Keith Raniere

Don't Call It a Cult: The Shocking Story of Keith Raniere and the Women of NXIVM
by Sarah Berman
Published 19 Apr 2021

Like Salzman, Mack admitted to forced labor, extortion, and obscuring the real purpose and leadership of DOS. “Specifically, I concealed Keith Raniere’s role as the head of DOS and characterized DOS as a women’s only organization, knowing that Keith Raniere was the head of the organization…. “I am very sorry for the victims of this case. I am also very sorry for the harm that I caused to my family. They are good people who I have hurt through my misguided adherence to Keith Raniere’s teachings.” Allison Mack thanked the judge, the lawyers, and her family. “I know that I am and will be a better person as a result of this,” she said

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Them 9 – Sunk Costs PART 2: SOME VERY POWERFUL HUMAN BEINGS 10 – Mission in Mexico 11 – The Heist 12 – What the Bleep 13 – “Cracked Open” 14 – An Ethical Breach 15 – Golden Boy 16 – His Holiness 17 – Spy Games 18 – Room PART 3: A PLACE OF SURVIVAL 19 – The Act 20 – Slave Number One 21 – The Call 22 – The Vow 23 – “This Is Not the Army” 24 – “Master, Please Brand Me” 25 – Reckoning 26 – “Me Too” 27 – In Character Epilogue: Vanguard on Trial Appendix: Letter to Raniere Acknowledgments Notes Index Photo Insert CAST OF CHARACTERS Adrian* Brother of Marianna, Daniela, and Camila. All three sisters were groomed for sexual relationships with Keith Raniere at a young age. Adriana* Mother of Marianna, Daniela, Adrian, and Camila. Moved the family from Mexico to Albany starting in 2002. Enforced Daniela’s confinement in 2010. Agnifilo, Marc Lead defense lawyer for Keith Raniere. Ames, Anthony Actor and longtime NXIVM coach. Husband of Sarah Edmondson. Aviv, Juval Private investigator hired by NXIVM. Banks, Teah Girlfriend of Mark Vicente when he joined NXIVM in 2005.

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Testified against Raniere and pleaded to racketeering charges for her role in secret sorority. Salzman, Nancy Hypnotherapist who cofounded NXIVM with Keith Raniere in 1998. Convicted of racketeering. Snyder, Kristin Disappeared after a NXIVM intensive in 2003. Friends say she suffered a psychological break. Disappearance was ruled a suicide. Target of hacking and spying. Sutton, Michael Son of wealthy New Jersey parents. Lost $1.3 million to Keith Raniere’s commodity trading bets. Subject of failed intervention by cult expert Rick Alan Ross. Sutton, Morris and Rochelle Wealthy New Jersey couple hired Rick Alan Ross for an intervention in 2002.

Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, the Cult That Bound My Life
by Sarah Edmondson
Published 16 Sep 2019

I got into NXIVM because I wanted to help others, to evolve the world and live and work among an empowered community of women. If Mark Vicente had asked me on that cruise, “Would you like Keith Raniere’s initials burned into your flesh?” I would have run the other way. But twelve years later, by developing the support I needed to come forward and share what happened, I stopped more women from being branded. I’ll never know how many women gained the information they needed to end their association with Keith Raniere because I, along with Mark, Bonnie, Nippy, and Catherine Oxenberg, had come forward with what we knew. Each of us, including Frank Parlato, Barry Meier, and many other journalists over the years have played an important role in exposing the darkness behind NXIVM’s front of “personal development.”

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There is some quiet solace in all this, and that is the positive parts of NXIVM I’ve taken with me. Although it was through an unexpected and hellish experience, Keith Raniere was indeed a “master teacher who brought my issues to light.” Don’t get me wrong, I am not paying tribute to him. He was right about one thing: “character is only character when it’s tested.” By risking it all to end DOS and stop the continued abuse, I had an opportunity to become the type of person I’ve always wanted to be. While Keith Raniere sits in prison, I hope he still believes that each of us causes everything that happens to us. I hope he is wondering how he created his situation.

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My blindfold was nothing more than a thin black napkin, most likely from the former Italian restaurant that NXIVM’s resident heiress, Clare Bronfman, bankrolled to serve as the company’s exclusive, members-only clubhouse. In the organization, we all refer to the venue by the name Apropos. NXIVM’s executives chose the spot for its location, just a four-minute drive from the Albany, New York, suburb of Clifton Park—home to our founder Keith Raniere and the upper ranks of his team, including Lauren. Physical proximity is crucial to Keith, and all the women who work as senior-level coaches in NXIVM’s headquarters live nearby: Lauren; her mom, Nancy (the president of NXIVM); Allison Mack; Nicki Clyne (whom I enrolled shortly after I joined twelve years ago); and over a dozen more.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
Published 14 Jun 2021

For people struggling with their mental health, who haven’t found a solution through traditional therapy and pharmaceuticals, her brand of occultic psychobabble creates the impression that she is tapped into a power higher than science. (This marriage of medical jargon with supernatural-speak is nothing new, either; it’s a strategy problematic gurus from Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard to NXIVM’s Keith Raniere have employed for decades. In the social media age, a throng of shady online oracles have followed in Swan’s footsteps, using this speech style to capitalize on Western culture’s resurrected interest in the New Age. We’ll meet some of her controversial contemporaries in part 6.) Swan hasn’t caused any mass suicides, but at least two of her mentees have taken their own lives.

