Untold: Opus Dei - The Retreat, Ep. 3: Jaqui’s Story

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Jaqui was 22 when she signed up to a 10-day Goenka retreat. It was the last known thing she did before she died. This is Jaqui’s story.For support or more information about adverse meditation experiences, take a look at the Cheetah House website.If you are in need of urgent mental health support, please contact your local emergency services or reach out to a mental health helpline, such as the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US or Samaritans in the UK.Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This series discusses suicide and mental health. Please take care while listening and seek support if you need it. So today I'm back in the van. I'm going to work on building out the shelf behind the bed. Also while we're at it, here's a more like... Jackie loved her van. It was a camper van, one that she'd retrofitted herself into a miniature house on wheels. She'd post updates about her van and her life on Facebook.

But yeah. When she was 22, Jackie decided to drive her van from her home in Ontario to Western Canada, as far as Vancouver. It was a huge distance, more than 4,000 kilometres. She stopped off at skate parks as she went, and she sold her tattoo designs to people she met on the road. She finally made it to British Columbia in May of 2022, just a few months later. When she got there, Jackie found work tree planting and working on a farm. Then she signed up to do a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Merit, British Columbia. Jackie wasn't new to meditation, but she'd never been to a Gwenka retreat before.

She'd heard a bit about them through friends and family, and decided she wanted to give it a try herself. When she showed up at the centre, the volunteers that checked her in took her phone and the keys to her van. And Jackie began her 10 days of silent meditation. The Gwenka retreat was the last known thing Jackie did before she died. This is the story of what happened. From the special investigations team at the Financial Times, this is the retreat. The retreat.

The retreats. Come out of all your bondages, all your miseries, to enjoy real peace, real harmony, real happiness. Episode 3, Jackie. In the last episode, I learned about the damaging side effects of intensive meditation. And I learned that these troubling experiences were much more widespread than what the twin sisters Emily and Sarah had encountered. I found out that although most participants leave the retreats feeling okay,

and some even feel euphoric, lots of people have experienced sheer terror during Gwanko retreats around the world. These people had certainly been harmed. So my next question was, how far does this harm go? And what's the ultimate consequence if it's not addressed? Jackie as a child was very inquisitive and very strong willed, and that pretty much is a theme throughout her life.

Jackie's mom and dad, Natalie and Lee, contacted me earlier last year, saying they wanted to share their daughter's story. When I first spoke with them, their immense love for Jackie was palpable. I'm trying to think of a favorite moment. memory of Jackie. No, I can imagine it'd be hard to narrow it down. It is. She had a big piece of cardboard in her van that said, smile or I think on the other side I said, have a nice day, and she would just drive around with that. Just to try and connect with people. Jackie was born in Toronto, Ontario. I think probably one of her most defining characteristics

physically was her crazy, beautiful curly hair. She had just ringlets. She had them from when she was a baby. Natalie and Lee describe her as someone who was incredibly sweet-natured from birth. Little giggles and huge smile. She was a happy kid.

She was joyful. Her parents separated when she was nine, although they remained friends and co-parented their kids amicably. Jackie was, in many respects, gifted. She had a beautiful singing voice. She was bilingual in French and English. English, she was good at sport and showed real potential in art.

As a teenager, like many adolescents, Jackie went through a trickier period. She struggled with anxiety and at times fell out with her parents. But who doesn't? By her late teens, she seemed to be coming into her own. She had also discovered a new passion, skateboarding. I think it was in high school that she went to a skateboarder. Waterloo and she kind of looked around and she was like, there are no girls here. It's all guys. So she was like, okay, I'm going to give this a go.

By her early 20s, she had grown into a striking young woman, tall and athletic looking. And she didn't just smile. She beamed. Pretty much all through high school, she straightened her hair every single day, but she had finally come back to loving that curly hair of hers. And when she smiled, her whole face just lit up. Jackie had enrolled in the University of Ottawa to study fine art, but she developed another passion, tattoo design, as well as working on her own artwork in her spare time. After studying for a couple of years at university, Jackie decided to drop out.

She said, Mom, if I want to do art, I feel like I don't need to get a fine arts degree. And I said, that's fair. In 2022, Jackie set off on her big adventure. She had picked up some DIY skills from her dad and her stepdad and renovated an old van to become her home for the next few months. Hello, I am doing the electrical today. I finally feel confident enough to actually start wiring everything. She did an amazing job.

I was incredibly impressed by the amount of detail and the workmanship. Jackie started driving in March. The next few months went well. She kept in regular contact with her family while she was away. She headed first to Ottawa to say her goodbyes to all of her friends, and then she made her way out west. She drove by herself. It's a long drive.

