My statement at Lauren Salzman's sentencing hearing

Your Honor,

Thank you again for allowing me to speak during these proceedings. Today’s statement is especially painful for me because the defendant was not only my peer and coach—she was my best friend for nearly 17 years.

When I first joined ESP, Pamela Cafritz—one of Keith Raniere’s chief enablers—was excited that I was joining the harem because I would be Lauren Salzman’s friend and companion, given our age and intellectual compatibility. Ms. Salzman was smart, funny, kind and a seeming pioneer of the noble enterprise I too had just embarked on. It didn’t take long for me to love her, much less for her to earn my trust.

She became my coach shortly after I moved to Albany in 2002—not by choice, but because I began putting up a resistance against Raniere and his lifestyle. She described her role as the inner circle’s “therapist”—a role she secretly told me she resented. That meant she constantly did EMs with Raniere’s women—especially the rebellious ones—condoning and furthering the physical, emotional and psychological abuses.

Looking back at our friendship, Ms. Salzman’s role was to keep me under control, to manage me. She was a hostage negotiator of sorts, and my goodwill and willingness to continue working for the company were the hostages.

She ended our coaching relationship around 2006 because of my insubordination to Raniere’s and the inner circle’s sick demands. She shunned me for about three years after this, punishing me for her inability to control me. To this day, I don’t know why she apologized and resumed our friendship. It’s possible she saw that her punishment eventually fueled my desire to defect.

Once we resumed our friendship, Ms. Salzman was again called in as the last resort to contain me. When all other tactics failed—mostly others’ verbal and psychological abuse, exploitation and threats—she was brought in to “reason” with me. But her reasoning skills and appeal to my emotions were all gaslighting, manipulation and lies—tactics in what Raniere called “strong thought control” or “intellectual might-is-right.” Unfortunately, she mostly succeeded until the very end.

I have previously made the Court aware that Karen Unterreiner, Raniere’s longest-standing intimate relationship and a NXIVM leader, has since apologized to me for her role in keeping me from leaving. The event in question happened on the cusp of Raniere’s full-blown abuse of me in 2006.

Karen, the number three EM practitioner in the company, was tasked to talk me out of leaving just days before the company’s annual retreat at Silver Bay. By then, Raniere was already shunning me and further curtailing my personal freedoms, and Karen manipulated me into staying after a 5- or 6-hour long conversation in a Clifton Park parking lot one night.

I share this with the Court because that was Ms. Salzman’s primary role when all other means of control failed. But unlike Karen, Ms. Salzman never apologized.

She did not verbally abuse me as her mother did, which kept my trust in her somewhat intact. In hindsight, she groomed me to feel safe in the presence of a predator and his vicious pack.

Ms. Salzman could have stopped my forced labor, which I had rebelled against for years and years, yet she did nothing. In the very least she could have spoken out on my behalf—she knew how valuable I was to the entire network of companies under Raniere. On the contrary, she used her position and skills to try to force me to accept my exploitation and to do so with a smile.

A clear example is when she “graced” me with being my mentor during the last NXIVM workshop I took, ironically called “The Ethicist.” She made a clear point that she was deliberately taking time away from her busy schedule and prodigious responsibilities to help me.

The point of contention then was her mother’s absolute abuse of me as an employee, which I intend to detail in the near future. All of the EMs, sourcings and mentoring sessions revolved around my fight to end the exploitation—a fight that was met with objections at every possible point and angle.

And on the last day of the eight-day intensive training, Ms. Salzman didn’t show.

Instead, she sent me a text message, entrusting me to my other two supposed mentors—DOS members and Raniere loyalists Rosa Laura Junco and Sahajo Haertel (I had no idea DOS existed at the time). Ms. Salzman said she wasn’t willing to invest more of her precious time on someone who simply refused to grow.

Never have I been prouder—in hindsight of course—of my unwillingness to “grow.”

Your Honor, as I share this statement, I cannot help but flash between the abuses I’ve related and the times I treasured with the defendant—our stimulating conversations on mutual topics of interest, the heartfelt laughter we often shared and events where she stood by my side when I felt all was lost, such as the week she spent with me at the hospital in Mexico City when my father was dying. 

I understand Ms. Salzman was the prosecution’s star witness and that she played a key role in bringing Raniere to justice. I also understand that because of this, she may serve a light sentence or perhaps no sentence at all. When I weigh the damage she did to me and others, I desire neither of those outcomes, but I earnestly respect the Court’s decision, whatever it may be.

All that is left is for me to address her one last time:

I trusted you above anyone else. You knew my weaknesses—my deepest fears and insecurities. You knew about my past trauma.

You knew my intent was not duplicitous or malicious. You knew me as I was, as I continue to be—yet you allowed so much damage, so much trauma and committed a great deal yourself.

You called yourself my best friend, you were a fellow woman, yet you did what you did. And you let Raniere and the others do what they did, even after I repeatedly begged you for help.

I imagine you’ve been living in fear since Raniere’s arrest. You knew it—we all knew it was a matter of time before you were arrested. I imagine today you’re especially terrified.

Reflect on that experience, on that fear—on that incessant stimulation to your nervous system, which can easily override the mind and emotions. Reflect on that feeling of powerlessness—of being trapped, with no way out and no light at the end of the tunnel. Think back on the nights you’ve lost sleep because of this, the nightmares you’ve had and the part of you that can’t help but think where you would be, had you only chosen differently.

That is the torture you subjected me to for too long. While you enjoyed power, clout and a lavish lifestyle, that was my daily experience while I was in Albany.

Pam wrote me this George Elliot quote on a birthday card once:

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.

All I wanted was to do something meaningful in the world. In you, all I wanted was a best friend.

Lauren, of all the pain you’ve caused me, the greatest is my broken heart.

Photo by Ivana Djudic on Unsplash

My statement at Keith Raniere’s sentencing hearing

Photo by Zuriel Galindo on Unsplash

Your Honor,

I am Ivy Nevares. Thank you for allowing me to speak freely about Keith Raniere.

I met him during my first ESP workshop in 2001. Although I was already indoctrinated, my instincts hadn’t been worn away. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the coursework showed his fascination with criminal psychology—specifically swindling and sociopathy. He even created a worse class of sociopaths he called “suppressives,” and later “luciferians” for added drama.

He showed up for a Q&A at the end of the fifth day. I asked him during that first encounter, “You seem to know a lot about these suppressives. How do I know you’re not one of them?”

He smiled coyly and said, “Because they can’t build value—they can only destroy.”

