Don't Call it a Cult

by Sarah Berman

  Salzman and Mack told the NXIVM community the same thing. They said that ex-law-enforcement had vetted the situation and there was no need for concern. “I lied to the entire community about it,” Salzman later testified. “I lied to the media about it. I lied to everybody about it.” That included her own mother.

  NXIVM then released a statement on its website: “Recently a media outlet unfoundedly, and incorrectly, linked NXIVM corporation, its founder and its related companies, with a social group. The allegations relayed in the story are built upon sources, some of which are under criminal investigation or already indicted, who act as a coordinated group. This story might be a criminal product of criminal minds who, in the end, are also hurting the victims of the story.

  “Unfortunately, this media outlet fell prey to these coordinated, criminal efforts. NXIVM was not able to participate in this story because it painfully held true to the due process of our free world justice system.”

  Lauren Salzman’s behind-the-scenes public relations outreach was working. The PR firm hired to get favorable media coverage secured a major profile with a writer who covers consent issues.

  * * *

  —

  I MET SARAH Edmondson at an upscale vegetarian restaurant on May 30, 2018, seven months after my first interview with her and one year since she had mustered the courage to leave. It was the same day The New York Times dropped another bombshell story, this time giving NXIVM’s top leaders more space to justify their therapies and minimize abuses. Salzman later testified that she and Allison Mack had lied to the reporter outright.

  Edmondson asked me what I thought of the story. Instead of clear-cut villains, the latest piece painted Raniere, Salzman, and Clare Bronfman as athletic, smart, conventionally attractive, and in touch with their emotions. It placed NXIVM within a constellation of self-improvement regimens that didn’t sound all that different. Allison Mack was quoted as saying that it had been her idea to brand women recruits; that, in her mind, a tattoo wasn’t meaningful enough. “I was like, ‘Y’all, a tattoo? People get drunk and tattooed on their ankle,’ ” Mack told the Times. “I have two tattoos and they mean nothing.”

  Both Salzman and Mack knew this wasn’t true, that it was Raniere who came up with the idea of branding. “She took credit for coming up with the idea of the brand and then was like, ‘I don’t know why I did that,’ ” Salzman testified. “She characterized it as this wonderful opportunity for women to explore their sexuality.”

  I didn’t yet know about the lies, so I told Edmondson that more nuance was usually a good thing. The news story contained all the accusations against Raniere—that he may have created this twisted pyramid scheme, that he may have abused underage girls in the past—but left enough room for the idea that DOS slaves might just be very capable women using very powerful tools. Raniere stressed that no collateral had been released. He claimed he only had sex with two DOS slaves.

  Every time a big story appeared, there’d be a flurry of ex-NXIVM chatter, Edmondson told me. Reactions in group chats were all over the map: some were outraged that America’s newspaper of record would allow a cult accused of sex trafficking to put so much of its own spin on the scandal; others said the reporter’s intimate access helped illustrate the extent of the psychological manipulation.

  Outside of Edmondson’s group chat, some readers wondered whether the world was overreacting to a chosen alternative lifestyle. Spend enough time scrolling on social media and anyone can find multi-level marketers, leadership seminar recruiters, BDSM practitioners, and, yes, polyamorous men. If the NXIVM fallout was going to add fuel to the #MeToo movement, the jury of public opinion was still out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  In Character

  I can’t pinpoint the exact moment my own sense of reality started to bend, but it was around one year into covering the NXIVM story for Vice. Keith Raniere had been locked up for just over six months, and I’d just learned that an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit had been inspired by the cult.

  By this time I was fully through the looking glass, nursing a level of paranoia I wasn’t comfortable sharing with anyone but my closest friends. “Maybe they’re following you,” one of them had unhelpfully texted after I described a NXIVM-related coincidence that left me feeling unsettled.

  The coincidence I’d recounted went like this: I was standing with another friend half a block away from my apartment one Saturday night, updating her on the stories I was working on. I told her about the branding, the actors, the FBI investigation—all of it. Then a striking blond woman with an iPhone pinned to her ear dramatically announced to the person she was speaking to that we were talking about Sarah Edmondson, someone she considered a close acquaintance.

  The woman quickly hung up. Then she proceeded to walk alongside us as we crossed a street and headed toward a bar, chatting us up along the way. She asked us questions about what we knew about NXIVM, and when I revealed that I was a journalist who’d been reporting on the self-help organization for many months, she started feeding me several NXIVM-related story tips.

  Because of the Vancouver neighborhood I live in, it made sense to me that we were likely surrounded by people who probably knew things about NXIVM. It was strangely serendipitous, but not mind-blowing. We were about a fifteen-minute walk from the yoga studio where people like Sarah Edmondson, Jenn Kobelt, and Kristin Kreuk did regular vinyasa and hot yoga classes. Surely others lived nearby. But something about the conversation still seemed off.

  The stranger suggested that I look into the misdeeds of the people who’d blown the whistle on the branding and cooperated with the FBI. I made a mental note to look into her allegations, especially something about NXIVM men supposedly being encouraged to “stallion” on their wives and girlfriends.

