AtypicallyRecovering

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Preface- Some people know her as Peggy Claude-Pierre. She uses the name Elle Cordonier on her European phone- so has 2 names. The one I learned about after she moved out of Canada to live in Europe full time is a form of her given name at birth. But why would someone need 2 names ? In my opinion, it’s only needed to run from something. And after learning what I have, that makes sense. She’s had issues in Canada and various European countries. Using a simple variation of her birth name keeps her off of the radar by not using her better known infamous name of Peggy Claude-Pierre.
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I was a patient of Peggy’s for 3 1/2 years, and had first heard of her on 20/20 – a news show that aired for decades- after getting back from a shoddy “treatment center” in California in 1996. I thought she truly ‘got it’ about what is behind anorexia, and was stunned at how she understood the 2 ‘voices’ in someone’s head (and I do believe she does, but goes off-script much of the time if one goes by the content of her book ” The Secret Language of Eating Disorders”). By the time I relapsed again in 2021, I’d heard of the controversy around her and Montreaux Clinic, but didn’t read the provincial ruling about the clinic’s license, or the McClintock book, written by a investigative journalist who truly did her homework. I wanted to make up my own mind. I read both of those sources about 9 months ago when I was getting more and more frustrated with how things were going, and was horrified. It wasn’t my imagination. Peggy isn’t what or who she wants people to think she is.

Just prior to finding out about the man who was going to impact my time with Peggy, she asked me to pay double for 6 months to do more intensive contact, and I agreed, hoping it would shave time off of the back end of my therapy. A week or so after that, Peggy had gone back to Europe where she was having some kind of gathering of a few patients, and there were a couple of weeks of absolutely no contact. I had no idea what had happened. Finally, I got in contact with another one of her patients that I’d been in regular contact with, and she told me about the new guy. I was angry, and at the same time, wanted to be flexible.

When I finally did get to speak to Peggy, I told her that if it would be better to postpone my intensive until the guy was more stable I was OK with that (she told me he arrived at his lowest ever weight which was very low, but wasn’t his actual arrival weight – creativity with the truth was common) she said no, she could do both. She did not. Once that double payment amount was over, and I didn’t have more than the original amount we had agreed to, contact got more sporadic, but still enough to think she was still involved in my recovery. I was wrong. She did reduce the monthly amount when I told her how much I was struggling financially, until I told her in September 2024 that I was going to be out of therapy funds at the end of 2024, and the requests for money for personal reasons started up, immediately.

She spent about a year (what she told me) recording her books that haven’t come out, though she mentions one in an old blog of hers dating back to 2013. She’d tell me she’d send a food list “tomorrow”, and it took a year to get that food list. From an eating disorder therapist. I had to wing it. I should have stopped, and it will take time to forgive myself for being so stupid. My self-esteem tanked, because of the self-esteem ‘queen’ finding me worth less of her time than I needed to get well. I desperately wanted to be a success story, and I now feel more like I was a peripheral part of a cult that serves Peggy’s purposes. There was a therapy website that she wanted me to ‘invest in’, and told me that Louis Vuitton wanted to buy it (Really? Not buying that one since she never mentioned high end luggage or gourmet foods in her theoretical projects), and there were five books were supposedly in the works. I was told that the first one would be published in September 2022 during our first phone call, but it wasn’t. Then I was told she was looking for a publisher- so which was it? She had a publisher ready to publish in a couple of months, or she didn’t have a publisher? I wonder if the books even exist, past her first one that came out in the late 90s.

I was heartbroken. I’d felt ‘disposable’ to Peggy for way over 2 years, and didn’t want to believe I’d been SO wrong about someone who initially seemed so ‘good’. But the ultimate absolute disregard for my well-being was worse than any abuse I’d gone through in the past, because she knew my history, and ‘played’ with my emotions by making it known that I didn’t mean enough to have the integrity to do what she said she would, and never seemed to care that I was still struggling where she ‘left’ me for new patients. She knew the vulnerable trauma to target. There are five stages to her ‘wellness’ journey. I never got past the early parts of Stage 2, and she knew it. I believe that she thought that if she blew me off, but told me of making food for patients living with her (gets past any pesky health department rules) or visiting patients in other countries that I’d magic up more money. She knew I could barely walk out into the kitchen without crying- but made a point to tell me of others who literally lived with her and had things handed to them without any of the struggle of having to wing it at home alone.

She knew I’d sold my childhood home AND that I got less for it than I’d put into it. I believe she felt SHE deserved more of that money, but had NO clue what my expenses were, and frankly it was none of her business. I paid what I agreed to in the messages leading up to her ‘accepting’ me (she wanted to see my Facebook page before accepting me as a ‘friend’- and saw that I’d been working on packing up the house so I could sell it). When I told her I’d paid her what I’d set aside for therapy with her and would be stopping after the end of December 2024, she literally begged “give me one more year”, without the monthly fee that had been renegotiated when she found out I was paying while being on disability. There were more requests for money in the early months of 2025, and when I said no after she told me to ‘sell everything you can’, contact went from breadcrumbing to a call once a month, and not seeing messages for days- but she wanted control over food again. But there was absolutely no ‘therapy’. She thought that her listening to me on phone calls WAS therapy- but with no explanation of how I was supposed to get well.