I would have normally caught the black-and-white fallacy, were it not for the narrative that had been pushed on me by his adoring women, who were already grooming me then. Like thousands of others, I innocently believed him to be sincere.

Ten months and several workshops later, Raniere asked for a lifetime personal and professional commitment—I could be with no other man and work for no other person or company.

I knew something was off early on—he spoke too much and too highly of himself, and claimed to have mystical powers no one should question. I was too embarrassed to ask why he spoke of mysticism while publicly claiming to be a scientist.

One of his most preposterous claims was that he had to have sex constantly, lest his “spiritual energy” consume him to the point of death.

I would like to ask him, your Honor:

You’ve presumably gone 2.5 years without sex since your arrest. How is it you’re still alive?

Hm.

One of the cornerstones of Raniere’s model was that ethical civilization can only be achieved, and I quote, “through mutually-consented, honest trade.” But consent cannot exist alongside dishonesty. And that, right there, was the loophole he relentlessly exploited.

I consented to an intimate relationship with him, but I never consented to being lied to, manipulated or abused. I never consented to being held captive by a dependence-inducing system that he architected. I never consented to having his flying monkeys gaslight, exploit, harass, threaten and attack me around the clock under his direction, simply because I refused to comply.

I would like to address Raniere directly:

That fateful October, you weren’t asking for fidelity—you were asking for blind obedience. You weren’t offering a type of marriage—you were opening the door to countless unwritten contracts whose conditions became ever-moving targets, but whose penalties you and your women were quick to enforce.

You asked me what I wanted from you. I said, “To know true love.”

You instead subjected me to nearly 17 years of indentured servitude and your own perverted monstrosities.

Had I known all this going in, I would have never followed you.

The force of Raniere’s world rests on a flippant double-edged sword he wields to benefit those who shield and finance his criminal appetite and to cripple those who refused to do so. He shunned me for the better part of 11 years and ordered others to do the same, because I could not or would not meet his extreme demands.

A decade before DOS existed, Raniere was already tormenting me with the practices the women would later take on. One year, after I put myself through hell to weigh his desired 95 pounds, he shunned me because I ate a handful of pumpkin seeds, breaking my 400-calorie limit. That night, he said his leaving me hurt him more than it did me. He is a sadistic, pathological liar!

Raniere said, and I quote, “Things are most maneuverable when they’re most unstable.” That’s exactly how he managed to subject me and others to systemic abuses—he kept us sleep-deprived, blackmailed, exploited, traumatized and malnourished.

One year, I completed a 45-day fast to prove to him that I cared about our relationship “enough.” What was his response? That I wanted to break the fast because I was “weak” and had “no character,” so he ordered me to extend it an additional 10 days—and I did with the best of intentions. But it was never enough. Nothing ever was.

Many of us experienced PTSD from Raniere’s “readiness drills.” I found out where he came up with the idea during an SOP training: in a video, he said a person close to him had lost a brother to murder and that the body wasn’t discovered until 10 days after his death.

That was my brother, Fernando! How dare you desecrate my brother’s death as justification to torture countless women?!

I come from a Mexican family, and Raniere knew that having children is important to me, so he baited me with promises of his firstborn child, like he did others. I was very clear early on, I said: “If you father a child with someone else, I will not raise hell. I will not destroy you. I will simply slip away quietly.” He agreed to be truthful then. Instead, he instructed the other women in the inner circle to lie to my face about his children for years—even after he was arrested!

I’m relieved to know one of his youngest victims has finally denounced him. It makes me sick to think he was raping a child AND sleeping with her sisters when he was living with me, swearing he wasn’t sleeping with anyone else. These very acts alone demonstrate his crazed misogyny.

In February 2015, Kristen Keeffe, Raniere’s long-time ally, emailed me shortly after she defected with their son. She said Raniere was hoping I would commit suicide. When I sent him the email, he replied, and I quote, “Can you see she is not of right mind?”

I’ve spent several years contemplating Kristen’s accusation because I refused to believe it was true. Recently, I learned she said that on walks with Raniere, he asked gleefully, “Do you think Ivy’s gonna try to commit suicide?"

When we first met, Raniere was intensely curious about my cutting myself and having suicidal thoughts as a teenager. I shared with him that in my early twenties, I foolishly imagined that if my ideal partner left me, it would be best for me to leave this world.

He used the first six years of our relationship to become that ideal man. He lived with me, lavished me with gifts and attention, much to the displeasure of the other women. And one fine day, he began shunning me, while he flaunted other women in public and barred me from even walking on the same streets as them.

I will address him again:

You often cited the Ayn Rand quote, “A viler evil than to murder a man, is to sell him suicide as an act of virtue.” Was my potential suicide your ultimate experiment?

I see now you exploited my dependence on a mate and suddenly marginalized me. Did you think that would drive me to commit suicide?

No matter the abuse, no matter the intensity of betrayal, I never came close to considering that option. The gift of your ultimate betrayal to me was realizing NO MAN is ever worth losing my life over. Much less a sick predator like you.

In our professional relationship, he violated every single work-related principle he preached—specifically, that work raises self-esteem only when it’s justly remunerated, otherwise it’s enslavement. Yet it wasn’t enslavement when it came to me. No one in the organization ever gave him as much time and results as I did, yet he and his lazy women claimed that I was the one who owed him.

Raniere was hiding in Mexico the day I found the courage to end our relationship. I asked Nancy Salzman to relay the break-up in person, but she lied to me and refused to do so three separate times. I want him to know I left him on January 15, 2018.

Alas, Raniere’s day of reckoning has finally come. This is my last message to him.

As a writer, you cautioned me to use my skill honorably and that, with a stroke of the pen, I could irrevocably affect the character of those I wrote about. Your own actions have rewritten your character. There is no damage I can do in this respect.

I do not speak as a jilted lover—on the contrary, I’m grateful my defiance created a distance between us. I don’t care that you had children with other women—I cared that you lied to me about it. And I’m not brainwashed—I’ve come to these conclusions myself after uncovering the myriad of lies you used to entrap me.

The last sympathy I felt for the man I fell in love with died with your lawyer’s sentencing memorandum. You have no remorse over what you’ve done. You blame your victims and direct your flying monkeys to create insults to legitimate social movements, as you try to fight your imaginary injustice. “We Are As You” and “Make Justice Blind” are platforms through which your co-conspirators like Nicki Clyne and Eduardo Asúnsolo commit professional and social suicide every day—they just don’t know it yet.

It is with a very careful stroke of my pen that I say and mean every word here: you are and forever will be remembered as the most dangerous predator of all.

May you live long enough in prison to know the hell you put me and others through.

