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Mommy, can I have a waffle?
- For breakfast? - Yeah.
- Hello? - Check Twitter out. It's blowing up.
Hold on. I'm going to look for it.
Everyone's doing MeToo.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on a sec, Trey.
Mommy!
Mommy?
You know the Me-Too thing, right?
If this Harvey Weinstein story broke
and I hadn't experienced what happened in ESP,
I would be as equally not supportive or not as compassionate, empathetic.
I'd be like, "Why wouldn't they just leave the room?"
If anybody's ever been in an abusive relationship, it's no different.
Why would you stay with an abuser?
You spend most of your time defending yourself.
Oh my God.
Look at the Bill Cosby thing. Look at the Harvey Weinstein thing.
There isn't a place in our culture right now
where women who had these abuses happen to them
can go and get taken seriously.
Unfortunately, you have to use the media to do that.
"Waking up this morning
to almost every woman friend of mine with a status
moved me to tears, and then rage.
I used to think that these things never happened to me, but it has.
In England at a rave, in Israel in a bathroom,
and most recently in Knox Woods, Clifton Park, New York.
Naked, pinned down, mutilated and videotaped.
Me too."
THE VOW
Days we were young
We took photographs Of everything we could see
We have to run from it
Priest and prophetess
We were nothing we would defy
Invisible skin There is the world within
Invincible skin It's how we all begin
HONESTY & DISCLOSURE
I just got a notification.
- A notification about what? - A New York Times notification.
- Really? - It's been popping up.
- Holy shit! Look. - You just got it? Let's see it.
"To join the self-help group's inner circle,
some women provided compromising material about themselves,
then they were held down and branded."
- It's happening. - Wow. This shit's about to explode.
- Its front page of the New York Times! - That's very good.
This is what we wanted! Oh my God! Oh my God!
With the Me Too shit, this is going viral.
Holy fuck. Nip, I'm the front page of The New York fucking Times.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
Shit, Sarah.
Oh my God, there's a picture of my brand.
"Albany, last March, five women gathered in a home near here
to enter a secret sisterhood
they were told was created to empower women."
"A copy of a text message
Mr. Raniere sent to a female follower indicates
that he knew women were being branded
and the symbols designed incorporated his initials.
'If it were Abraham Lincoln's or Bill Gates initials, no one would care.'"
That's what he said to somebody?
"Several former members have asked state authorities
to investigate the group's activities,
but officials have declined to pursue action."
- Fuck them. - Yeah.
Fuck you all, shitheads.
Hold on. Mark's calling.
- Hi. - Holy fuck.
My phone has just been going.
I'm literally phone call to phone call to phone call.
Oh my God. Like, "I've got to go. Here's Mark.
Got to go, here's Mom. Got to go to there's a reporter."
"Here's my chiropractor. I missed my chiropractic appointment."
In some ways this is like another beginning now.
Yeah. No. The fireworks are going to start.
Is there a certain unloading of emotion going on?
- Yeah. I love you, Bonnie. - I love you, Sarah.
No, no. Seriously. I really fucking love you.
- You were so brave. - I love you too.
We're having a moment. You are the bravest, first one.
That must have been scary as fuck to try to leave when you did.
It's just, this is crazy.
This is going to be a roller coaster.
It's gonna have inertia going one way, inertia going the other.
But I think it's a steady climb towards whatever justice, whatever.
What are they going to do now?
What is the worst-case scenario that they're going to do?
- Yeah, agree. - Love you. Bye.
Barry, it's Catherine Oxenberg. I just finished reading the article
and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart.
This is going to help save my daughter. I'm so incredibly grateful.
- Hi. - How's it going?
Welcome to the New York Times party.
The party's getting started.
Hi, just to let you know, you're on speaker.
There's a bunch of ex-ESP-ians at my house.
We're having a New York Times party.
- Hey, guys. - Hey.
Everyone's on their phone texting, tweeting,
sending it to people who are still in,
making sure the right person sends it so we don't trigger their pride.
We're a little...
Someone is trying to... Barbara Bouchey is trying to call me now.
Oh my God. Should I answer that?
Some people say I'm too busy. I can't squeeze anything in.
You're exactly the type of person that needs a program.
You know why? Your life is obviously controlling you.
- Sarah? - Hi, Barb.
What a big day! Oh my God, I love that it rode the Harvey Weinstein coattails.
Yeah. I think that was very smart, and I posted the Me Too.
You should go on my Facebook and check it out.