  I thanked the woman for her suggestions and attempted to exchange contact information. I ended up giving her my Twitter handle, and in return she gave me what I thought was hers. A few minutes later, while waiting for a round of drinks on a Kitsilano patio, I plugged in every combination and spelling of the compound word she’d given me. I guessed I was about to find the musings of a bubbly yoga teacher/actor, but nothing came up on any social platform. It seemed she’d given me a fake name.

  More unnerving than that were her parting words to me. Before disappearing around a corner, she warned that I should be careful about who I talked to and what I told them. This was after she’d invited me to describe my research process. I had named some of the people I’d interviewed with an understanding that she could potentially help uncover new aspects of the secretive group. Yet instead of feeling energized about new leads, I couldn’t help feeling something spooky had just happened.

  I already knew from court records that Clare Bronfman had paid private investigators to spy on perceived enemies. I would later hear testimony about actors sent on spy missions, instructed to drum up conversations with Raniere’s targets.

  I told my friend, “I don’t need that level of paranoia in my life,” but the damage was more or less done. Suddenly many terrible things seemed possible. Could the potential sources I’d already contacted be reporting back to NXIVM leadership? Was Clare paying to access my bank account and inbox? What was real and what was a product of gut feeling, suspicion, and thin air? I worried that what I thought were the facts of the case, ones I’d been poring over for months, could turn out to be a figment of my overactive imagination.

  * * *

  —

  ALL OF THIS was bouncing around in my head when I arrived at Edmondson’s door on November 12, 2018. It had been months since our last conversation. I didn’t bring wine this time because she’d just recently announced her second pregnancy. Edmondson’s four-year-old was playing around on the carpet, showing us his Ninja Turtle sunglasses and Transformers as we cued up the NXIVM-based episode of Law & Order.

  Edmondson told me about her latest a
cting role: a journalist investigating a secretive women’s empowerment group that turned criminal. I remember thinking it was fitting and confusing and hilarious at the same time. We later joked that it was too bad I wasn’t able to show her the ropes at my desk job. The episode began with a disclaimer insisting that the story did “not depict any actual person, entity or event,” which put a half-smile on my face. Then the Law & Order sound, an auditory meme in its own right, finished the job. I’ll admit that I was excited.

  One of the first scenes looked like a NXIVM recruitment session, except the group was called Accredo. About a dozen slim, beautiful women in blazers and minidresses sat in an open-concept living room with high ceilings, long golden curtains, and a grand piano. There was a sameness among the women, all with long hair down their backs, modest sleeves and necklines, and postures that minimized their already tiny frames. They applauded as a woman with sweeping dark hair moved to the front of the room.

  “Barf,” Edmondson said at the familiar scene. We were only two minutes in and for her it was already too on-the-nose.

  Then she recognized the actor playing the blond woman directing the pitch meeting. “That’s Sarah Carter,” she told me. She reached for her phone to double check. Of course this actor was also named Sarah. Who better to stand in Sarah Edmondson’s fictionalized shoes, pitching empowerment and success to would-be recruits? By the end of the episode, her character would be charged for “carrying out a murder at the behest of a manipulative guru.”

  “We were slick like that, with the power suits,” Edmondson said as one woman onscreen recounted how she’d been in an abusive relationship and stalling in her career before she discovered Accredo. “And testimonials were a big part of it,” she added.

  The members of this slick empowerment group talked about subsisting on cucumber water and where to find the best gluten-free pasta. There was talk of step counts, intensive programs, facing fears, and gaining permission to love themselves. When the SVU detectives interviewed a woman dressed in red robes on the set of a Handmaid’s Tale–like TV show, the line “This is so surreal” resonated on too many levels.

  “Who knew there was so much money in insecurity?” Detective Amanda Rollins asked as she approached a mansion standing in for the NXIVM mothership.

  Of course there were plenty of details that strayed far from the truth. The fictionalized Keith Raniere was a different flavor of creepy—in real life he’s a calculating listener who hides what he thinks behind big questions, but the show presented an amateur mind reader, spouting off invasive assessments of the SVU detectives’ personal lives.

  When Detective Rollins stumbled on a sea of mattresses in a pool house, Edmondson pointed out that in her twelve years in NXIVM she’d seen no bare mattresses. Then again, she was never invited to what the New York Post called Raniere’s “sex den,” known to his associates as the executive library. “That was never on the table,” she said. Edmondson was married, and she’d never taken Raniere up on his business offers, which would have placed her much closer to Albany and his harem.

  Those points and the murder angle aside, Edmondson was impressed by the way the show handled some things, the branding in particular. Arlo, the Raniere stand-in, was quick to mention that it was a woman’s idea to burn her skin with AHM, standing, in this fictional universe, for At His Mercy. “It’s to symbolize her progress,” said Arlo. “Something she’d never forget.” The women onscreen insisted that Arlo didn’t make any decisions for them; they found strength within themselves. That resonated for Edmondson.

  A climactic scene had a detective question one of the women in a Rikers Island interrogation room. The detective says, “You know most of the women are in here because they believed a man’s lies. Ask them. They’ll be happy to tell you.”

