Leader of NXIVM sex cult gets 120-year prison sentence
Her voice trembling, the witness, identified only as Camila, recalled Tuesday the precise date that she was sexually abused by Keith Raniere, leader of a self-improvement company called NXIVM that prosecutors have described as a sex cult.
It was Sept. 18, 2005, she said in her victim statement. She was 15, and he was 45.
The relationship lasted 12 years, Camila said, with Raniere expecting her to be available for sex at all hours. He ordered her to weigh less than 100 pounds and directed her to get an abortion. She said she tried to kill herself once.
Camila was the first of 15 victims who gave statements at Raniere’s sentencing Tuesday, where he was facing a life sentence for sex trafficking and other crimes. Raniere received a 120-year sentence from a judge on Tuesday.
Raniere, 60, had promised a path to happiness, seducing successful and wealthy people including those who felt they lacked a higher purpose in life. His company offered self-empowerment workshops that were taken by Hollywood celebrities and business leaders.
But underneath the surface, Raniere was a puppet master controlling a cultlike criminal enterprise, prosecutors revealed at his trial last year. Some women in NXIVM were forced to have sex with Raniere and even branded with his initials in a secret ceremony. A jury convicted Raniere in June 2019 after a six-week trial. Prosecutors charged him with racketeering, applying a statute that had been used to dismantle the Mafia families in New York. Besides sex trafficking, the jury found him guilty of crimes that included child pornography, forced labour, identity theft and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors have said in court papers that Raniere deserves a life sentence, a punishment typically reserved for cases involving deaths or murders.
Raniere’s lawyers argued that nobody was “shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, slapped or even yelled at.” This was not the typical organized crime case, and Raniere should get no more than 15 years in prison, they contended.
To this day, Raniere has many supporters who believe he was wrongfully convicted and insist that every activity in NXIVM was among consenting adults.