Self-improvement guru set to face ‘sex slave’ accusers
IT WAS called ‘collateral’ – nude photos and other embarrassing material that female members of an upstate New York selfimprovement group turned over to their ‘masters’ to ensure obedience, silence and sexual fealty to the organisation’s spiritual leader, Keith Raniere.
Now some former members of the group, NXIVM, are poised to break their vow of silence for the first time by testifying against Raniere, who has been compared to a cult leader. Opening arguments are set for Tuesday at a federal court in Brooklyn.
Among the more sensational allegations: Some women ‘slaves’ in a secret NXIVM sorority were branded with Raniere’s initials as part of their initiation. Others were threatened with the release of their collateral if they didn’t have unwanted sex with him.
Prosecutors have been tightlipped about who will testify about the sorority, called DOS, an acronym for a Latin phrase roughly translated as ‘Lord/ master of obedient women’. There’s speculation that former members of Raniere’s inner circle including TV actress Allison Mack and Lauren Salzman, the daughter of the group’s top executive, could take the witness stand against him.
United States (US) District Judge Nicholas Garaufis has yet to rule on a request by prosecutors
to protect the privacy of some alleged victims, referred to as ‘Jane Does’ in court papers, by only using their first names, nicknames or pseudonyms while they testify – measures needed to protect them from “potential harassment” and “undue embarrassment”.
Raniere, 58, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and other charges. His lawyers have opposed what they call “unusual and dubious” protections that would violate his constitutional right to confront his accusers. They add it would “unfairly signal to the jury that, in the court’s view, the witness is a victim of a sex crime who is in danger”.
DRAMATIC DOWNFALL
Either way, the case has resulted in a dramatic downfall for Raniere from a time when he was known as ‘Vanguard’ by devotees in the United State and Mexico.
Promotional material for the now-disbanded NXIVM once hailed him as a “scientist, mathematician, philosopher, entrepreneur, educator, inventor and author” who has “devoted his life to developing new tools for human empowerment, expression and ethics.”
Last year, after a New York
Times exposé on the group and reports that investigators were interviewing some women who had defected from DOS, Raniere fled to Mexico. He was ultimately found staying with Mack and other women in a luxury villa in Puerta Vallarta and taken into custody on a US warrant.
Mack, best known for her role as a young Superman’s close friend on the series Smallville, was also was charged, along with Clare Bronfman, an heir to the Seagram liquor fortune who bankrolled NXIVM. Salzman and two others also faced charges.
But after prosecutors added child exploitation charges against Raniere earlier this year, based on evidence he had sex with a 15-year-old girl, all of his co-defendants pleaded guilty.
Salzman admitted in her guilty plea that they held a Mexican woman hostage in an upstate home for more than two years under threat of having her deported, “if she did not complete labour requested by myself and others”.
At her plea hearing, Mack tearfully said she had collected ‘collateral’ against women and expressed regret about getting involved with Raniere – a change of heart from when she told
The New York Times that, as one of the DOS “masters”, she saw the women’s servitude and willingness to be branded as acts of devotion.
Authorities say the branding was done using a cautery pen without anaesthesia by a doctor who is now under investigation by state health officials.