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This was a bastardization of a key Buddhist teaching, which says to “drive all blames into one.” Essentially, it means that if you’re experiencing something negative, you can’t change the outside world, so you have to look inward to solve the conflict. (So many shady New Age gurus—ranging from NXIVM’s Keith Raniere to Teal Swan–type self-help guides—warp similar teachings to fault followers for their own mistreatment under the guise of “internal work” and “overcoming fears.”) “What people struggle with,” Abbie continued, “and it’s a huge philosophy question in Buddhism, is how do you challenge social injustice?”

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Engrams are stored in the reactive mind and require auditing if the PC has any hopes of going clear (and if you can understand that sentence, mazel tov, you’re on your way to speaking fluent Scientology). The linguistic world Hubbard created was so legit-sounding—so inspired and comprehensive—that it sparked a host of copycat “cult leaders.” NXIVM founder Keith Raniere lifted all kinds of terms straight from Scientology, like “suppressives,” “tech,” and “courses,” as well as illusory, pseudo-academic acronyms, like EM (exploration of meaning, NXIVM’s version of auditing) and DOS (Dominus Obsequious Sororium, Latin for “Dominant Submissive Sorority,” a secret all-female club within NXIVM composed of so-called “masters” and sex-trafficked “slaves”).

Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It
by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris
Published 10 Jul 2023

More likely they were a hard-core, committed subset who remained after Camping said more and more implausible things, up to identifying the precise date and time when hell on earth would commence. Teachers laugh about the Doonesbury comic in which a professor is dismayed to realize that his students will unquestioningly scribble down whatever he says, no matter how outrageous it becomes. Cult leaders would see this cartoon as a recipe for success.9 Keith Raniere was the founder of NXIVM, a multilevel marketing organization that offered self-improvement courses but became infamous for enticing women into master-slave relationships and branding their bodies with a special logo. He proclaimed himself the smartest person in the world, so anyone willing to follow him would already regard him with awe.

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Trudeau, Doonesbury, January 27, 1985 [https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1985/01/27]. 10. Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison after convictions for racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, attempted sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy [https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/nxivm-leader-keith-raniere-sentenced-120-years-prison-racketeering-and-sex-trafficking]. The NXIVM case is detailed in several sources, including the 2020–2022 HBO documentary series The Vow [https://www.hbo.com/the-vow], Season 1 (2018) of the CBC investigative podcast Uncover [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover], and a series of New York Times articles starting with B.

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The NXIVM case is detailed in several sources, including the 2020–2022 HBO documentary series The Vow [https://www.hbo.com/the-vow], Season 1 (2018) of the CBC investigative podcast Uncover [https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover], and a series of New York Times articles starting with B. Meier, “Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded,” New York Times, October 17, 2017 [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/nyregion/nxivm-women-branded-albany.html]. Toni Natalie’s memoir of her membership in the group (written with Chet Hardin) is The Program: Inside the Mind of Keith Raniere and the Rise of NXIVM (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2019); her quotation is from p. 10. Note that multilevel marketing organizations are often described as pyramid schemes, which are commonly associated with deceptive business practices. 11. Similar tactics have been employed to interfere with online recruiters for terrorist organizations.

It's Not TV: The Spectacular Rise, Revolution, and Future of HBO
by Felix Gillette and John Koblin
Published 1 Nov 2022

“That last factor enables I’ll Be Gone in the Dark to interrogate the reasons why this genre is so enticing, especially to women, something that other TV true crime has rarely, if ever, done.” In the months that followed, HBO would go on to air documentaries investigating the alleged misdeeds of director Woody Allen, the music manager Ike Turner, and the NXIVM multilevel marketer and convicted sex trafficker Keith Raniere. * * * • • • THE ON-AIR SHIFT toward more female protagonists could be traced back, in part, to the directive made in 2016 by Casey Bloys to diversify HBO’s lineup. In the years since, HBO had ushered in the most female-centric stretch of programming in the network’s history. By the end of the decade, HBO began airing Euphoria, a teenage drama about the intoxicated misadventures of Rue Bennett (Zendaya) and her pack of synapse-burning friends; Divorce, a breakup comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker; A Black Lady Sketch Show from comedian Robin Thede; and My Brilliant Friend, the adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novels about female friendship.