My victim impact statement addendum on Keith Raniere

I’m publishing this the morning of Keith Raniere’s sentencing hearing. The Court will hear my testimony via a recorded message later today, which I will publish after the sentencing. For now, a brief preface followed by the addendum itself.

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I submitted my first victim impact statement on Keith Raniere et al on Nov. 12, 2019. Such statements allow victims to relay their experiences of the defendants and their abuses to the Court. Knowing my first statement was delivered to Justice Garaufis brought me such peace. It was the first time I spoke out. I felt my voice was being heard when and where it mattered most. 

My statement then dealt with five individuals in the NXIVM trial: Keith Raniere, Nancy Salzman, Clare Bronfman, Lauren Salzman and Kathy Russell. While I relayed my grievances against those individuals, I chose not to write about Allison Mack.

My doing so doesn’t mean Mack is innocent or that I’m shielding her in any way. The reason I didn’t submit a statement is that our relationship was always amicable—although deceptive on her part. She never displayed the abusive side of her personality with me. She looked up to me and, for whatever reason, never disrespected me. The worst thing she ever did was lie to my face about DOS and her involvement when I confronted her about it in late 2017.

I do not condone Mack’s criminal behavior or reported lack of contrition. My friends and even people I barely know suffered at her hand. It’s just not my story to tell.

Back to Raniere, whose time has come. 

Today I will have said my final words to him in Court. But I neglected to include this: Raniere often referred to me as a flower denying its roots, citing my supposed “ethical breach” against him. I titled one of the chapters in our books after his accusation, believing him to hold the moral high ground. How foolish I was. 

What “rootless flower” means is that Raniere single-handedly “made me” in terms of my skill, talents and position within NXIVM, and that I was at fault for denying him the recognition for my success and achievements by not complying with his extreme demands. His lawyers or remaining loyalists can relay this to him: 

I am a flower, but you were NEVER my roots. You were the poison in my water.

As I’ve continued healing over the last two years, the process has armored me with greater awareness and insight. That whole “hindsight is 20/20” is for those who want to see the past for what it was, not for those who seek to revise it. In my case, the benefits of hindsight are strengthened by having years’ worth of archived information.

I am not yet ready to disclose a lot of the more personal, intimate details of my dealings with Raniere and NXIVM. However, I will disclose my addendum statement to Justice Garaufis. Not only because it is timely, but because it is right. It is an important step in releasing myself of the burden of secrecy and shame I’ve carried for so long. 

The search for truth brought me to Raniere—egregious things followed. Now the painful truth must come forth.

“Severed” ©2008, Ivy Nevares. All rights reserved.

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October 8, 2020

Hon. Nicholas G. Garaufis

 
Your Honor,

This letter may be one of the most important I ever write, for a person’s future hangs in the balance. It is not something I take lightly.

Before I met Keith Raniere in 2001, I had never been abused in an adult intimate relationship. I was loyal to him for nearly 17 years, despite how much he harmed me, directly and through his women. What buttressed that loyalty? Some acts of kindness on his part that led me to believe there was goodness in him. What kept me in that glass prison? Mostly lies and information he and others withheld from me to control me. The combination acted as powerful leverage that wore my instincts over time.

Even after he was arrested, I hoped with all of my heart to be right about him—not in the sense that he was innocent, but that the man I fell in love with was somewhere in there and that his arrest and imprisonment would guide him back to the light. When his followers started the so-called movement “We Are As You” this summer—the first of several recent efforts Raniere has directed to con the public into believing he was wrongly prosecuted and convicted—that perception of him began to change. I was sure he was behind it and felt personally insulted, not just as a victim but as a dancer.

The day I read the prosecution’s sentencing memorandum on Raniere was the day the last of my compassion for the person I thought I knew died. He takes pride in his total lack of remorse or consideration for his victims. He sees himself and his loyalists as victims, without any idea how their parading around for him as “activists” is affecting us all. He couldn’t just stop at the dance-protest farce but had to mount another one to mock the work prosecutors have done and to mock this very Court. And to top it all off, he made his victim’s suffering a contest worth a $30,000 prize, even though he knows full well there is not a shred of evidence to support his claims of innocence and persecution. How dare he?!

I am outraged by his arrogance, sociopathy and utter disregard for the law. I am outraged that he dare insinuate the Court is incompetent or corrupt. While I know the Court can see through NXIVM’s manipulation so clearly even it as it’s being perpetrated in the proceedings, as evidenced in Clare Bronfman’s sentencing, I wish to share some of my own experiences so the Court can fully appreciate how Raniere’s actions affected me and continue to impact me to this day.

Raniere stole nearly 17 years of my life and labor. He took credit for the work I did and the skills I built during his nearly 11-year absence in our relationship, as he shunned me for an “ethical breach” I supposedly committed against him. Initially, the “breach” was raising questions about Raniere’s conduct and promiscuity, then it morphed into my gaining weight, then it became something no one could define. A solution is impossible if a problem cannot be defined. Through these imaginary infractions, Raniere directed most of the community to shun me, making me a pariah until I figured out the impossible task of remedying the “breach.”

An ever-moving target, these “ethical breaches” kept me in a perpetual state of indebtedness and, as hard as I tried, no remedy was ever enough. Raniere and his women used “breaches” to enforce and justify their crimes and abuses. I was not alone in this, but I am the person he penalized and marginalized the longest in NXIVM’s history.

I have physical proof of this. Although I didn’t have a positive body image, I did enjoy my thick, brunette hair, which I loved to wear long since I was 13. As with everything I loved in my life, he turned it into a weapon: he made an example of me within the community by publicly humiliating me after insisting I could not cut my hair until I healed my “breach.” Because I still believed him—and believed in him—I let my hair grow more than a foot beyond my height, which is 5’ 3”. I did this to get back in his good graces, as I became ashamed of the locks I once cherished. His women also used his hair length mandates as leverage over me.

Raniere lied to me consistently and deprived me of information he and his women knew would have caused me to leave. He shunned, chastised, humiliated, penalized, defamed and swindled me and, when he was too busy abusing others, he instructed his women to subject me to the same abuses. My principal tormentors were Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman and the late Pamela Cafritz. Clare Bronfman and Kathy Russell were instrumental in my labor exploitation. There are others too, some still parading around New York City, others comfortably hiding in Mexico.

The ire I feel towards them quietly rages inside, yet it has been the very thing that guides my voice as I have come forward and provided statements to the Court, against all of my ingrained fears of prejudice, abuse and retaliation. This opportunity to share my story has finally liberated me from the deteriorating burden of the secrecy I swore to Raniere on October 10, 2002. Writing this very statement and reliving the nightmare has been so emotionally excruciating that I have had to walk away from it multiple times for five consecutive days.