I was always amazed that she just went and did it. In May, Jackie reached British Columbia and signed up to do a three-month stint. planting trees. It was difficult, physical work, but she thrived there. She loved tree planting. I mean, tree planting doesn't exactly attract the mainstream population, but they all loved each other.

It was just a really, a really happy community. She couldn't wait to go back this summer. That was her plan, was to go back and plant again. When the season ended, she spent a month in Vancouver, doing odd jobs and hanging out with other artists. It was around this time that Jackie started preparing to go on a Guenka retreat. She was so excited about going to that retreat. And she just, I think, thought that it was what she needed to do next to kind of get to that next, I don't know, spiritual level or what.

She was a very spiritual person. She had been meditating daily, I would say, for a couple of years. She found it, you know, it really helped. to just calm her. And she knew it was going to be hard, but she was never a person to shy away from a challenge. During the application process for the retreat, Jackie had to complete some questionnaires,

probing her mental health. Her mum shared Jackie's responses with me. I won't go into full detail, but I will share the parts of the interaction that seemed relevant to me. In one email, Jackie was asked to provide further information about panic attacks she said she had previously experienced.

Jackie replied that she had experienced three panic attacks in the last two years, triggered by, quote, difficult life situations. This included a recent car accident. She wrote, quote, I use time and breathing to let it calm down and talk to a close friend during the situation. In another email, she was asked about an eating disorder she had had when she was a teenager.

She told the centre she was now healthy and eat slots. The most striking email from the centre focused on Jackie's earlier admission that she had, at some point in her life, experienced suicide ideation. I was taken aback by the bluntness of the centre's response.

Dear Jacqueline, thank you for the information you've provided. We're continuing to process your application and need some additional information information. Please provide details about the following. Your suicide ideation. Frequency, when, how you handle them, vague or definite plans. Jackie's reply stated that she had contemplated suicide seven years earlier when she was 14 years old, but she added, I have not had any issues with suicidal thought in seven years. No considerations and ablytable.

Absolutely no action. Jackie was accepted onto the meditation program. A few days before Jackie entered the retreat center, she posted an update to friends and family on a Facebook page she used to share her van adventures. It included photos of sunsets, huge pumpkins, flowers and mountains. In one photo, brightly colored peppers char grill on a barbecue. Jackie is grinning joyfully in the background.

Her eyes bunched closed and one arm flung towards the sky. In her Facebook post, she wrote, Hey folks, here's an update. I've been on an organic farm for the past week, and it's probably one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I've been staying in a cabin on a hillside with a very cute setup. It has a full-sized bed, so I don't have to sleep diagonally. As much as I love the van,

This was a nice change. Here are pictures of where I'm staying, some dogs and the folks here. I'll be leaving in a couple of days to do 10 days of a PASNA in Merritt, BC. Then I'm off to the west coast of the US to get to California, after a brief visit in Vancouver. We'll be back after the break. Jackie arrived at the Merritt BC Centre on September 21, 2022. The location was remote and surrounded by Woodland. for miles and miles.

What happened over the next few days was, for a long time, a complete mystery to Jackie's parents. She sat down to the same schedule that happens at Gwanker retreats all over the world. Ten hours of daily meditation starting at 4 a.m. No dinner, talking or eye contact. And she watched old tapes of S.N. Guenka's teachings at night. In days after Jackie started the retreat, Natalie, Jackie's mom, noticed she had a miss call on her phone, and a message, which said, Hi Natalie, I'm on the management team at the Vipasna Meditation Center, that Jacqueline enrolled in a 10-day course. She left your name and number as her emergency contact. Jackie left the course during the night last night,

and I'm reaching out to ensure that she's safe. Please call me. Natalie called the center straight back. She says the conversation with the retreat volunteer was pretty relaxed. They said, we're reaching out to let you know that she didn't come for breakfast. We're not sure where she is. We haven't heard from her. So I was like, oh, well, that seems strange, but maybe not completely out of character for her. If she was really having a hard time, maybe she just left and decided to, you know,

remove herself from that situation and, you know, she's in her van. I'm sure she's fine. Natalie tried messaging and calling Jackie that day, but couldn't get through to her. That wasn't completely out of the norm for Jackie. She had never been someone who was glued to her phone. Natalie tried Jackie's best friend as well, but they hadn't been in touch. At first, Natalie felt irritated that Jackie had gone off grid. But she was also getting increasingly concerned.

It was on my mind all day, and I think we were trying to call her and everything. There was no response. But I didn't really have a big red alarm bell yet. I remember we went out that night with friends. And I mentioned to them, I was like, it's a bit weird. I think I actually said I'm a little annoyed with Jackie. She's gone offline. She's not answering me, so, you know, gur.

