A LIFE IN THE DEI..

New book lifts lid on recruitment into Catholic 'cult' compared to The Handmaid's Tale and featured in The Da Vinci Code

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A NEW book has lifted the lid on life within the Irish Opus Dei, a place of physical and psychological torture.

ANNE MARIE ALLEN was just 15 when she was recruited by the global Catholic cult, and was caught in its grip for seven years.

Her memoir tells of the brainwashing, isolation from family, coercion, control and conformity.

She was made self-flagellate with a spiked wire called a ‘cilice’ for two hours a day, forced into celibacy and constantly monitored for any “impure thought” by the cult obsessed with sexual sin.

It's a work of non-fiction that has ben compared to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale.

It began when teenage Anne Marie took a place on a cookery course in Ballyglunin House in Co Galway.

But she had been tricked into a life of domestic servitude, cleaning and cooking for the higher members.

In this extract from her book Serve, she tells how she was lured in...

Now, said Miss Smith, and she opened a door with a key, leading me into a small room that I realised was her bedroom. I was overcome with embarrassment and stared straight ahead as she sat down.

Her bed was oddly made: it looked really flat on top, and the bedding was folded oddly at the edges.

“What would you like to get out of the course, Anne Marie?’ Miss Smith was smiling and leaning forward as she asked me. She smelled lovely. I looked around her dressing table to see if I could see a bottle, but there was nothing much displayed.

‘I would like to be a chef, I said, softly in order to sound serious. I couldn't stop looking at the bed. It looked like there was no mattress at all. Just a flat board laid across the frame, with a sheet wrapped on it.

“This is the place to learn cookery, Anne Marie; she replied. ‘What we offer here you will not find anywhere else: safety, good accommodation, training and a payment of five pounds a week!’