I had a very troubled past before I went to ESP. I come from a broken home: my brother was a drug addict, my father an alcoholic, and when I was 14, I had a hand in raising my two younger sisters after my father abandoned the family overnight and my mother assumed his role as provider. My brother was killed when he was 20 and I, 19. By the time I was 20, I was clinically depressed and plagued with nightmares that would cause me to wake up screaming—sometimes waking up my college roommates.

I tried everything I could to get better: therapy, yoga, acupuncture, self-help books—the list goes on. I am a sensitive and empathic woman who feels others’ pain as her own and cares deeply. For whatever reason, I cannot just shut it off—empathy has been a burden to bear. Part of Raniere’s method is to delve deeply into the inner lives of those close to him, mining their psyches for information that can be weaponized. He and his women used my sensitivity against me to serve his purposes.

When I first met Raniere, he was exceedingly interested in two things about my youth of which I am not proud: cutting myself and suicidal thoughts—adolescent ways to numb out or escape the emotional pain with self-inflicted pain or fantasies.

He was fascinated by one of my scars, which I made during a bloodletting when I was 16. I have come to believe he took the idea for DOS’ branding from my scars and that particular experience. He used this and other knowledge against me for years, turning my deepest pain and traumas into tools to keep me under his control, convincing me everything was my fault, rendering me too fearful to speak out or walk away. I accepted his abuse as the necessary means to transform myself into someone worthy of his love—my greatest error.

I was so deeply under his spell that I could not see it as abuse at the time, and it is incredibly painful now to reflect on these events and see the many ways he intentionally amplified my earlier traumas simply because that served his depraved purposes. His efforts to control me knew NO bounds: he controlled my livelihood, career, body, sex, interactions with men, friendships, comings and goings, sleep, emotions—especially my beliefs and perceptions.

Raniere lived with me from 2003 to 2006 and swore fidelity to me. The court record shows he was also bedding three sisters at the time, including 15-year-old Camila! Knowing I was sleeping with him when he was abusing a child and performing incest with her sisters fills me with utter disgust! That I was biologically connected to those very acts because Raniere refused to bathe for over two years is absolutely repugnant!! I am amazed I never contracted an STD.

Raniere used everything at his disposal against me, even my most important family relationships. In June 2008, I received a call from one of my relatives in Mexico, informing me my father was dying—mesenteric thrombosis had left him with only a few feet of his small intestine. I flew there intending to say goodbye to one of the most beloved people in my life. He knew how important my father was to me and positioned himself as savior.

He mobilized NXIVM’s Mexico City community to help—as a result, my father was transferred to a better hospital, where he was treated by a preeminent gastroenterologist. After two unsuccessful surgeries, the doctors concluded all that could be done was to perform a third and final surgery to remove necrotized tissue to make him slightly more comfortable until he passed away.

After hours in the waiting room, the surgeon came out to meet me, head hanging low, shaking. I braced for the worst: “In all my years of practice, I have never seen this. His tissue has healed! I think we’ve just witnessed a miracle.” Whether it was a miracle is debatable, yet Raniere was quick to take credit for it and I believed him, which instilled in me an immense debt of gratitude.

My father passed away a few months later. But for the longest time, on nearly every occasion that I would suffer some abuse by Raniere and his women, that very experience would come to mind, challenging my instinctual perception that I was being tormented. He and his women would hold it over my head when I threatened to leave NXIVM. I believed them when they told me it was impossible for a man who could perform such miracles to be ill-intended or do anyone harm.

Nor was the abuse strictly psychological. I suffered physically as well. I am at least a year away from full repair—and that doesn’t account for the psychological baggage when it comes to diet and exercise. I did severe damage to my metabolism by adhering to Raniere’s ludicrous 400-500 calories-per-day regimens coupled with a surplus of exercise. No matter how hard I pushed, the results were always short-lived and, to everyone’s surprise, I put on weight over the years.

In 2008, he threatened to shun me during our “anniversary” with the following email. The communication shows his desire to control my subconscious after I had an erotic dream about a faceless person. He implied I was “unfaithful” to him and that I needed to control my subconscious. As I read his email, I questioned the obvious, “Isn’t that the point of having a subconscious, to know unrestrained, unpredictable freedom?” I didn’t have the strength then to question his mystical claims that stood in stark contrast against his public persona as a “scientist.”

From: “Flintlock” <kunterre@nycap.rr.com>

Subject: Re: details

Date: October 6, 2008 at 3:27:16 AM EDT

To: “Ivy Nevares” <ivy@nxivm.com>

I want you to know I love you. I want the best for us and act toward you in a way to optimze [sic] that. I had planned to surprise you on our anniversary for I had hoped you would make this possible for me by losing weight etc. I do believe your habits are more important than “us.” We are nothing if you do not earn your way out of this ethical dilemma. At this point, I do not know your weight and you have not written to me as you promissed [sic]: obsessively. Even if you drank only water and walked many miles a day, I do not know if you can create the ethical permission for us to be together on our anniversary. I do not know what to do. Only you can create this, but it has to be more important in every moment than anything and I still [sic] there are no guarantees.

On another note relating to this: in thought I am far more “faithful” to you than you to me. For example, I have never dreamt of having sex with another woman. Up until recently you said the people with whom you had sex in your dreams were faceless and genital-less or with my genitals. This is no longer the case and I see it as an additional problem. It is a problem because of things you said and thought about my genitals amongst other things from the begining [sic] of our relationship due (I believe) to fear of dependency. I think you are obsessed in this area. If so, it is important you be obsessed with me/mine. Your dreams indicate otherwise.

I want to help you and us with all my heart. My condition has gotten very bad where I hide it from Nancy and Pam. I can't go on much longer. If you are to break this cycle, you must adopt a zero-tolerance, immediate policy with yourself. The moment you read this you must start, not tomorrow. You cannot use any excuse for any transgression. One single trangression [sic]--one single lazyness [sic] of writing or anything--and you have started down the slippery slope. You need to obsessively incorporate all I have written here: miss not one word. I cannot tell you anymore [sic]; it is all up to you. You need to prove us to yourself and to me. You must live all of your past commitments, ideas of commitments, thoughts of commitments and anything else you can imagine: there are no limits; no idea, concept or practice is too much. This is a start. I do not know if it will be enough but this fact must not discourage you.

Please do this. Make this right.

I love you.

“I can't go on much longer.” How on Earth was I to respond to that?!