But I kept checking my phone all night and, you know, nothing, nothing, nothing. The next day was a Saturday, and Natalie had planned to go on a hike with her husband. As they drove towards the trailhead, she contacted the retreat center again. I messaged or called the retreat on our way there and said, hey, like I still haven't heard from her, have you.

And that's when they came back and said, we're really, really concerned about her well-being. The retreat volunteers advised Natalie to call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, known locally as the RCMP to request a welfare check for Jackie, to officially say she had gone missing. Suddenly, Natalie became very alarmed. We were like, what the hell happened there?

What is going on here? The office admin person who had reached out to us got the assistant teacher on the phone with us, and all he basically said was she had a difficult day. She was crying. She was obviously struggling. And so we were like, we said, so you sent her to bed? And he said something along the lines of, well, we were going to work on it tomorrow. After speaking to Jackie's dad, Natalie called the police to let them know her daughter was missing.

She half expected or hoped the police would tell her she was being silly. Honestly, I fully expected he was going to call and be like, hey, you know, she hasn't been missing for like you know we'll look into it we'll keep an eye out but don't worry you know it's probably fine but that is not what he said he asked me a whole bunch of questions about her um you know what does she look like where she last seen does she have identifying marks things like that i remember i kept trying to say you know she's in this van this is what it looks like it's a white van it has a logo on it and he kept saying you know we'll talk about the van later we'll talk about the van later and so once he had actually gals

gathered all the information about Jackie. Then he said, okay, I'm going to give you an update on the van. And he said, we found the van. And she's not in it. And I think for me, that was, that was it. Everything just, like I just, I knew something was wrong. I thought I was going to throw up. I just was sitting there and I hung up. And Matt and I looked at each other, and I just went, oh, my God, she's not in the van. She's not in the van. So then, of course, you know, where is she? The police found Jackie's van, abandoned on the side of the road, 50 kilometers from the Gwankas Center. Jackie had seemingly run out of gas and then vanished.

She had literally disappeared without her trace. Her van, everything was in her van. everything, her phone, her laptop, everything, her keys, her wallet. Over the next week, an intensive search party was launched to find Jackie. Police, volunteers, friends and family all flocked to mayor at BC to scale the vast terrain, searching for her across miles and miles of woodland. Flyers with Jackie's beaming smile were posted all over the local area. Sniffer dogs were brought in.

It was an agonizing week for Jackie's parents. The week that Jackie was missing, that has to be like one of the most harrowing experiences I've ever been through. Actually, it is the most harrowing. To me, it was very concerning because I think that in having it explained that she left this retreat before she was supposed to be done. that was just not Jackie. Like that, Jackie was, again, that determination that, you know,

I'm going to see it through to the end, that just did not sit right. Horrifying scenarios played out in their minds about what could have happened to their daughter. At that time, we truly thought perhaps she had been abducted, or she had walked away and been hit by a vehicle and was injured. Did she go leave and she's hiking and now she's lost, or if she's hurt or, you know, there's wild animals out in BC, or if she was in an emotional state and was, you know, out of it, has she been abducted? The one thing that stood out was one of the constables, he said,

and, you know, I won't ever forget this, he said, the one thing you have to be prepared for is that we may never find her. And, yeah, that's just, just pretty. bringing chills to me right now as I talk to you. Because it was, yeah, I don't know. I think a part of me just died when he said that. The police did eventually find Jackie. On the eighth day of the search, her parents noticed a sudden commotion

among the police officers and search volunteers. Two of the lead detectives on the case sped off in a car. He came back and he, uh, he, uh, And this will be burned in my memory forever. But he basically kneeled down in front of Natalie. And he said, you know, we found her and she's deceased. And Natalie shrieked and collapsed. And I think I was almost, I think it was just so numb.

I was still hopeful that it was irrational, but obviously still hoping for the best outcome. And then they came back. And he said, you know, we found her body. And then I think the absolute worst was when he said that she died by suicide. It was just inconceivable. It was just unbelievable. and I remember I fell to the ground and it was awful. In the following months, while dealing with their grief, Natalie and Lee tried to piece together

what happened to Jackie during the retreat. Why did she leave two days early? What was going through her mind? And why did she take her own life? That final question will always be impossible to answer. Suicide is complex, and mental health organisations say that suicide can never be ascribed to any one cause. But the last thing Jackie did was sign up to a Guenka retreat. What happened during her final days there?