If you hope to get help from Peggy Claude-Pierre, know that at some point, she will get quiet w/o warning, beginning the emotional ‘game’ (cruel game) of ‘breadcrumbing’ (see other post below that is dedicated to this). She’ll see someone else to ‘save’ who is eager to send her money for the hope of help and that means there isn’t time for those she already has. It seems it eventually happens to a lot of her patients. When money runs out, contact changes drastically. This is a pattern. I was given someone else’s ‘spot’… and an Aussie man got mine (and that’s not his fault). It’s the beginning of ‘grooming’ to stay loyal to her. The first 6 months are OK (unless living with her, then it’s 24/7 BS ad nauseam), then things change.
https://escapethechaos.blog/2025/10/11/how-i-was-breadcrumbed-during-eating-disorder-therapy/

Six months is just enough time to think she is invested for the long haul, but she simply moves on no matter how much or how little someone is actually “getting it”. She stopped regularly checking in about what I was eating, and never did explain how I was going to change my thinking- there were no solutions- just socially-toned phone conversations. Getting well wasn’t discussed. It’s about her getting some needs met, as well as people desperate for help just getting cast aside.

There never was %100 cure rate. The Barbara McClintock book “Anorexia’s Fallen Angel” goes into great detail about what things were like at the Montreaux Clinic in Victoria, BC, Canada, where Peggy’s ‘care’ first came into question, and ultimately resulted in the clinic shutting down. The provincial health department found enough problems that were risky to patients to revoke their license. Peggy got around that by ‘hiding’ patients in hotels and people’s homes, which wasn’t legal from what I understand. She also lied under oath. Some did get better if she deemed them worthy of enough of her time, and that’s how she still operates, at least from the outside looking at how, and with whom, she allocates her time. Others got her time ‘leftovers’ (if any). I was in that latter category, though she said she loved me like a daughter… if that’s true, maybe that sheds light on why her daughters got sick. I don’t know. I just hope she treated them with more compassion for their emotional well-being. She can travel to various countries to visit patients in their homes, but it’s too hard to pick up the phone.
https://www.ebooks.com/en-us/book/1061508/anorexia-s-fallen-angel/barbara-mcclintock/

https://www.islandhealth.ca/sites/default/files/2018-10/decision-montreaux-facility-eating-disorder.pdf

You’ll hear all kinds of medical things that don’t make sense, to explain her not calling or absences (to this former RN of 35 years; worked 20 before my body broke, then became the family ‘go to’ for medical info and translations of lab work and doctor-speak). She’ll say she’ll call, but the calls don’t come after she’s gotten her ‘target’ comfortable with how she does things, with good contact initially. There was no explanation (or even acknowledging) some of the missed calls, or that someone else was more important (different language, same impact). There is no actual ‘therapy’, only social conversation. I could get that on a bus. There are several (according to her) chronic health issues- but she told me in the first phone call that she was healthy. For being well into her later decades, she goes all over the place, so is she well enough for some patients to get help, or is she full of crap ?

I’d seen one documentary on the Portuguese clinic she had several years ago. She’d also had patients come to Rome, and there are links to Malta and The Netherlands. More recently, it’s been Cyprus, Switzerland, and regular trips to London and Belgium to see patients who could afford concierge ‘care’. She was going back and forth to Canada for a while, always saying she’d call. Nope. She’s had several off-shore accounts. There have been business dealings in the Netherlands according to an online offshore website (and there are many reasons for offshore accounts, but then why all of the requests for more money from someone who has no more?). She was well enough to send me photos of walking along the Thames in London, but couldn’t pick up the phone. I called her out on that one, and got reamed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USUzR9q1kGE&t=50s

There is another Portuguese documentary by a news program there that was horrifying, about Ira Nikkoy, a teenager who died from low blood sugar complications that weren’t treated in time (I’m not sure of all of the details, as I was picking up on Portuguese words that were similar to Spanish words, that I do know). Peggy is still wanted for questioning there about this (there was a 2nd death also mentioned; several who had been to Montreaux died young as well). Peggy and another woman who worked for Peggy spoke in English. Peggy’s tone is one of apathetic disregard, with her attorney sitting off to the side, when she was asked if she felt responsible; she said no. After knowing what my time was like with her, I think that’s more her true self than the kind eating-disorder whisperer that she seemed to be on 20/20. It’s been so painful to realize that I gave so much to getting well, and paid nearly $33,000 USD to be left worse off than I started with Peggy. Now I have to recover from her as well. But $33K wasn’t enough for me to be worth Peggy’s time. I am on a fixed income from disability, and that’s what I had to spend, which she agreed to up front, but later asked for money several times for personal and family expenses. That’s never OK from a therapist.
https://arquivos.rtp.pt/conteudos/sexta-as-9-243/

I’d read the online stuff too late. PLEASE, believe the McClintock book, YouTube comments, and the court ruling from Victoria, BC Canada. I was also yelled at a couple of times (once over a difference of opinion that got a “What the fuck is wrong with you?”- from a “therapist”- with no credentials). I was stupid to stay for 3 1/2 years, after initially feeling something off after 6 months (when my ‘spot’ was given to someone new, and she’d asked for double payment from me for the same time period). But she’d say she was the victim of something- never saying she does anything wrong. No acknowledging how much pain she inflicts. No actual therapy. The ‘unconditional’ love is very conditional… on who has money. I just feel like a gullible moron for believing her. At this point, I don’t really believe anything she said to me. I had been one of her biggest supporters, and defended her online. This has been a very painful and expensive lesson. I wish I’d never even thought to contact her. After feeling so much more worthless than I thought I was, I understand why some patients 86’d themselves after leaving Peggy’s care.

https://www.jezebel.com/the-story-of-peggy-claude-pierre-the-eating-disorder-h-1826149382