NXIVM
NXIVM was a cult led by Keith Raniere, who is now a convicted racketeer and sex offender. NXIVM is also the name of the now-defunct company that Raniere founded in 1998, which provided seminars ostensibly about human potential and served as a front organization for criminal activity by Raniere and his close associates.
NXIVM was based in the New York Capital District and had centers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. The subsidiary companies of NXIVM engaged in recruitment based on the multi-level marketing model and used curricula based on teachings of Raniere known as "Rational Inquiry". Courses attracted a variety of notable students, including actors and children of the rich and powerful. At its height, NXIVM had 700 active members. Alarmed by Raniere's behavior and NXIVM's practices, former members and families of NXIVM clients spoke to investigative journalists and described the organization as a cult. In 2017, former NXIVM members revealed damaging information about Raniere and NXIVM to The New York Times; that information included the existence of a NXIVM-connected secret society called "DOS" in which women were branded, made to record false confessions, and made to provide nude photographs for blackmail purposes.
Following The New York Times exposé, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York investigated the organization, and in 2018 brought criminal charges against Raniere and other NXIVM leaders and participants containing allegations of sex trafficking, forced labor, visa fraud, and wire fraud. All defendants except Raniere pleaded guilty. Raniere was tried in 2019. Prosecutors revealed a decades-long pattern of grooming, sexual abuse of girls and women, physical and psychological punishments against dissenters, and hacking and vexatious litigation against enemies.
On June 19, 2019, Raniere was convicted on the top charge of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy as well as several other charges and was sentenced to 120 years' imprisonment. Following Raniere's conviction, the Department of Justice seized ownership of NXIVM-related entities and their intellectual property through asset forfeiture. Defendants Clare Bronfman, Nancy Salzman, and Allison Mack were given lesser prison sentences, and defendants Lauren Salzman and Kathy Russell were each given non-prison sentences. Since Raniere's conviction, he has continued to direct a small set of loyal members from his prison cell, encouraging continued recruitment.
History
Before founding NXIVM, Raniere created Consumers Buyline, a business venture that the New York Attorney General accused of having been a pyramid scheme; Raniere signed a consent order in 1996 in which he denied any wrongdoing but agreed to pay a $40,000 fine and to be permanently banned from "promoting, offering or granting participation in a chain distribution scheme".Founding and initial success
In 1998, Raniere and Nancy Salzman founded NXIVM, a personal development company offering "Executive Success Programs" and a range of techniques for self-improvement. Raniere claimed that its "main emphasis is to have people experience more joy in their lives". In one account cited by former NXIVM member Sarah Edmondson, Raniere chose the name based on the ancient Roman system of debt bondage known as nexum. The 2002 registration with United States Patent and Trademark Office for the NXIVM trademark states that "The foreign wording in the mark translates into English as 'the next millennium.During NXIVM seminars, students would call Raniere and Salzman "Vanguard" and "Prefect", respectively. The Hollywood Reporter wrote that Raniere adopted the title from the 1981 video game Vanguard, "in which the destruction of one's enemies increased one's own power". Within the organization, the reasoning for the titles was that Raniere was the leader of a philosophical movement and Salzman was his first student.
By 2003, 3,700 people had taken part in ESP classes. Reported participants included businesswoman Sheila Johnson, former Surgeon General Antonia Novello, Enron executive Stephen Cooper, Ana Cristina Fox, entrepreneur Richard Branson, businessman Edgar Bronfman Sr., and actresses Linda Evans, Grace Park, and Nicki Clyne. In the early 2000s, Seagram heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman, daughters of Edgar Bronfman Sr., became attached to the organization.
Cult allegations in early 2000s
NXIVM claimed its training was a trade secret, subject to non-disclosure agreements, but reportedly used a technique the organization called "rational inquiry" to facilitate personal and professional development. In 2003, NXIVM sued the Ross Institute in the case known as NXIVM Corp. v. Ross Institute, alleging copyright infringement for publishing excerpts of content from its manual in three critical articles commissioned by cult investigator Rick Alan Ross and posted on his website. Ross posted a psychiatrist's assessment of NXIVM's "secret" manual on his website that called the regimen "expensive brainwashing".Ross obtained the manual from former member Stephanie Franco, a co-defendant in the trial, who had signed a non-disclosure agreement not to divulge information from the manual to others. NXIVM filed suits in New York and New Jersey, but both were dismissed. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal, ruling that the defendant's critical analysis was fair use since the secondary use was transformative as criticism and was not a potential replacement for the original on the market.