Did any of the volunteers know what Jackie was going through? Did they try to help her? This seems to be the most critical question in all of this. Jackie was under the care of the Gwenca volunteers. There were people overseeing the retreat. Jackie's family did manage to glean a picture of what happened to her during that retreat and Jackie's movements in the aftermath. The Canadian police or RCMP visited the Gwenco Meditation Centre in Merit

and interviewed the volunteers there. The police report, obtained by Jackie's family, states the following. staff stated Jacqueline was having a difficult time with classes, having constant emotional episodes. Episodes were not uncommon. The ongoing nature of them was unusual. Jacqueline appeared ashamed of something she had previously done, but did not disclose what it was. Jacqueline did not show signs of suicidal ideation or self-harmed thought. The police found that Jackie left the center between 9 p.m. on September 29th.

and ATM on the 30th. She drove away in her van until it apparently ran out of gas. It isn't clear what Jackie did next or when. Several members of the public reported seeing a young woman by a lake about 15 kilometres away from where her van was parked around September 30th.

Next to the lake, the police found a stack of stones with a pagan rune scratched onto one of them. Jackie's parents believe it may have been left there by their daughter. The coroner determined the date of Jackie's death as the 2nd of October 2022. These details matter. They mean that there could have been time to find Jackie and help her.

But Natalie feels like she was kept in the dark about her daughter's distress, until it was too late. She wasn't just struggling the day that this happened. She had actually been struggling for days. And they even said to the RCMP that it wasn't unusual for someone to struggle. It was unusual for someone to continually struggle for days. I had no idea the severity, the possible severity of the state that she might be in. I didn't have the urgency. I didn't know.

I didn't know. I guess it just deepens my sadness because it's, you know, is this something that could have been prevented? And more importantly, it sounds like it could have been prevented if, you know, if there was maybe some way to intervene. You know, you know the train's going off the track, but nobody bothered to slow down the train. So, and they had an opportunity to slow down the train. Jackie's parents believe many things went wrong during and after that retreat. There were so many opportunities to slow down the train. They feel that they should have been contacted when Jackie showed signs of distress mid-retreats.

That they should have been immediately told that the situation was serious. That the centre itself should have alerted the police. And that Jackie should not have been allowed to drive away from the centre in her van. when the retreat's own website states, participants will not have access to their vehicle for the duration of the course. Natalie is shocked. Jackie was given access to her van,

considering the extreme emotional state she was in during the retreat. Somehow she had her keys, and if your policy is to have people handing their keys, there's a reason for it, so enforce that policy. Natalie believes the Gwanker organization utterly failed her daughter, but she doesn't believe the local volunteers who ran the retreats Jackie attended are necessarily to blame.

In my heart, I have to believe that nobody helped her because nobody understood that she needed help. So I think there has to be more awareness for the people who are basically the front line at these things. Natalie thinks they didn't know any better. But she says the lack of awareness and inadequate emergency response protocols desperately need to change. When you're aware of the potential mental state that someone could be in, I think calling the RCMP without hesitation would be step one. I don't know what the difference would have been, but the story would have ended differently.

And I would like to think that one or the other of those things would have prevented her death by suicide. Less than three weeks after Jackie's body was found, her mum received a text message. It was from Jenny and Bob Jeffs, who said they were the lead teachers for the Merit Center. Here's some of what it said. Dear Natalie, your daughter Jackie has been constantly in our thoughts since learning that she was missing. We send our deepest heartfelt condolences to you and her family for your tragic loss. We never met her, but it would have been an honor to meet such a wonderful, young, light soul. It is so painfully tragic and sad that she didn't open up to anyone,

kept her suffering secret inside, and then decided to take her own life. Thank you so much for your openness and sharing, so that others may reach out for help, knowing they are deeply cared for. At the time, Natalie was too consumed by grief, to study the message closely. She sent a friendly reply. But looking back on it now, she's angry. Effectively, they're like,

oh, it's too bad she didn't share that she was suffering from mental illness and she decided to kill herself. That's just, to me, victim blaming, right? Like, it kind of doesn't matter if she was suffering in silence or if she wasn't. At the end of the day,

she died because your organization did not look out. after her. Lee believes the organization should have done more in the wake of Jackie's death. We know far more about suicide now than I ever wanted to know. And we know it in a way that is so horrendous. But I believe that if she hadn't gone to the meditation center, she'd still be with us. I do believe that. What Lee expected from the organization was not a big ask. Actually, it was quite simple. I think some accountability to say, hey, how can we, is there something that we can do to make sure this doesn't happen again?