For the following five days, I put myself on 500 calories of maple-syrup sweetened lemonade (the “Master Cleanse”), laxatives and saltwater purges. I walked 4 miles to the gym, worked out for an hour, sat in the sauna for an hour and walked 4 miles back home—this doesn’t include my teaching dance classes 1-2 hours a day. I lost 10 pounds in five days to spend our anniversary together, shortly before he shunned me again, because when I began eating, it caused an inflammatory response and my body stored the energy as fat.

After I left Albany in 2018, I read a book from Dr. Jason Fung, a Canadian nephrologist who precisely outlined why Raniere’s regimens wrought hormonal havoc on me—no wonder I couldn’t lose weight! But during all that time, he and his women blamed me:

You serve fear as your master. Satiation is your “other lover.” You’re not committed, much less committed to reality. You’re lazy, irresponsible, unprincipled. You care more about your body feelings than anything else. You don’t care enough about Keith!

I can still hear their voices and it brings me to tears. I’ve never had a positive body image, even though people have found me pretty or attractive, but I never felt ashamed about my body until I met Raniere, and I still feel ashamed.

I believe that and other torments made me a testing ground for what would later become DOS. He subjected all his women to diets, but because I am petite, I was the first he subjected to the 400-500 calorie diet. He demanded I write him “obsessively” throughout the day even though he rarely if ever responded. To prove I was loyal to him, he demanded other collateral and nudes, even if it meant producing it in other people’s homes. He also filmed us having sex multiple times and withheld the tapes from me.

In 2007, he put me in charge of the Ultima project, shortly after his first child was born. I understand now it was the ultimate hook to keep me in Albany: my only condition in our relationship, which I made crystal clear in the beginning, was that he not have a child with anyone else before we had ours. (I cannot convey how fortunate I am that I was careful enough to never conceive!) He instructed his women and the community to lie to me about both his children.

Ultima was designed to enhance human expression, so it aligned perfectly with my values—I am a writer, editor and dancer. In my opinion, it was one of the least destructive programs, and I poured my heart and soul into writing and teaching the curriculum.

I stopped teaching the original curriculum around 2009 because I couldn’t move the program forward as Raniere was aggressively shunning me. When he restarted Ultima in 2014, he also launched several offshoots, among them the media analysis company The Knife and the pseudo-health-and-wellness project Exo-Eso.

To get back in his good graces, I had to lose about 20 pounds in record time, which I did. The conditions of my return were these: I would earn nothing from the six or more hours I would teach each week, nor would I be compensated for teaching the Fiji workshops, even though they grossed $80,000 and $200,000 respectively. I accepted this in part because it was deeply ingrained in the community that if someone had breached, they could not deliver sufficient value to entitle them to compensation. Nancy Salzman told me that working without pay was an appropriate consequence of my supposed breach and that Raniere was infinitely generous by asking me back.

After being marginalized for so many years, I was grateful for the opportunity to teach again and rejoin my friends with my head held half-way high—because I could never forget my long absences from the community and the questions they raised. As was the case every time he stopped shunning me, I didn’t realize the only reason he did so was to keep me in indentured servitude. As soon as my work sufficed, he and others would resume my marginalization.

By 2014, he had elevated Marianna as the number one woman in the inner circle. She had no education, accomplishments, skills or career, and held one of the lowest ranks within ESP. Her extraordinary arrogance centered around the belief that servicing Raniere sexually was equivalent to a job qualification that earned her the highest status throughout NXIVM. Which, apparently, was the case in his twisted mind.

It was difficult for me to interact with her even as her teacher, and not just because of her arrogance: He demanded nothing of her, yet he and his women gave her everything. He demanded everything of me, yet he and his women gave me nothing—on the contrary, they stole from me everything that mattered: my self-esteem, self-worth, physical and emotional health, the value of my labor and precious, precious years.

Marianna decided to ditch a number of Ultima classes and not respond to every effort I made to catch her up. I treated her the same way anyone was supposed to be treated who fell behind: kicking her out of the program. But Raniere pushed back, demanding I take time out of my life to bring her into good standing. For the first time in my relationship with him, I said “no.”

He became furious—I could see it in his eyes. He tried the usual gaslighting, but for the first time, I remained adamant in my denial, believing she was the very last to deserve special treatment, given her childish behavior. Raniere then flipped the argument on its side:

Do you remember when I made YOU the favorite? Do you remember how much that angered all the other women? Do you remember how much they HATED you? Do you remember how you felt being on top? Do you remember how they felt being on the very bottom?

I swear I didn’t know where he was going with this.

Well, NOW you know what it feels like!

I don’t know if that was the first time spite shone in his eyes or if that was the first time I was able to see it. I was paralyzed, gutted to my very core. Instinctively, I started walking away from him, heart slaughtered.

As he saw me walk away, he threatened to give Ultima to Danielle Roberts, whom he considered incompetent and a terrible teacher. I succumbed and did not leave.

I cannot tell the Court how many times I’ve run that scenario in my mind, hearing the voice inside me screaming in desperation, “GET OUT! LEAVE HIM!!” It haunts me still.

For all of this, it gets darker yet. Perhaps the most sinister thing he ever attempted was to push me towards committing suicide. He was always curious about my suicidal thoughts as an adolescent, which I now understand are not uncommon. In February 2015, Kristin Keefe wrote me, warning that Raniere was a sociopath who wanted me to die by my own hand. Again, that fight for the belief in his goodness made me invalidate her message and, despite her warning, I stayed in NXIVM for an additional three and a half years.

I have recently learned more details from Kristin’s conversations with Raniere that are deeply disturbing. I’ve learned he gleefully questioned not only if but when I would commit suicide, once I learned of the information he was withholding from me. Worse still, he expressed his wish that I would be the first to fall in a cascade of suicide dominos, followed by Barbara Bouchey and other women he was oppressing.

I would set those anecdotes aside, were it not for this: As NXIVM’s communications specialist, I worked with Raniere and Nancy Salzman to write and edit the vast majority of the curriculum. I believe “Rational Inquiry” can be classified in three ways: innocuous, a double-edged sword and sociopathic.

Raniere had a fascination with criminal psychology—specifically swindling, narcissism, psychopathy, sociopathy, and a supposed condition worse than sociopathy that he called “luciferianism.” In one class, he described seven levels of sociopathy. The highest level was the most sadistic and depraved—characterizing the type of sociopath who is exquisitely overcome with Schadenfreude as his very subjects are tortured by his own hand. He called this module, “The Best Game in Town.”

