Mom joining lawsuit says she ran away from religious school after abuse

A mother of four who is joining the lawsuit against Mile Two Church Inc. and a number of its former employees and affiliates says she suffered abuse at the church and the school it managed, which led her to run away and end up living on the street.

Even though Corlene Robinson ran away from her home – and the school and church she was forced to attend – she said she found healing when she returned with her children to give it a second chance. Robinson said one of her sons was being severely bullied at a Saskatoon public school, which prompted her to look into private school options.

Her sons attended Legacy Christian School after 2018 for one year.

She remembered the current pastor, Brien Johnson, from her time with the church, back when it was called Christian Centre Church. Brien, the son of the church’s former pastor and former head of Christian Centre Academy, Keith Johnson, is not named in the lawsuit, while his father is.

“Brien was the only one that was nice to me as a kid,” she shared, recalling that he used to sneak National Enquirer magazines into the service.

“We would kind of steal away and read them, because that was forbidden reading material,” Robinson said.

With the school and church now re-branded, with Brien at the head, Robinson said she was curious to see if anything had changed.

“I went back, and it was very cathartic for me,” she said.

“His message wasn’t fire and brimstone. It wasn’t the same as his dad’s. He was talking about mental health. He was talking about parenting. He was talking about things that you should be talking about in church, and things that actually were reassuring instead of scary to hear.”

She said she’s listened to his podcasts and found them comforting during the pandemic, because they gave her a sense of community and faith.

“I did send my kids to school there, and they did great,” Robinson said. “I think it is a safe place today.”

But while she believes the school is a safe place for students now, Robinson said that wasn’t the case in the ‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s. The school and church were far from it, she said.

Escaping abuse

“For the longest time as a kid, I wanted to burn that place down,” Robinson said.

With her newly divorced mom taking care of her family alone, Robinson said they moved to Saskatoon and began attending Mile Two Church — Christian Centre Church at the time — in 1992.

“She did her best,” Robinson said, calling her mom a “proud” woman.

“She was trying. She thought she was doing what God would have wanted her to do, and raising her kids the best way she could. She really thought that was the best thing for us,” she said.

Robinson said she remembers feeling intimidated and unwelcome when she first walked into the school building at age seven.

Being a kid who questioned a lot of things and was “very rebellious,” Robinson said she used to sneak away from her classes and sit outside the doors where marriage and parenting courses were being taught at the church.

She remembered things being taught in a very repetitive way.

“I know now the words for what was happening, and it was absolutely brainwashing,” she said.

Robinson said she saw her mother change after they moved to Saskatoon. The introduction of corporal punishment, as encouraged by their church and school, was one new thing.

“We were paddled at home. We were paddled at school … nobody would hesitate to drop a paddle at church, too,” Robinson recalled, calling it “a hell of an experience.”

Their family’s whole existence began to revolve around the church, she said, with services held several times a week on top of school.

“Church, school, your whole life, it was one thing,” she said.

The church also preached against associating with those who did not attend the church, “because they weren’t serving God,” Robinson said.

“It was a lot of manipulation and coercion, control and brainwashing,” she said.

Robinson said she suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse during her time attending the school and church.

In addition to constant corporal punishment, administered by way of a wooden paddle, Robinson said she remembered being tormented by peers and superiors at church and school, called names like “spawn of Satan,” “evil” and “a worthless whore.” She called her experiences “damaging.”

Robinson said Keith Johnson reminded her of the evangelical preachers that used to be on the television when she was a child. She called him a “very compelling” speaker, but said he “was twisted.”

Robinson referred to a manual Johnson penned on mandatory corporal punishment for the church, and other requirements the church put on its congregants.

“My mom was always struggling to make ends meet, but she always had to put a tithe in the basket when it was passed around,” Robinson said.

Because her mother was single, Robinson said the church declared that she needed a husband, and it had to be someone from the church. So her mom began a marriage that Robinson described as miserable.

“But that solved their problem of having a divorced single mom in the congregation,” she said, wryly.

Robinson said she knows her mother still carries significant guilt over what happened to her children at Christian Centre Academy.

Robinson said she ran away from home at the age of 11 because she said she couldn’t take anything more of the church, the school or their teachings. The day she left, she said she’d been given 30 swats with a wooden paddle for forgetting to wash a frying pan.

“I ended up being on drugs, living on the street, working the street, even, from the age of 12,” Robinson said.

She finally returned home at 14, she said, pregnant with her oldest son.

Robinson said her return home was what finally helped her mother gain the nerve to stand up to the church. When Robinson came home, she said her mother was instructed to throw her out by church officials.

The impact of the church and its leadership has left a permanent mark on their lives, Robinson said.

“What would my life trajectory have been if I hadn’t experienced that?” she wondered.

Even now, Robinson said there is more to the church that she hasn’t shared publicly. She said she wants to see the whole truth come out eventually through the Saskatoon Police Service’s investigation.

Seeking healing

Robinson said she knows her mother still struggles with what her family was subjected to during their time at Christian Centre Church and Academy. She said her mother is still very religious, however, which sometimes hampers their relationship.

“Everything is about God. We can’t really go to her for normal motherly advice, because her go-to is to pray about it and talk to God,” Robinson said.

Robinson said she wants everyone to be able to find healing after the alleged abuse so many claimed to have endured at the church and school.

She said she decided to join the class-action lawsuit, seeking damages from Mile Two Church Inc. and almost two dozen individuals connected to the church and school.

“What happened, happened,” Robinson said. “This settlement could change my life, my kids lives.”

But despite intending to join the lawsuit, the mom of four said she doesn’t want to see the school shut down.

“I came to peace with the past a long time ago. I faced the people who were scary and I’ve seen that there has been change,” she said.

Instead, Robinson said hopes the people responsible for the alleged abuse in the church and school are held to account.

–Editor’s note: A line in this piece has been corrected to reflect that Robinson has not yet joined the lawsuit.