Oh my God. Finally, it's getting out there.
- And I'm just really proud. - Thank you.
- And it's very emotional. - Yeah.
So, I... You know, I don't feel so alone anymore.
No, you're not alone anymore.
I don't know if you guys know this, Barbara was my field trainer.
Barb taught me everything. Everything I know.
- That was her? - That was her.
You told me that story. I didn't know it was Barbara Bouchey.
I guess her name was blacklisted back then.
- Now you're back. - Now you're back.
You know, Sarah, I want to tell you, you outdid me as a field trainer.
And I just knew you were going to do amazing things,
and I saw that in you from the first moment I met you.
And this is what I'm going to say to you.
It... Nothing may ever come it. He may not be stopped.
But nothing changes what you did.
I'm hoping perhaps the authorities will take another look.
Yeah, I hope so too.
THE BAY AREA
This is it. These are the old VHS.
I haven't seen him in 10 years,
and so we're going to be watching them for the first time.
April 2009, myself and eight key women resigned.
We thought that people would wake up at NXIVM
or we can get the government involved and hold Keith accountable.
This needs to stop.
It's manipulative and deceptive and not transparent,
and you don't know that.
Of course, it didn't do anything.
- This is a tape that you made? - Yes.
And I decided to surprise Keith.
His father gave me some videos when he was a little kid,
and so I compiled that.
This was his song that he would play for me all the time
by Led Zeppelin that says, Thank You.
So, of course, I put it in there because I'm a romantic.
That's me.
- Why did you make this tape? - It was his birthday.
And you know, at this point now, I was in love with him.
So, yeah, so I started the trend of creating tribute videos.
Did one for Nancy for her birthday.
Okay. Are we ready?
Who was Nancy Salzman to you?
Nancy Salzman, I met in the late '80s.
Nancy was a therapist and I was referred to her for stress management.
My mom died when I was eight. My dad was a severe alcoholic.
And I would get stressed out about things
because I needed to control my environment.
So, Nancy, she helped me a lot and we became friends.
Around the year 1999,
she tried to convince me to take a workshop.
She and Keith had formed the company
at that time called Executive Success Programs.
It was the first time in my life
that I visited those wounds and that childhood trauma.
There's a part of our existence that is indescribable.
Like, for example, the experience of pain.
You could say, "Well, you have nerves that fire and go up into your brain."
Those are signals, that's not the experience of pain
because there are certain aspects where you really like pain.
You ever have someone hit the volleyball at you fast,
really hard and you receive it.
Doesn't it feel neat when you hit it?
You know, that's pain.
Good pain, though.
Let's go!
Oh, get it, get it, get it, get it!
Good.
Do questions?
I have an assumption that you don't have any disintegrations.
- Is that correct? - Interesting question.
It gets raised from time to time. Unified or disintegration.
I have some really neat talents
and I have some even neater fallibilities.
The last thing I needed was a boyfriend,
and I didn't find him attractive.
But after taking the program, I began to admire and respect his mind.
If I say, "I'm not unified," then, of course,
"Oh gosh, he created this, and he's not unified yet?"
The goal is not to be unified. The goal is to have more joy.
Thank you for listening and playing.
I'm going to take my balls and go home.
I do that all the time.
You take my balls and go home?
Wait a minute now. I mean, that's a nice offer, I guess.
My saying is: I take my toys and I go home.
I take my toys and go home.
Keith began flirting with me and pursuing me.
Do you want to take my balls? Boom, boom.
But it wasn't until months later that I actually started dating him.
And he would say,
"You are not like anybody else,"
because I was a business woman and I was all self-made.
I could match him in a way that other people couldn't.
Keith told me that we would work together
to help make a difference in the world.
Hello, everyone. It's an honor to be on the call this evening.
I was 40-years-old and had a highly successful financial planning firm,
a couple of million dollars in the bank,
and my business was worth a couple of million.
One could say I had it all, but I didn't.
I gave up making millions to help build the company.
I was the first board member on the very first executive board.
I created Vanguard Week.
It brought me great joy to create a space for you to have joy.
They had no sales and marketing material
and they didn't have any professional image.
Do you feel like a supermodel yet?
That's my business sense that I brought to the table.
- She's quite the enroller. - I know she is. She never gives up.
During my time there, I was personally responsible
for probably enrolling hundreds, maybe a thousand.
If you could change things that you want to change...
What would that be worth?
So 24 messages since I last looked at Facebook.
I'm looking at Twitter now.