The second question I ever asked Raniere was, “You seem to know a lot about sociopaths. How do we know you’re not one of them?” He giggled and responded, “Because sociopaths can’t build value. I do.” This happened on day five of my first ESP workshop in 2001.

It wasn’t until I read transcripts of Raniere’s calls from jail last month that I fully realized that part of the curriculum was entirely autobiographical in nature. He is the very predator he so specifically described, and believes he’s winning the biggest game of all.

Raniere continues to victimize those of us who left NXIVM and even the few marionettes whose strings he continues to pull, directing them to twerk in the streets of Brooklyn to entertain his fellow inmates, to mass at the U.S. Attorney’s Office demanding prosecutors sign some “affidavit,” and now parading as “activists” offering monetary rewards for evidence they claim to already possess yet say they will only release to the media at some undefined point in the future.

May I note the absurdity of this? Raniere publicly condemned NXIVM’s defectors’ taking their grievances to the media, rather than the justice system—until now, when the chips are down for him. A modern-day Nero, he sits in his cell, joyfully fiddling away while his very subjects follow his instruction and publicly debase themselves in ways their lives and careers will never recover from when (or if) they awaken from their chimeras.

The very day the jury convicted Raniere was the day I decided to get help. NXIVM long taught that psychology, psychiatry and any other sanctioned mental health approach were little more than money pits, and that “the tech” was the only effective tool. On that day, I threw that indoctrination out the window, seeing I could not shake the anxiety and nightmares that plagued me every day, and that I had to trust those sciences instead.

Having received a diagnosis of PTSD for the prolonged trauma of my years in Raniere’s orbit, I am finally on a path to healing—not from some “ethical breach,” but from the nearly two decades I was tormented by him and his female lieutenants.

In NXIVM, I developed a work ethic forged in the fire of forced labor, yet I had no self-confidence and little self-esteem. Still believing their narrative of my failings, I thought I completely lacked the required ability to make it in corporate America if I ever defected. I overcame that, and I am thriving in a rewarding position, but I still live in fear that my association with NXIVM might cost me my job. I have consulted with my company’s HR and legal departments in an effort to make sure my history won’t get me fired. I still don’t know if it will, but I feel compelled to say my piece, to speak my truth and to wrest from him and his cohorts every last bit of power over my life.

Raniere and his loyalists may write me off as a case of “hell hath no fury as a woman scorned.” Your Honor, I was not scorned—I was lied to, abused, exploited and tortured. The prime of my early adulthood and all the opportunities it held were stolen from me. My belief in myself was beaten down 24/7 at Raniere’s and his women’s hands.

I thought I was in a consensual relationship with Raniere, but I never consented to being lied to, controlled, exploited or abused. I didn’t ask for it—I didn’t deserve it. I entered into that relationship with a hopeful and open heart, and walked away nearly broken in every respect.

I believe Raniere deserves to live the rest of his days in prison and forever be deprived of his cohorts’ money and connections, not just for my sake and safety, but for those he continues to abuse. As the Court has witnessed, his predatory appetite is unmatched, even as he begins to wither away in prison. He is nothing without their money or connections.

Please disable his and his cohorts’ resources any way you can. Our safety and mental health depend on it.

Thank you, your Honor, for your time, consideration and strength in compassion.

With deep respect and admiration,

Ivy Nevares

My statement at Clare Bronfman’s sentencing hearing

Your Honor, 

My name is Ivy Nevares. Thank you for providing a space for me to share the statement I’ve prepared for Clare Bronfman’s sentencing hearing. 

Clare came to ESP at the height of her privilege, but sorely lacking as a woman in her early twenties—uneducated, socially inept, insecure and practically friendless. When I met her, she was timid but she was kind. No one would ever guess she was an heiress to the Seagram fortune—not by the way she looked or interacted with others.

Like many of us, Keith Raniere exploited her vulnerabilities. Yet, because of her wealth, he took her for a much longer ride, giving her an unearned position, illegitimate status and inclusion in a select group she so desperately craved, but hardly deserved. She never earned the power she was given—not by title, skill or performance. And in return, she used her power to abuse others, especially those of us in Raniere’s “inner circle.”

I would like to address Clare directly for a few moments.

Clare, after all the evidence, after countess victims whom you considered among friends—how can you remain loyal to your Vanguard? No matter how hard you try, you cannot be principled if the person you follow is a sociopath and a convicted criminal.

Your Honor, when Raniere raised Clare to power in 2009, she began using her position to exploit me through indentured servitude. As soon as Clare supplanted Nancy Salzman as NXIVM’s de facto decision maker in the executive board, Clare lowered my pay, removed what insignificant privileges the company afforded me and raised my rent—all punishments for my supposed “ethical breach” against Raniere. In truth, she punished me for disobeying him. Salzman would later tell me Clare did these things of her own volition.

Twice she caused me to go into financial debt. Together with Raniere, Salzman and Kathy Russell, she subjected me to forced labor as soon as she was given the chance. She also participated in the myriad of lies told to me to keep me from defecting.

My starting salary with ESP was $36,000 a year—this was back in 2002. By the time I stopped working for the company in early 2017, I never earned more than $48,000 a year. I was NXIVM’s hardest-working employee, always filling two or more roles at once and sometimes working up to 20 hours a day. Yet I was provided no benefits, no health insurance, no 401K, no worker’s comp—nothing. The only so-called benefit was a $5 credit per hour worked that could only apply towards ESP’s curriculum.

Instead of recognizing Raniere’s and others’ abuses against me and righting them, Clare enacted her own with exceptional cruelty: She had me teach two intensive trainings at her Fiji resort where students paid $20,000 each, yet she didn’t pay me a cent for the work I performed. I had to pay over $5,000 out of pocket to even be able to teach the second training because she refused to pay for my travel and immigration expenses. This happened after she threatened to have another person teach the curriculum that had taken me years to write and develop. It’s important to note she leveraged the entire situation before I was fully recovered from an emergency shoulder surgery that I, of course, paid for out of pocket.

This is how she treated NXIVM’s most loyal workers: demanding, underpaying or not paying at all. But when it came time to put down hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for lawsuits and PR firms, Clare would do so without a second thought.

One of the cruelest and most reckless things she ever did was hiring me to care for a woman who I later learned had suffered a psychotic break during a Jness training that Clare was attending at the time. She also tasked the now-former doctor Brandon Porter to care for her. She, Raniere and Salzman were frightened that if the woman was taken to a hospital, it would implicate the company in wrongdoing—and that was not the first case.

I took 12-hour night shifts for a week to care for this woman. I still remember running across a field after she suddenly took off in the middle of the night. I thrashed through two feet of snow, screaming into the phone as I asked Salzman what to do, horrified at the possibility she might kill herself and others by running into traffic.

