‘Sex slave’ pics at trial
Jurors winced Thursday when they got their first look at pornographic photos of one of the women lured into the NXIVM sex cult.
The 18 photos, allegedly taken in 2005, portrayed the nowgrown woman known to jurors as underage “sex slave” Camila when she was only 15 years old.
A FBI agent flipped through the photos jurors looked on. The agent did not show the pictures to the entire courtroom.
Some jurors sat stone-faced during the presentation. Others grimaced. And some looked longer than others.
The same agent portrayed Camila days before in courtroom readings of her text messages with Keith Raniere, the cult leader accused of sex-trafficking and requiring Camila to have sex with him, send him “crotch” shots and recruit virgins for his harem.
As jurors reacted to the photos, Raniere, 58, scribbled notes and passed them to his lawyers.
After a lunch recess, the jury heard from FBI agent Michael Weniger, who testified about email exchanges between NXIVM members and people they recruited to find dirt on “enemies” such as Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), President Trump’s fixer Roger Stone, and an assortment of federal judges.
Weniger said Stone worked for NXIVM, but was not questioned on the details of what he did.
Emails tie Raniere and Emiliano Salinas, a NXIVM inner-circle member and the son of an exMexican president, to the Canadian investigator Canaprobe and efforts to discredit people perceived as threats, Weniger testified.
The firm took about $400,000 from NXIVM, with much of that from Clare Bronfman, the Seagram’s heiress, who pleaded guilty in the case in April.