria and is named as a defendant in the complaint — pushed back on Ross’ claims. (Members take on spiritual names.)

"We're culture building," Lilly said in the story. "We teach responsibility and multi-dimensional attitudes towards life. We're trying to be a prototype community, something positive for our kids' future."

The members also told a reporter they marry whom they want, can contact and visit family outside the community, and that while some children don’t live in homes with their families, it is the parents' choice, often done for the well-being of the kids.

But the allegations raised in the lawsuit match the stories of several people who fled the compound since 2010, and have spoken with the Green Valley News. One who left as a teenager said he later returned because he couldn't cope in an outside world that was so foreign to him. He ended up leaving a second time and not returning. 

The church has been a lightning rod for criticism over the years and has not hesitated to defend itself in letters to newspapers, social media and in interviews, labeling much of the reporting as hit pieces and insisting nobody in the community is controlled. It describes itself on LinkedIn as “a cosmic family, with members and friends from every corner of the world and from many diverse religious backgrounds” whose teachings of “epochal revelation” were found in “The URANTIA Book and The Cosmic Family volumes,” written by Delevin.

A critical book on the church was published in 2021 titled, “New Age Grifter: The True Story of Gabriel of Urantia and His Cosmic Family.” It described Delevin as “the leader of a UFO religion based in the desert of southern Arizona.”

No contact

The filing stated Jane M. Doe suffers from severe anxiety, depression, PTSD, unexplained exhaustion, recurring night terrors and “a morbid, uncontrollable fear of men,” among other issues. It adds Doe, who recently turned 30, will “likely will be plagued by lifelong physical and mental health problems” and says damages to the plaintiff are in excess of $7.5 million.

One of the group’s leaders, Lilly, agreed to an interview with the Green Valley News last week but later did not answer two text messages seeking to set up a time. 

• Global Community Communications Alliance, described as “a closed, communal campus” whose members arrived in Tumacacori in 2007, moving from Sedona.

• The Estate of Anthony Joseph Delevin (aliases include Gabriel of Urantia and Van of Urantia), founder and spiritual leader of GCCA. He died Aug. 8, 2025.

• Nancy Emerson Chase, co-founder, senior leader and wife of Delevin.

• Stacy Myszka (spiritual name TiyiEndeae DellErba), listed as Delevin’s “second wife” in the suit, and a senior elder “with supervisory authority over members, including children.”

• Catherine J. Lilly (spiritual name Centria), listed as director and elder “who exercised authority over childcare, discipline, labor assignments and internal investigations.”

• Linda Cunningham (spiritual name Marayeh), listed as an “intermittently licensed physiologist.” Served as GCCA’s counselor, directed “unlicensed counseling practices, extracted confidential information from members, and participated in concealing child abuse.”

• The suit also lists “GCCA Elders I-X” and “DOES 1-50,” whose identities are not yet known “but who participated in neglect, concealment, supervision and control of Plaintiff during her childhood.”

SYNANON CULT

The lawsuit claims defendant Linda “Marayeh” Cunningham is a former member of the Synanon cult.

Synanon was founded in 1958 by Charles E. Dederich to help drug and alcohol addicts. It quickly grew as it touted a new, utopian way of living built on tough love that drew the attention of Hollywood stars, notable figures from the 1960s and politicians.

Synanon eventually grew to be isolationist then devolved into what has been called the most violent cult in the country, with severe beatings for members suspected of being “spies” and teens accused of insubordination.

As Dederich tightened the noose — insisting on vasectomies for men, abortions for women and that everybody live in the compound — membership dwindled.

The group grew more militaristic, even buying $200,000 in weapons in 1978. It threatened members of the media, sent thugs after people who crossed the group, and once placed a rattler in the mailbox of an attorney, who was bitten and barely survived.

The group disbanded shortly after losing its tax-exempt status in 1991. Dederich died in 1997; he was 83.