Clare risked Porter losing his medical license by not taking her to a hospital. She risked this woman’s life by not allowing her to be cared for by trained professionals. She risked my life by putting me in an impossible situation, knowing I needed the money.

While payment for these services is the most trivial point by comparison, it demonstrates her callousness and punitive nature: she paid me the going rate for babysitting a child: $12 an hour.

I protested then, citing my measly $17-an-hour wage as a minimum standard, but she refused to pay the difference because of my so-called “ethical breach.”

Your Honor, Clare could have led the company towards just rule, she had the power and she had chance—she could have done so much good.

Instead, she and her sister Sara became Raniere’s primary enablers. I am not alone in my belief that without their money, he could have never harmed as many people as he did.

Clare claims she did not bankroll Raniere or his organizations, that she did not know what he was doing behind the scenes and that she bears no responsibility in what he did. Again, I would like to address her.

Clare, you gave millions of dollars to him. Even if you never asked what he did with it, you’re still responsible for exponentially amplifying his abuses. You were and are the propellant to his unyielding fire.

Not knowing doesn’t relieve us of responsibility, remember that? So why do you refuse to see your part in all these damages?

In addition to exploiting many of us and facilitating Raniere’s trafficking of women, she has crippled countless others through vindictive litigiousness. She even sacrificed her relationship with her beloved father. I ask Clare:

Would he be proud of you knowing that you’re going to prison for following the very monster he was trying to protect you from?

I would like the Court to know I see no indication that Clare has any remorse about what she’s done—not her guilty plea, not her funding Raniere’s defense and cohorts, not her letter to the Court nor her recent filings claiming she has been unjustly targeted because of her wealth.

 If I may, again, address her. 

Clare, you are being held accountable for your crimes. Sylvie wasn’t your only victim. I am one of them, as are a number of women whom I spoke with and heard their direct account of how you exploited them until the government forced you to stop.

The fact that you want to persuade the Court and the public to think otherwise demonstrates you have no remorse whatsoever over what you’ve done, over what you are still doing and over what you will continue to do if you keep supporting and funding Raniere.

In our last face-to-face before I left Albany in 2018, I asked Clare point-blank: “Clare, you’ve spent your entire time and resources defending Raniere. Are you willing to spend the rest of your life defending him?”

Not a moment had passed before she turned and said, “Absolutely.”

When I read her last court filing, where her lawyers adamantly urge the Court to prohibit other victims from speaking at this hearing, I took it as the statement of a woman who refuses, at all costs, to see and hear the extent of the damage she has done. 

Your Honor, all of Raniere’s organizations prey upon well-intentioned people, baiting them with promises of success and nobility. He hasn’t stopped. He will not stop. 

Clare’s money will simply amplify the harm Raniere and she can do together. For this reason, I not only consider her a menace to me and her other perceived enemies, but to society at large.

I would like to address Clare one final time.

Raniere often said the most sacred and valuable thing we have in the world is time because it is the one thing that can never be replaced.

Clare, I hope during the years you sit in prison, you reflect on this: your minutes, hours and days are only a fraction of what you, Raniere and his women stole from me.

On my former connection to Keith Raniere and NXIVM

I’m publishing this statement on the eve of the first sentencing hearing in the federal case against Keith Raniere and NXIVM. I’ve remained silent about my former connection to him and his organizations for numerous reasons—the most important being my personal healing and protecting the life I have fought hard to build since I defected. 

As I prepare to speak at the hearings, beginning with Clare Bronfman’s tomorrow, it’s clear the time has come for me to establish my position publicly. 

In December 2001, I took a 16-day introductory workshop with Executive Success Programs, Inc. (ESP) at the behest of a now-former friend from college, Farouk Rojas. The company touted itself as a human potential school that sought to further ethics in the world. I and thousands of others flocked to its headquarters in Albany, New York with the understanding that its unique “technology” (Raniere would later call it a “talk therapy”) could radically improve our lives and the lives of others. I became a coach the following spring and began editing the course materials as a barter to take more advanced trainings.

ESP rebranded itself as NXIVM Corporation in 2002 and would later spawn dozens of spin-offs (ESP remained NXIVM’s main “educational” branch until 2018). Each new organization was pitched as a one-of-a-kind noble endeavor that would solve one or more societal problems—violence, gender issues, negligent parenting and the lack of journalistic ethics, among a myriad of other global issues. The workshops sold ranged from $300 to $20,000 a person—the first one I took cost $6,000 back in 2001.

By the time Raniere showed a personal interest in me, I was heavily indoctrinated into NXIVM’s culture and dogma, and had already been groomed by his women. They said his time was worth upwards of $100,000 per hour and that spending but a minute in his company was life-changing.

It was life-changing, just not the way I expected.

After just 10 days of personal contact, I began an intimate relationship with him in October 2002, when he asked me to commit to him personally and professionally for life.

There I was: an idealistic 25-year-old woman, advocating for free expression and human rights with PEN, the world’s first NGO. There he was: “the world’s smartest, most ethical man” asking me, of all people, to spend the rest of my life with him.

© 2020, ivy nevares. All rights reserved.

Little did I know, he was a 42-year-old manipulative narcissist and sexual predator.

I moved from Brooklyn to Albany two months later to work as the company’s communication specialist and the only writer with whom Raniere published. In keeping with my vow, I went on to work exclusively for him and his companies for nearly 17 years. Sixteen years, eight months and six days, to be exact.

Cults abuse people through a highly deceptive, complex, invasive and drawn-out process of manipulation. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to characterize a victim as having been “stupid” for falling prey. Yet to truly understand how and why these abuses happen, one must consider the dynamic process by which people are victimized by manipulative sociopaths such as Raniere. 

In my case, NXIVM’s psychological warfare began before I ever stepped inside the door—it started with an hour-long enrollment call from that former friend. By the time the first five days of the workshop were over, I was taught that people are either “parasites” or “producers,” that there are no such things as “cults,” that I’m responsible for literally everything in the world now and in the past, and that “there are no ultimate victims.” Victimhood, according to Raniere, is a choice. 

That last assertion is perhaps the most dangerous because removing victimhood from the human construct of justice automatically legitimizes criminal conduct. It’s curious that Raniere now considers himself the ultimate victim of the U.S. justice system—as do his cohorts.

Although NXIVM was not religious, there were whispers that Raniere, known as “Vanguard” to the organization, was someone akin to a messiah-type figure. Many intelligent people I met in those early days revered him so that I naturally questioned my resistance to these ideas—precisely the intended impact of the initial workshop. 

