Checking in with ELIZABETH VARGAS
After 22 years at ABC News reporting and anchoring on everything from “World News Tonight” and “Good Morning America” to her most noteworthy role on “20/20,” Elizabeth Vargas has a new gig into which she can sink her journalistic teeth – investigating cults on A&E Network. In “Cults and Extreme Belief,” airing under the cablenet’s new “A&E Investigates” banner and premiering Monday and Tuesday, May 28 and 29, the Emmy-winning journalist does a deep dive into how fringe groups prey upon people’s desperation to create powerful and often destructive belief systems, looking at them through the eyes of ex-members.
“I think people have sort of this not very kind presumption about anybody who would join ‘a cult,’ ” Vargas explains. “They must be stupid. They must be very, very gullible. They must be all sorts of things that aren’t terribly nice.
“When you meet these people, you find out that nothing could be further from the truth. Many of them are very, very bright, very altruistic, very well-meaning. Some of them were born into these groups and didn’t have a choice. Their parents were parts of the groups and therefore they were raised as parts of these groups. And getting out can be a tremendously painful process for each and every one.”
Such was the case with the upstate New York-based group NXIVM, the subject of Monday’s premiere. It stands accused of luring its supporters down a path of destruction that includes nearstarvation diets, sexual assault, forced branding, pseudo-slavery and blackmail. Hollywood actresses were recruited to evangelize their cause, one of whom, former “Smallville” star Allison Mack, is currently facing charges of sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy and forced labor conspiracy.
“Allison Mack was a very bright, very talented young woman who won the lottery, so to speak, by going out to Hollywood and actually getting a job and making it,” Vargas says. “... Allison Mack walked away from it all to go be part of this group NXIVM. So that tells you something’s happening in these groups and that’s what we’re aiming to try and expose.”
Full name: Elizabeth Anne Vargas
Birth date: Sept. 6, 1962
Birthplace: Paterson, N.J.
Education: Bachelor’s Degree in journalism from the University of Missouri
Family ties: Has two sons, 15 and 11, with her ex-husband, singer Marc Cohn
Local TV news stops: KOMU-TV (Columbia, Mo.); WBBM-TV (Chicago)
NBC News (1993-96): correspondent for “Dateline”; news reader and substitute anchor on “Today”
ABC News (1996-2018): anchor of “Downtown” and “Primetime Monday”; anchor of “World News Tonight Saturday” and “World News Tonight Sunday”; newsreader and substitute anchor on “Good Morning America”; anchor of “20/20”
On her years at ABC News: “I really feel like I had a front seat to history . ... I really feel lucky to have done everything that I’ve done.”