Actress linked to sex trafficking
AN actress who starred in the US television series Smallville has been arrested on charges of sex trafficking.
Allison Mack, 35, is accused of recruiting sex slaves for a self-help guru and helping to brand them with his initials.
Mack played Chloe Sullivan, one of the main character’s best friends, in Smallville, a show about Clark Kent’s childhood in Kansas before he becomes known as Superman, which ran from 2001 to 2011.
She later became involved with a group called Nxivm – pronounced Nexium – which was promoted as a mentorship organisation for women.
The leader of the group was Keith Raniere, 57, who called himself “Vanguard” and presented himself as a guru to the stars.
Prosecutors alleged that Mack was a “slave” of Raniere and recruited other female slaves for him, at times holding them down while a symbol bearing his initials was burnt into them with a cauterising pen.
At a brief hearing in a New York court on Friday, Mack pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking.
Prosecutor Richard Donoghue said in a statement that Raniere had, over two decades, established Nxivm in Albany, New York, and it had centres in the US, Mexico, Canada and South America.
He said it was a pyramid scheme in which participants were encouraged to recruit others to rise in the system.
Within Nxivm, there was a secret society called “DOS”, which was an acronym for a Latin phrase, loosely translating as “Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions”.
It was also known as “The Vow”. Those who were part of The Vow were referred to as “slaves” and “masters”.
“Raniere stood alone at the top of the pyramid,” Donoghue said.
“Other than Raniere, all members were women. Mack is one of the women in the first level of the pyramid.
“The victims were exploited, both sexually and for their labour, to the defendants’ benefit.”
He said up to 50 women had been recruited and forced to have sex with Raniere.
They were allegedly placed on extreme diets and subjected to “readiness drills” in the middle of the night, which meant they were seriously sleep-deprived.
On joining the secret society, they had to provide “collateral”, such as naked photographs of themselves, which could be used against them if they left, prosecutors said.
Nxivm has denied being a cult, and described itself on its website as being guided by “humanitarian principles that seek to empower people and answer important questions about what it means to be human”.