  Edmondson cut in, “I hope Moira said that to Allison.” I hadn’t yet met prosecutor Moira Kim Penza, but I knew she had a stranger-than-fiction trial ahead of her.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WAS STILL so much that was up in the air, but Edmondson was finally starting to feel secure in her decision to leave, she told me. There had been many times over the previous year when she’d questioned her decision to walk through fire on the way to justice and accountability. But those moments were becoming fewer and further between.

  She still occasionally got obscenity-laced emails from strangers accusing her of seeking fame by going to The New York Times with her branding story. But by now she was incredulous at the suggestion: “Like, why?” she fumed. “Of all the things I could do, I’m not doing this to be famous.”

  She was right, of course, and I fumed with her. But I also wondered if a sense of personal exceptionalism was what attracted many NXIVM students in the first place. Followers wanted to be the best in their chosen field, whether that was acting, running, dancing, writing, public speaking, or filmmaking. And they all dared to believe greatness, if not fame, was possible.

  Edmondson said she wanted to start a foundation to help victims of similar manipulation. Enough time had elapsed that she’d become more certain of her ethical principles, and living those values meant telling the truth about what had happened and letting the public decide what was good, bad, or criminal.

  The irony wasn’t lost on Edmondson: it took leaving and challenging NXIVM to finally uphold the world-changing ideals she thought Keith Raniere had taught her.

  EPILOGUE

  Vanguard on Trial

  Nancy Salzman was the first to plead, in mid-March 2019.

  Suddenly, after months of silence from lawyers and whistleblowers, case developments started coming, one after another.

  Salzman, once a feared disciplinarian to many inner-circle women, appeared deflated as she entered the Brooklyn courthouse. She pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy. In a short statement she apologized to her daughter, Lauren, and the other defendants for her actions. “Some of the things I have done weren’t only wrong, they were criminal,” she told the court. “If I could go back and change things, I would. But I can’t.” Salzman also admitted to conspiring to commit identity theft and doctoring video evidence in a civil court case against cult educator Rick Ross.

  Then, hours after Salzman’s plea, the Department of Justice brought new child porn and child exploitation charges against Raniere. The explosive new indictment alleged that he’d had a sexual relationship with at least one fifteen-year-old victim and had taken photos that the feds called “child pornography.”

  After twenty years of working in lockstep atop a hierarchical web of companies, it seemed that Vanguard and his Prefect were facing the moment of collapse.

  * * *

  —

  LAUREN SALZMAN PLEADED two weeks later, 364 days after Raniere’s arrest.

  I thought about the difference a year makes. On March 25, 2018, Salzman had been at that compound in Chacala, Mexico, with Nicki Clyne and Allison Mack. A year later she was officially convicted of one count of racketeering and one count of racketeering conspiracy. Her plea was sealed by the court on March 25, 2019, likely in an effort not to disrupt the ongoing plea negotiations with other defendants in the case.

  As part of her plea, she admitted to confining Daniela in a room for nearly two years and threatening her with deportation. She said she’d committed forced labor as a DOS “master” and committed extortion when she collected “collateral” from her “slaves.” She admitted to collecting credit card authorizations, sexually explicit photos and videos, and rights to cars and other property.

  Lauren Salzman apologized for the harm she’d caused the witnesses who were about to testify as well as the hundreds of members of the NXIVM community. “Your Honor, in light of reviewing all the discovery and having many months to reflect, I came to the conclusion that the most moral and the most just course of action for me was to take full responsibility for my conduct, and that is why I am pleading guil
ty today.”

  * * *

  —

  MEANWHILE, CLARE BRONFMAN’S courtroom conduct nearly overshadowed the Salzmans’ pleas. She’d shown her loyalty to NXIVM by staring daggers at prosecutor Moira Kim Penza during a March 19 hearing and setting up a $14.3 million trust to pay for some of the other defendants’ legal fees.

  Bronfman had as many as twelve lawyers working on her case. On March 27 she was asked whether she’d retained famed Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti, who was already making headlines that week for his alleged role in a high-profile case in New York’s Southern District that involved an attempt to extort $20 million from the Nike company. Judge Nicholas Garaufis questioned why Avenatti and Bronfman’s main lawyer, Mark Geragos, had met with a federal prosecutor to negotiate on the NXIVM file. He also cast doubt on Bronfman’s account that she found Geragos by internet search, as there happened to be a family connection between Raniere’s and Bronfman’s legal teams: Teny Geragos, Mark’s daughter, was working on Raniere’s defense.

  Faced with such tough questions about her legal representation, Bronfman fainted, and an ambulance was called.

  “As Your Honor is aware, Ms. Bronfman is not feeling well,” one of her lawyers told the judge after the episode. “She is going to the hospital…. I believe she blacked out.”

  Judge Garaufis scolded Bronfman’s lawyers for deflecting his questions. “I want answers. I want to know why I wasn’t told last week that Mr. Avenatti had been retained,” he said. “I should have been told who the lawyers are.”

  In a letter to the judge the next day, one of Bronfman’s lawyers confirmed that Avenatti had worked for her “for a matter of days” and “for a limited purpose.” Avenatti was charged and later convicted of extortion in the Nike case.