People joined ESP for many, many different reasons. What drove me were personal insecurities and roadblocks to the next phase in my life: trusting a partner enough to start a family. There were, of course, lots of nutty things in that workshop, but there were also benefits: I overcame several limiting beliefs that had haunted me since childhood. I began taking back my territory, my very self-esteem. Although this, too, is common to manipulative, coercive control groups: if there were no positive aspects to the teachings and practices, nobody would stick around for long.

What I didn’t realize was the initial workshop was a gateway to systemic conditioning that would slowly erode my instincts and defenses, opening me up to brutal psychological, emotional and physical abuse. 

As is the case with many victims, it took me a very long time to recognize I was being abused—that I did not ask for it, I did not deserve it, I did not consent and that I was not alone in experiencing these things. Even once I began to recognize that I was being abused, the feeling of shame I experienced kept me stuck in the situation for quite some time.

I finally found the courage to leave Albany three months after Raniere’s scandalous arrest and extradition from my home country in March 2018. It took another two months to rip out the last claws still digging into my mind, which prevented my seeing the full picture and my place in it. As I removed the last one, the blindfold finally fell away and, in its absence, grew pure rage. 

The cycle of awareness and ire finally erupted while reading the first chapter of “Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships.” I owe the authors, Dr. Janja Lalich and Madeleine Landau Tobias, a sincere debt of gratitude for their work.

That fateful day in August 2018, I realized that I had been part of a cult. (If the term offends anyone’s vernacular, replace “cult” with “high-demand group” or simply “abusive relationship,” because that’s what they are—cults can get a little weirder sometimes). Realizing I was in a cult was humiliating, but the worst was realizing the people I had trusted with my life had betrayed me in the most sinister way.

The irony is unmatched: I joined NXIVM to work on my trust issues, yet their treachery nearly eroded my trust in humanity. “Nearly” because I’ve since opened up to friends from my past and friends who also defected. Their kindness and solidarity have helped restore my belief that people can care for and protect one another.

In June 2019, after the jury deliberated for only four hours, Raniere was convicted of seven federal crimes, including fraud, racketeering, forced labor and one count each of sex trafficking of women and children. The jury unanimously decided that he committed each of the fourteen enumerated criminal acts underlying his racketeering charge. Two of those criminal “predicate acts” involved Raniere producing and possessing child pornography.

Many of the charges relate to a female secret society he created in 2015 known as DOS or The Vow. DOS baited women with the promise of conquering their fears, personal limitations and historical dependence on men. No other women’s “movement” in history offered quite the full package: self-reliance, success, freedom from subservience, and, to sweeten the deal, spiritual enlightenment.

I never took part in DOS, although I had my share of the denigrating practices more than 10 years before DOS was born, thanks to Raniere’s unyielding demands. I did participate briefly in the equally misogynistic female and male precursors to DOS: Jness and SOP or “Society of Protectors.” However, I largely avoided the workshops because I would feel worse about myself every single time I attended. 

DOS recruited over 100 innocent women in the U.S., Mexico and Canada under false pretenses—precisely Raniere’s M.O. The leaders concealed the fact that he led DOS, and they gathered “collateral” consisting of highly embarrassing and even incriminating materials the group used to blackmail women into submission.

What is even more shocking is Raniere continues to lead DOS from prison, as well as its male counterpart. While SOP is alive and well, I hear some of its members have gone underground to form and find recruits for a male-version of DOS. Worst still is the strong hold he continues to have over his most ardent followers, especially those in New York City and the ones still hiding in Mexico, fearing prosecution.

Keith and his first line of sex slaves—specifically Allison Mack, Lauren Salzman, Nicki Clyne, Rosa Laura Junco, Loreta Garza, Daniela Padilla and Monica Duran—all abused new recruits and lied to them about the supposed symbol that was to be cauterized on their pelvis. It wasn’t a symbol, but rather a pathetic drawing of Raniere’s initials. Danielle Roberts, who may well lose her medical license in New York for her involvement, branded numerous women while lying to them about the symbol’s true meaning. She also continues to stand firmly behind her actions. 

DOS was an inevitable escalation in the twisted world of Raniere, but as much as it garnered the most media attention, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. He’s been playing this depraved game for decades, and the abuses I and other female victims suffered served only his amusement. Sadly, he did not work alone.

Similar to Jeffrey Epstein’s Ghislaine Maxwell, some of Raniere’s women blackmailed, exploited and procured young women to satisfy his pathological need for power and control—particularly the late Pamela Cafritz, who was the first to groom me and normalize his abhorrent proclivities. To me, Cafritz was the most monstrous of the lot. Not only because of what she did to me until her dying days but because she procured women and girls for Raniere with absolutely no remorse.

It’s taken tremendous personal effort and a strong support network to get back on my feet after so many years of unyielding trauma. I considered remaining silent, but this summer, to top all things COVID and, for lack of a better word, 2020, Raniere’s loyalists—led by Nicki Clyne, Michele Hatchette, Suneel Chakravorty, Marc Elliot and Eduardo Asunsolo—did the unthinkable: they started a so-called “movement” called “We Are As You” (a.k.a. The Forgotten Ones) outside his prison in Brooklyn.

More on that nonsense later. The point is when I saw this farce of a social justice initiative, I could no longer stand by and do nothing, so I took to Twitter. And just three days ago, they launched yet another front—I’m guessing the first one didn’t work out. This one’s called “Make Justice Blind” and the same brainwashed gang is taking up a fight with the federal government now—good luck with that.

It’s time for a formal statement—secrecy is the sociopath’s creed.

Through this, I take the first step in transforming from a highly private person to potentially something else. This is the beginning of my social emancipation from NXIVM.

With this statement, I also begin taking back control of my narrative, which has been told inaccurately or outright falsely by some dubious media outlets, and opportunistic journalists and bloggers. I also plan to publish the statements I make at the sentencing hearings here.

I hope Raniere and his co-defendants get the sentences they deserve so they experience, first-hand, what it’s like to lose precious, irreplaceable time.

Although in their case, it is well deserved. 

More to come.

Photo by Jake Colling on Unsplash

Victim vs. Survivor

I’ve been reading up on and watching documentaries about a slice of systemic abuses in the United States, among them USA Gymnastics, Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking and cults. I wholeheartedly respect that these brave women have opted for the label of "survivor" instead of "victim." Both are fundamentally valid and sound. I just can't adopt either of them. Abuse has shaped my life, but it doesn't define who I am. Whatever the case, term or label: I stand with you.