And I think there's been nothing. Since losing Jackie, a family have tried to celebrate her life at every opportunity. So we have our ashes. with us when we travel and we spread them in all different places that we know she would have loved. Some places that she had been to, some places that she should have been to. And then I mark the GPS coordinates every time we do that. And someday I'll have a, hopefully, a map of the world showing all the places that Jackie is, that she will never be all at the same time, you know.

They retraced her steps across Canada. They spent Mother's Day weekend planting trees at the same site Jackie had spent three months. They visited the organic farm where she worked. On Jackie's birthday, in July, her parents and extended family gathered by a beautiful peninsula where Jackie had spent many childhood holidays. They watched the sunset together and had a champagne toast to Jackie. But her loss is still unbearable. She's gone.

The foreverness of the gone is what's really difficult to deal with, especially around those occasions and realizing that you'll forever be talking about your child in the past tense is really hard. Jackie was, you know, it's never again going to be Jackie is. Jackie was. And it's, that's really hard. I asked Natalie and Lee, what was Jackie like the last time you saw her? How did she seem in herself?

She was very, you know, very happy and animated when she was talking about her plans and what she wanted to do. They said she flew home for a wedding, just a couple of weeks before attending the Gwenka retreats. And at the time, she seemed happier than ever. I just remember her dancing all night.

Whether someone wanted to dance with her or not, she was on the dance floor all night. She seemed at peace, and I remember looking at her and going, you know, she's, this is the real Jackie that we're seeing now. You know, she's matured, she's kind of dealt with a lot of that, just, you know, teenage crap that we all go through. She feels like she's come around the bed, and she just seems really content with herself and happy.

She just seemed happy. After the wedding, Jackie stopped back at her mom's house. Natalie had no idea at the time that this would be their final encounter. She just popped by the house, just for quick hugs, grab some of her stuff. And, you know, I said, oh, Jack's, like, I didn't really get a chance to spend a lot of time with you. But she said, oh, don't worry, Mom, I'm coming home for three weeks at Christmas. It'll be great. We'll really spend some time together.

Lee ended up driving Jackie to the airport. She was running late and on the verge of missing her flight. She called her dad in a panic, asking for a lift. So luckily it was just local airport, but I said, well, don't worry. I'll pick you up, take you. And that was nice. I got to, at least that's a memory that I have. I was able to help her.

Can I get back to the airport, get back to get out west? And I got to hug her and tell her that I loved her. I couldn't help but wonder how a seemingly happy, enthusiastic young woman could end up unraveling so quickly. Jackie had clear, stated plans for her future. I thought back to her Facebook post about heading to the retreat and then on to California. for the winter.

How she planned to spend some quality time with her mum over Christmas. How she wanted to return to the tree planting site the following summer. I know that mental health issues are complicated and often poorly understood. And that even though Jackie's parents were not aware of any underlying mental health issues, that didn't mean their daughter wasn't struggling with something. But for me, the state of Jackie's mental health when she entered the retreat was in some ways unimportant. What I thought mattered was how the volunteers responded when Jackie was in distress. Did the staff know that meditation could have negative effects?

That meditators could be pushed so far, they might even contemplate taking their own life. And what was the Gwenca organization doing to mitigate these risks? If anything. That's next time on the final episode of The Retreat. She didn't want to leave. She kept saying she was supposed to die there. She was supposed to die there. She's horrible.

We had to practically carry her out. When you came out of the room after you'd first seen her, what did you say to the staff who were, present or what did they say to you? So what happened? What happened to her? They had no answers. They had no answers. The retreat is the first season from Untold,

a new Financial Times investigative podcast. It is produced by the Financial Times with Goat Rodeo. The series lead producers are Rebecca Seidel and Persis Love. Reporting by me, Madison Marriage, Writing by me, Megan Nadolsky and Rebecca Seidel. Story editing from Ian Enright. Executive producers for the Financial Times are Tofer Forges and Cheryl Brumley. Executive producers for Goat Rodeo are Ian Enright and Megan Nadolsky.

Mixing, editing and sound design by Rebecca Seidel. The series theme is Everyone Alive Once Answers by Kaleen. Additional music from Ian Enright, Rebecca Seidel and Blue Dot Sessions. Editorial and production assistants from Paul Afflalo, Joshua Gabbat Doyon, Petros Guillaume Passas, Andrew Georgiades, Siddharth Venkata Ramakrishna and Laura Clark. Thanks also to Alastamaki. If you've been affected by anything in this series, there are some useful resources highlighted in the show notes. And if you want to share a tip in relation to this podcast, please get in touch with me, Madison, at madison. Atmatterson.mdmarriage atft.com.

Thanks to you for listening. And thanks to the many sources who shared their very personal stories with me.