Uncover: Escaping NXIVM

FROM THE VAULT

The Secret Life of Us (2001)

TVNZ OnDemand, from Monday

More weight to the theory that Deborah Mailman has been in every good Australian TV show of the past 20 years arrives this week with turn-of-the-millennium drama coming to TVNZ OnDemand. It starred a young Mailman as Kelly Lewis, one of a group of 20-somethings living it up in tight T-shirts and baggy pants in Melbourne’s inner suburbs. There’s only one word for it, no matter how overused it might be: iconic.

The Secret Life of Us PODCAST OF THE WEEK

Cults continue to be the big podcast trend of 2018. But where exactly is the line that must be crossed for a group or organisation to become a cult? New CBC podcast series finds itself at the usual crossroads, where one (wo)man’s dangerous cult is another’s harmless "multi-level marketing company".

You might have read about NXIVM (pronounced Nexium) when the outrageous news story broke that one of its members, former actress Allison Mack, had been arrested on sex trafficking charges. Now

offers a much more in-depth, and even more shocking account of life inside the organisation from the perspective of one long-time former member turned whistleblower.

In the first episode, Sarah Edmondson describes watching her "sisters" in a sorority-like secret organisation within NXIVM being branded with a cauterising iron in an initiation ceremony, before submitting to be branded herself. This was the bottom of a slippery slope from what at first felt more like a self-help group to what she now describes as a fully blown cult.

The podcast goes in-depth, uncovering the inner workings of NXIVM and investigating its founder, Keith Raniere. Arrested alongside Mack earlier this year, his case is set to go to trial in October.

Smallville Escaping NXIVM Escaping NXIVM

Calum Henderson