A life under thumb of NXIVM
Attorney: Bookkeeper was group’s “indentured servant”
Longtime NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell abandoned her young son in Alaska to be an “indentured servant” in the Capital Region, and was then subjected to Keith Raniere’s cruel demands on her weight, love life and whether she could own a cat, her lawyer told the federal judge who will sentence her Wednesday.
An attorney for Russell asked Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis to impose probation and no jail time at the former Halfmoon woman’s sentencing in Brooklyn at 11 a.m.
Russell, 63, who spent more than 17 years in Raniere’s cultlike organization based in Colonie, faces six months to a year in prison for her April 2019 guilty plea to visa fraud. Russell is the sixth and final defendant to be sentenced in the more than three-year-old case against NXIVM’S leadership.
A jury convicted Raniere, 61, the NXIVM leader known as “Vanguard,” in 2019 of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy and racketeering charges. He is serving 120 years in an Arizona federal prison.
Russell now believes Raniere, her onetime lover, is a “deceitful and devious person,” likely “psychopath” and “monster who destroyed so many lives,” according to a letter Russell wrote to the judge that her attorney, Justine Harris, quoted in a sentencing memo.
“It is truly a horror that I believed Keith was an honest, honorable man,” Russell told the judge. “I have never known or met anyone who went to the lengths he did to manipulate, abuse, and harm.”
Russell said she is “deeply ashamed and regretful for what my actions have caused and what it meant to be someone who supported and was complicit with Keith.”
Russell’s attorney said Raniere subjected Russell to psychological manipulation, shame and blackmail, leaving her on the brink of suicide. Harris said Clare Bronfman, the Seagrams liquor heiress and NXIVM operations director, docked Russell’s pay at times for no reason.
“NXIVM dictated how much she could weigh, what types of foods she could eat,
who she could communicate with, and even how often she could dance,” Harris stated. “At one point, Clare chastised Kathy for owning a cat, telling her that she did not make enough money to have a pet and that she would need Raniere’s permission to keep her beloved animal.”
Bronfman, 42, is serving six years and nine months in prison for identification fraud and conspiring to conceal and harbor illegal immigrants for financial gain. EX-NXIVM president Nancy Salzman, 67, known as “Prefect,” will serve three and half years in prison for racketeering conspiracy. Her daughter Lauren Salzman, 45, and actress Allison Mack, 39, both former high-ranking NXIVM members who cooperated with prosecutors against Raniere, pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. Mack is serving a three-year sentence. Lauren Salzman received five years’ probation. All the defendants lived for decades in the Halfmoon and Clifton Park areas.
Russell, a Jacksonville, Fla., native, was living in Alaska when her hairdresser suggested she take a 16-day NXIVM intensive class in Anchorage. Russell, who had a 12-year-old son from a marriage her lawyer described as abusive, “fell under the group’s spell.” Russell took more classes, including some in Albany taught by Raniere, Harris told the judge.
Enchanted by Raniere, Russell left her son in her ex-husband’s custody. In July 2002, at the request of Nancy Salzman, Russell left a job in Alaska that paid $40 per hour and included a 401K plan to be a bookkeeper for NXIVM, which paid $15 an hour and provided no benefits, the lawyer said.
After moving, Raniere asked Russell to commit “just to him” for five years. In 2004, he asked Russell to commit to him for life. Raniere demanded Russell drop to her high school weight of 85 pounds. And he subjected Russell to abuses he would later employ in Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS), his notorious secret “master/slave” club in which starved and sleep-deprived women were coerced into providing devastating blackmail material called “collateral” that could be used against them.
“As far as collateral, Raniere taped Kathy making incriminating statements about an incident in Alaska — and held it over her head for years to come,” Harris said.
Once Raniere no longer found Russell desirable sexually, he continually accused her of “ethical breaches.” Raniere directed Russell, should she fail to reach certain goals, to form a plan of punishment for herself that included “losing pay, running errands for her peers, planking daily, and reducing her calories by 200 each day for a week,” Harris said.
In 2011, Russell’s son, Silas, moved to the Capital Region, worked with his mother and saw that she was being underpaid and subjected to abuse. She was demoted, fired, living hand to mouth and desperate to leave NXIVM, but could not do it mentally or financially, Harris stated.
In 2013, Russell broke her wrist and begged Raniere for help. Instead he demanded she drive him and another NXIVM member to get a haircut, the memo said.
“She basically spent 20 years of her life as an indentured servant,” the son told the judge in a letter Harris quoted.
Harris said Russell, now living in Georgia, wants to move with her son to North Carolina and continue to build a new life.
In her guilty plea, Russell admitted that in February 2014 she signed a fraudulent letter at the U.S. Consulate in Mexico for NXIVM member Loreta Garza, also known as Loreta Garza Davila, a future high-ranking “slave” in DOS. The letter claimed NXIVM hired Garza as a management consultant. In truth, Garza was hired to manage Rainbow Cultural Gardens (RCG), a chain of schools built on Raniere’s teachings that claimed to immerse children in nine languages. Garza used her “consultant” money to pay RCG employees, none of whom reported their income. RCG also paid no state taxes, prosecutors said.