Generally, the overall is: "Holy fuck.
I'm so glad you're out. You're so brave."
Every now and then, I'm getting a
"What the fuck? How could you let that happen?"
It makes me sound stupid, but whatever.
This isn't a sideline thing. You know...
People don't understand that though.
You don't get to be neutral.
You're going to get praised and punished for it.
"I don't feel sorry for them at all.
These people in the Vancouver chapter were aggressive, cliquey,
and downright abusive in some of their recruitment tactics of people
within the Vancouver yoga and acting communities.
Predators."
- Holy shit. - Wow.
"Why would any woman subject herself to a tattoo
after being made to say,
'Master, please brand me. It would be an honor'?"
Sarah.
Sarah?
"It's so shockingly sad that these women felt so lost in their lives.
No red flags were flapping?
No one thought, 'Wait a minute, what?'
I know we're not supposed to blame victims, but c'mon."
It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Come here. Come here. Come here.
This is my life in general, but it's way worse right now.
- I want her to hold me. - Okay, but she's busy right now.
You've got to give her five minutes and then she'll come sit with you.
Troy. Troy, look at me.
- Sarah? - Barb?
The comments on the New York Times,
I'm really recognizing specifically how the main thing that Barry missed
was the steps into getting involved
and the psychology behind the coercion.
So, yeah.
I would understand why that would be really bothersome to you, you know?
And they didn't mention your career, and it was your community.
I felt your pain in that moment
because that's what they've done to me for the last eight years.
Someone just sent me a link, "Shocking allegations
about capital region calling group a cult." Let's play it together.
The report out today says
that some female members have been branded with the founder's initials.
What?
News Channel 13's Dan Bazile digs deeper into the underground world of cults.
Oh my God.
Does that mean nobody wants to talk to me?
They shut the door on us.
And she was saying they didn't want to say a word
about some serious allegations in the New York Times.
What is happening essentially is that these organizations...
Jesus. These are pictures of me, by the way.
Your lack of identity, your lack of a self.
The person who joins the cult and the person who invents the cult,
they kind of suffer from the same disease,
this kind of fragility or narcissism.
Oh my God.
So, I'd say best case scenario
is there's enough public outrage for law enforcement to go,
"Okay, we got it from here."
Yeah. But the New York Times article,
in reading it I thought, "Okay, this is great,"
but like, people still don't really get what this is.
Look, the branding and all that is the headline.
Right, and that's the physical manifestation of multiple abuses,
primarily in the emotional realm,
which are harder to quantify and harder to prove.
It's very important that that's the narrative of what's being told.
I think it might be good to talk to Brendan.
- The Times Union guy? - Yeah.
Yeah, I think so too.
The irony is I live about 10 minutes from Keith.
Oh, my goodness.
We've done many stories through the years.
What was left on the cutting room floor, for you, that you thought...
A lot, a lot. And you know, they broke the story,
but you can do the rest.
They left out the nuances of how the recruitment was done.
If they had said,
"Do you want to get Keith's and Allie's initials branded on your vagina,
I definitely would have said no."
But it was step by step, by step, by step.
People's boundaries and conscience are being messed with here.
Keith assumes this moral high ground that he just doesn't have,
but he's convinced an insular group of people that it exists.
And then they don't take in any more information from the real world.
And also, they left out that with the women at the top,
sex with Keith is part of the enlightenment.
V-WEEK
There don't seem to have any chairs left. I don't think they need to.
Around 2006, a lot of people had bought into the belief
that Keith was really truly an enlightened being.
And if you have sex with the guru, it actually moves your evolution.
But did you see a halo over his head?
Did the bells ring? No, I didn't have any of that.
But the truth is I had a lot of intimacy problems.
If you grew up without touch,
without cuddling, without being hugged...
I don't know... You can't receive.
Keith was very loving, gentle, attentive, affectionate,
and he helped me work through a lot of that,
to accept love, to receive love.
I really felt that he was my soulmate.
And the women in the inner circle
who lived with him for decades, said that.
Recorder on ya.
He was living with Karen Unterreiner, Pam Cafritz.
- What's Odin? - Odin is a Norse god.
And Kristin Keeffe.
Which color do you think I should dye my hair?
This is an important question.
This. It has more red.
And you can make it lighter or darker depending on how long you treat it?
You can look back and always see the red flags.
But they presented it like you know a dormitory.
When I walked into his house,
whoever was in there made room for me to sit next to him.
So, for all general purposes, what I could see, I was the girlfriend.
