Absolutely Everything You Need to Know About the NXIVM Trial
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In October 2017, New York Times published a report detailing years-long, heinous abuses against women within NXIVM (pronounced “nexium”), an Albany-based “self-help organization.” The Times piece depicted NXIVM as cult-like, run by Keith Raniere, known as “Vanguard,” and his number two, Allison Mack, an actor best known for her role as Chloe Sullivan in the television series Smallville. In the year-and-a-half since, allegations against NXIVM have grown to include trafficking, sexual abuse, starvation diets, and blackmail. On Tuesday, May 7, Raniere will stand trial, alone, in Brooklyn, where is he charged with forced labor, wire fraud conspiracy, human trafficking, sex trafficking, and possession of child pornography (two nude images of a 15-year-old.) He is also accused of having had sexual relationships with two girls under the age of 18. He has pleaded not guilty to the child exploitation charges.
NXIVM’s alleged abuses span decades. Below is a comprehensive primer covering the timeline, major actors, and events leading up to Raniere’s trial.
What is NXIVM?
According to NXIVM’s website (which has since been deactivated), the organization promised participants a “new ethical understanding that allows us to build an internal civilization and have it manifest in the external world,” through “seminars” and “Executive Success Programs” or ESPs. It was founded in 1998 by Raniere and former nurse Nancy Salzman, who acted as the company’s president. Prior to NXIVM, Raniere founded Consumers’ Buyline in 1990, a multi-level marketing company that, just three years later, was revealed to be a pyramid scheme. It was shut down in 1993, according to Vanity Fair, after being “investigated by regulators in 20 states and sued by New York’s attorney general.”
NXIVM was cut from a similar cloth. Financed by Sara and Clare Bronfman, heiresses to the Seagram liquor fortune, the organization ran life-coaching workshops that, in 2010, ran about $7,500 each. Vanity Fair described them in 2010 as being “based on an amalgam of therapeutic techniques, including hypnosis and Neuro-linguistic Programming, or NLP, a controversial behavior-modification regimen… repackaged—along with a moral twist, that by becoming fully empowered one could help create a more ethical world—into something called Rational Inquiry by Keith Raniere.”
In 2006, Edgar Bronfman, Sara and Clare’s billionaire father, called NXIVM a “cult” in Forbes Magazine. The Times’ recent report built on this characterization, describing not just a self-help organization moonlighting as a pyramid scheme, but also an alleged “sex cult,” complete with “slaves.”
What is DOS?
NXIVM grew much larger than its Albany-based headquarters (according to the Times, “an estimated 16,000 people in the United States and Mexico” paid for NXIVM courses), but centered in the New York state location was a secret wing called DOS, short for “dominus obsequious sororium,” Latin for “master over the slave women.” Reportedly, selected women would forfeit blackmail material to ensure their silence, usually in the form of pornographic pictures or financial information, referred to as “collateral.” They were also allegedly forced into “near-starvation diets” to satisfy the sexual needs of Raniere. (Raniere referred to DOS publicly as “a sorority.”) These are the same women who, when initiated, claimed that they were branded with cauterizing rods (which Raniere called a “tribute”), referred to as “slaves,” and told to stop dating to become available to their “master” at all times. This alleged sexual coercion, per the Times, resulted in multiple abortions.
One month after the Times report, rumors began circulating that Mack was somehow involved in DOS, and acted as a key recruiter, finding women for Raniere’s “sorority.” In April 2018, Mack was arrested for her involvement in the alleged trafficking circle. She was accused of recruiting victims by telling them they were engaging in a “women-only organization that would empower them and eradicate purported weaknesses that the NXIVM curriculum taught were common in women.” She pleaded not guilty. Two weeks later, she was released on house detention with electronic monitoring to her parents home in Los Alamitos, California and her bail set was at $5 million. In May 2018, it was reported that Mack came up with the branding system because she believed tattoos didn’t seem severe enough. According to reports, she was second in command at DOS. Raniere was the leader of NXIVM, and her “master,” but she was also a “master” herself.