In the monster's own words

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In moments of rage, it helps to put feelings on paper. To think that a few years ago, I would have been punished for feeling the way I do. But rage is a natural and valid response in the face of injustice.

How did the lowlife felon that is Nancy Salzman manage to buy a get-out-of-jail card? Did her ex-husband, a cardiologist, or perhaps her friends in the medical community exaggerate her supposed symptoms? Whatever her ploy, she managed yet again to play the ultimate victim.

In honor of this newest deception, I want the world to see her as she truly is, through the damning nature of her own words.

I originally included this email in my letters to the Court as she awaited sentencing, but I excluded it to be respectful of my reader’s time. It is the last in a long string of messages, which she penned at the height of my exploitation. I was raging against her, at the years she exploited me as she orchestrated it all with glee, sometimes even without Raniere having direct knowledge of it. Not because he turned a blind eye, but because he was otherwise “entertained.”

The email thread started after I laid out a timeline of the meager wages she paid or entirely withheld as my employer over the course of 14 years (at the time of writing). She controlled my salary, work visa and major expenses such as rent and utilities—the timeline details the years she raised my rent and decreased my salary. Like all the businesses she ran, she used my employment to evade state and federal taxes, all while she enjoyed six-figure paychecks and tens of thousands of dollars on everyday luxuries.

How did she justify my forced labor? My enduring exploitation?

My supposed ethical breach against Raniere, of course. I came so close to leaving that time, writing:

I am not happy with my situation. My breach and my work exchange relate, but they’re not complex equivalents. You seem to indicate they are with certain consistency. And maybe they are to you/the company, but then I need to know that’s how it is. 

If that is the case, I would evaluate my situation differently. In other words, if I knew that working here meant that unless I lost weight, was in good standing with KR, etc., my work with corporate [NXIVM] would not be valued for what it is, and instead would be devalued/undervalued, that’s a very different exchange than the one I think I’m under.

If you were to say, “Ok, the deal has changed: your personal issues are one and the same as your work with corporate,” then we’d be working within a completely different framework and I would need to evaluate my options given that. 

Her response?

Please read your breach over again if you are not happy with your situation and see how it applies.

I pushed back, to which she said:

Keep thinking and prove yourself wrong here like in SOP.

I pushed again. I even roped in Loreta Garza, another lowlife whom I believed a friend who could help on my behalf (how wrong I was!). Finally, the monster’s coup de grace:

Ivy,

You had individual personal training from Keith, a personal interest free loan, your name on his books as a co-author (when you were a ghost writer), you got to participate in the creation of Ultima and the possibility to earn upwards of $100/hour, the rent on your dance studio was paid for years and I’m paying for your gasoline. You have been compensated well and your breaches are something that is considered because you are a proctor (as it is the territory of all proctors). Stop it Ivy, do you want the job or not?

She lied, of course. The loan Raniere ordered was used to entrap me. I authored the books I wrote—Raniere hardly lifted a finger. I never earned upwards of $100 an hour ever, not even half, in any of NXIVM’s ventures, much less as Salzman’s employee. Of the over $100,000 I paid to keep my dance studio going through nearly 10 years (which was another master entrapment), Raniere paid a total of $3,850 as my “silent business partner.” And the gas she paid was because I could not afford to drive down to an empty NXIVM center to serve out my sentence every day—a sentence she singlehandedly brought down and enforced.

I wish I had taken her implicit threat of firing me and ran with it. But the shackles ran deep and would still run deep for another four years.