In October 2003, Forbes published a critical article on NXIVM and Raniere. According to Vanity Fair, NXIVM leadership, who had spoken to Forbes, had expected a positive story. They were especially upset by remarks made by Bronfman, who told Forbes that he believed NXIVM was a cult and that he was troubled by his daughters' "emotional and financial investment" in it. In 2006, Forbes published an article about the Bronfman sisters, stating that they had taken out a line of credit to loan NXIVM $2 million, repayable through personal training sessions and phone consultations with Salzman. Another Forbes article in 2010 discussed the failures of commodities and real estate deals by the Bronfmans made on Raniere's advice.
Recruitment in Vancouver
After actress Kristin Kreuk became involved with NXIVM in 2006, Salzman and her daughter Lauren, a junior NXIVM leader, went to Vancouver to recruit Kreuk's Smallville co-star Allison Mack. Lauren bonded with Mack. Kreuk, however, left NXIVM in 2013. Mack became "an enthusiastic proselytizer" for NXIVM, persuading her parents to take courses, and after wrapping production of Smallville in 2011, moved to Clifton Park, New York, to be near NXIVM's home base in Albany.2008–2010
In 2008, the Bronfman sisters allegedly pressured Stephen Herbits, a confidant of their father, to ask Albany County District Attorney David Soares, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, and New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram to begin criminal investigations into NXIVM's critics. NXIVM reportedly kept dossiers on Soares, Spitzer, political consultants Roger Stone and Steve Pigeon, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, and Albany Times Union publisher George Randolph Hearst III in a box in the basement of Nancy Salzman's home. According to the Times Union, NXIVM "developed a reputation for aggressively pursuing critics and defectors who broke from its ranks, including using litigation to punish critics of Raniere, the organization, or its training methods."The World Ethical Foundations Consortium, an organization co-founded by Raniere and the Bronfman sisters, sponsored a visit to Albany by the Dalai Lama in 2009. The visit was initially canceled by the Dalai Lama owing to negative press about NXIVM, but was rescheduled; the Dalai Lama spoke at the Hart Theater at the Egg in Albany in May 2009. The Bronfman sisters announced at the talk that they were broke and could not pay him. He said that he gives talks to spread dharma, not for money. In 2017, Lama Tenzin Dhonden, the self-styled "Personal Emissary for Peace for the Dalai Lama" who had arranged the appearance, was suspended from his position amid corruption charges; the investigation also revealed a personal relationship between Dhonden and Sara Bronfman, which began in 2009.
NXIVM has been described as a pyramid scheme, a sex-trafficking operation, a cult, and a sex cult. In a 2010 Times Union article, former NXIVM coaches characterized students as "prey" for Raniere's sexual or gambling-related proclivities. Kristin Keeffe, a longtime partner of Raniere and mother of his child, left the group in 2014 and called Raniere "dangerous", saying, "All the worst things you know about NXIVM are true."
Related organizations
NXIVM has been associated with several related organizations. Jness was a society aimed at women, while the Society of Protectors was aimed primarily at men. A third group was known by the acronym DOS, short for "Dominus Obsequious Sororium", which, according to one member, means "master over slave women". In 2006, Raniere founded Rainbow Cultural Garden, an international chain of childcare organizations in which children were to be exposed to seven different languages.In 2014, Raniere founded the NXIVM-affiliated news organization The Knife of Aristotle, to identify and measure media bias.
Exposure of "DOS" and NXIVM downfall
Starting with reports by Frank Parlato in June 2017 and bolstered by an October 2017article in The New York Times, details began to emerge about "DOS", a secret society of women that started in 2015 within NXIVM in which female members were allegedly called slaves, branded with the initials of Raniere and Mack, subjected to corporal punishment from their "masters", and required to provide nude photos or other potentially damaging information about themselves as "collateral". Law enforcement representatives have alleged that DOS members were forced into sexual slavery.