Mack’s sentence: three years
Judge notes that she was an “essential accomplice” to Raniere — but also his victim
A federal judge sentenced Allison Mack to three years in prison Wednesday for her role supplying sex “slaves” to NXIVM leader Keith Raniere as one of her victims compared her to Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged enabler of late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Senior U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis told the 38-year-old Mack she was an “willing and proactive ally” to Raniere, in the reputed cult leader’s secret club, Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS) in which women were physically branded on their pelvic areas, forced to work on little sleep and food and at times assigned to seduce the convicted sex trafficker known as ‘Vanguard.’”
“You used your leverage, your power over these women, to recruit and groom them as sexual partners for Mr. Raniere, and to pressure them into engaging in sexual acts that — according to their testimony — they did not want to engage in and would not have engaged in voluntarily,” the judge told Mack in a cavernous second-floor courtroom in Brooklyn. “When it comes to DOS, and the monstrous crimes he committed in connection with that organization, you were an essential accomplice.”
Formerly of the Knox Woods townhouse complex in Halfmoon, Mack
pleaded guilty in April 2019 to racketeering conspiracy and racketeering charges with underlying crimes of forced labor, extortion, fraud and sex trafficking. Mack began cooperating with prosecutors around that time, which contributed greatly to the judge’s leniency Wednesday. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Garaufis could have sentenced Mack to at least 14 years in prison.
But Mack’s role as one of Raniere’s most egregious enforcers came along with her being his victim, the judge said.
“I don’t doubt that you were also manipulated and that you also felt captive, even as you were inflicting those very consequences on other women,” the judge said. “In the language of DOS, you were a slave as well as a master, and the harms that you inflicted as a master were, to some extent, demanded of you in your capacity as Mr. Raniere’s slave.”
Garaufis told Mack some of her victims “see you both as their abuser and as a fellow victim,” adding. “That is something that weighs on me. It is hard to determine an appropriate sentence for a perpetrator who is also her co-conspirator’s victim.”
Earlier, one of Mack’s victims painted Mack as a cruel and complicit villain.
“Allison Mack is a predator and an evil human being,” Jessica Joan, a former slave in DOS, told the judge. “(Mack) can blame Keith all she wants, but she is a monster cut from the same cloth.”
She described Mack, sitting before her across the room, as a sadist, as well as a “demon” and “sociopath.” Mack ordered Joan to seduce Raniere and take a naked photo of the encounter, telling Joan it would help her. Joan refused to do the assignment, risking the release of blackmail material Mack had on her.
“Allison Mack and Keith Raniere are the most evil monsters I’ve ever met,” Joan said. She told the judge Mack played a similar role to Maxwell, who is charged with providing teenage victims for Epstein to sexually abuse. “She was the Ghislaine Maxwell to Keith Raniere’s Jeffrey Epstein.”
Joan said she flew across the country from Los Angeles, using her last unemployment dollars, to make her voice heard at Mack’s sentencing. She testified at Raniere’s trial only as “Jay.” After the sentencing she said she respected the judge’s decision.
Mack, clad in a black dress, sat and listened as she heard Joan and another victim, Tabby Chapman, describe their experiences with the disgraced actress. Chapman said she was elated when the television star reached out to her in 2007. She worked for Mack in Vancouver and ultimately the Capital Region, where Chapman’s glowing view of Mack changed.
“Once I was in Albany, I was subjected to cruelty beyond my imagination,” Chapman told the judge.
She said Mack told her that without NXIVM,
Chapman had no value. Mack told her that unless she fixed her defects, it would ruin her future children. Chapman, who left NXIVM in 2014, said Mack was prone to angry outbursts and at times humiliated her in classes.
Chapman included a jaw-dropping anecdote, saying to Mack: “I cannot forget the moment you told me that being raped came with a choice to either suffer during it or to choose happiness and joy.”
When afforded a chance to speak, Mack told the judge she was filled with remorse and regret.
“I renounce Keith Raniere and all of his teachings,” Mack said, “I understand that that choice cannot be undone.”
In tears, Mack said that when she was charged in 2018 and forced to return to live with her parents in California it felt like her worst nightmare. She now called it a blessing.
Garaufis, who presided over the nearly two-month
trial of Raniere in 2019, could have sentenced Mack to at least 14 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines. Federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York had asked the judge to sentence Mack below those guidelines because of her cooperation in the case against Raniere, which they described as substantial.
Raniere was convicted of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy and racketeering charges at trial, and is serving 120 years in prison. Mack, who once beamed at Raniere in videos created by NXIVM, now refers to her former lover as a “twisted man.” Her attorneys asked that she receive probation and home confinement.
Mack, who was born in Germany and grew up in Southern California, rose through the ranks of NXIVM and later became a key member of Raniere’s most notorious venture — what would be later described as a sex cult, the group known as DOS or “The Vow.”
Mack and other firstline “masters” pitched DOS to potential recruits as a women’s empowerment sorority. To find out more about the group, they told the recruits they had to offer “collateral” in the form of naked photos, rights to financial assets or
devastating personal information (even if the material was fictional).
Once in the group, recruits learned that they were “slaves” taking lifetime vows of obedience to “masters.” The organization was supposedly composed entirely of women, but Raniere sat at the top of the DOS pyramid, serving as a supreme “master” to his first-line members, whose slaves in turn became masters to lowerranking slaves in several descending orders.
DOS masters demanded their slaves live on daily diets of 500 calories or less, respond to text messages at all hours, perform unpaid labor and, in some cases, receive “assignments” to seduce Raniere. Prosecutors said Mack assigned four of her slaves to that task, and ordered another woman to do it who refused.
The judge reminded Mack how seriously he considers the crimes of Raniere.
“You willingly enslaved, destabilized, and manipulated other women so that when they were at their most vulnerable, when they believed that they owed you total obedience and that anything less than that would cause them serious personal and financial harm,” the judge said. ‘When you had taken from them their sense of agency to make their own choices, you gave them ‘special assignments’ to satisfy Mr. Raniere’s sexual interests. Mr. Raniere could not have done that without you. You did that together.”
Some women in DOS were physically branded on their pelvic areas with a symbol that was later revealed to contain Raniere’s initials. The branding was performed by a person using a cauterizing pen. Mack ordered one woman, an actress from California, to be celibate for six months. Mack then ordered the woman to meet Raniere outside Mack’s townhouse, where the woman was staying. The woman testified at Raniere’s trial that Raniere blindfolded her, drove her to a house, ordered her to undress and tied her to a table where she was subjected to oral sex from another DOS slave.
Mack handed prosecutors a recording of Raniere instructing her how women were to be held down and physically branded without it appearing as if it had been coerced.
Six women wrote victim impact letters to the judge. They were not identified. The judge noted that Mack sent apologies to nine victims.
Mack became the third defendant in the NXIVM case to be sentenced. In September, the judge went far above sentencing guidelines in sentencing Seagrams heiress Clare Bronfman to six years and nine months in prison. A month later, the judge sentenced Raniere to his 120 years in prison.
Other defendants who await sentencing are NXIVM president Nancy Salzman; Lauren Salzman, a high-ranking member of NXIVM who served as a first-line DOS master and testified in court against Raniere; and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell.
In a sentencing memo to the judge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tanya Hajjar said, “Although Mack could have provided even more substantial assistance had she made the decision to cooperate earlier, Mack provided significant, detailed and highly corroborated information which assisted the government in its prosecution.”
The judge also imposed a $20,000 fine and 1,000 hours of community service. Mack must report to prison on Sept. 29. She asked to be placed in a facility in California.