There's something about me
that I can carry on a very odd life, and in some ways...
Yeah, it's odd in a lot of ways.
Again, the number of women that have been with me a long time.
You've been with me almost 30 years.
You've been with me almost 20 years.
How does that happen? Why me?
It's like what you are is it.
I don't know how to put it into words.
I think you touch people's heart, and you get to their core.
Everyone that's ever received a Hallmark card,
someone said something about someone touching their heart.
It sounds good and it may be true,
but how do you express to an audience who doesn't know me at all?
Do you say, "He touches my... If you saw a video
about a bunch of people saying a guy touches someone's heart,
what do you get from that? Do you really get it?
Why is it that I can have relationship with multiple women for a long time?
So, you were aware that he was having sex with other people?
Not for about a year.
NANCY'S BIRTHDAY 2006
Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together
and get ready to sing a very Happy Birthday one time.
On three everybody! One...
Two, three!
Well, this is a party not even Nancy can't help herself. Sing along.
- How are you doing? - Good.
- You look fit. You been working out? - It actually looks good on you.
- You got anything on under that? - No. I did that for you.
You've got to see... She's got nothing on.
- Did she take you to the light? - She didn't take me to the light.
- To the beam yet? Oh, all right. - She did that to you, but not to me.
I'll see you a little later, right?
- Who was the first woman? - Barbara Jeske.
Why so small?
Keith said, "So I have sex with Barbara.
What's the big deal?"
Maybe once, twice a year, that's all,
he had sex with her as her guru teacher.
But then I found out about the next one, Pamela Cafritz,
and I confronted them,
and they didn't hold back, yup.
And then all this other stuff came up, Karen Unterreiner,
because now I'm suspicious
of everybody's he's living with, in that house.
Who are you looking for?
I'm looking for someone.
You can bring me to the light.
It's getting hot.
During my nine years there, there were 12 women he was intimate with.
I was humiliated. I felt betrayed. I was in shock.
But you don't know things and you don't know people until you do.
And everybody is a blend of good and bad.
You can't see the bad if you don't understand how they use the good.
Oh, thanks babe. Thank you.
Okay, here we go. First radio interview.
Thank you.
The last 12 hours have been actually pretty insane.
All of a sudden, it's like, holy shit, the whole world knows.
It's hard to know how it reads to people
who don't know about any of this,
because now that I'm out and I'm looking at the people
who are still in, they just look crazy.
And so, like the frog in the pot of boiling water.
What was implanted from the very beginning, that's caused...
...Such a fracture in my psychology
that I would even get to the point where I said,
"Okay, master, it would be an honor to brand me."
That night, it was like a horror show.
And then there's Lauren saying, "You're a Green you need to do this,"
and, "What does it mean, Sarah?"
What does it mean to be afraid?
Like, this is the kind of mind-fuckery.
It was immediately always flipped back to you being your issue.
A lot of people are reaching out like, "Oh my God, what man did this to you?"
And technically, it was the women.
It was the women who pinned me down.
It was the women who scarred me.
It was the women who did the manipulation.
But it was under direction of a man.
And it was all for, in my opinion, a man's pleasure.
I didn't really recognize how much
that was a massive assault on me emotionally and physically.
And I just felt compelled to share it.
And these women feel it's a beautiful, noble attempt
to teach women strength and to teach women empowerment,
to be the type of women that they could be,
and I'm fucking that up for them.
THE BAY AREA
This was from Keith. "Happy birthday.
Dance like no one's watching you. Sing like no one can hear you.
Love like you've never been hurt before
and live like it's heaven on earth."
And he wrote, "I just think of you every time I read this.
I love you, Keith."
There's a lot of people think
there's nothing wrong with multiple consenting sexual relationships.
And these women bought into that concept,
and also the concept that it was the way to evolve your soul.
I just had a problem with it all.
We have an amazing show.
So, once I found out about some of the other women,
Keith stopped talking to me
until the inner circle all met with me for three days.
You know, "Keith is your soulmate. What's the big deal?
It makes you really angry and jealous.
Wouldn't you rather not have those feelings anymore?"
And I did love Keith, and I wanted to get through my issues.
I didn't like feeling jealous.
I didn't like feeling angry. I felt out of control.
I gave it the Girl Scout try to not be so attached to the penis.
But any time Keith and I had a disagreement or an argument,
he'd hang up, and then I'd get the phone call
within five minutes from one of those other women.
"Keith says that you're blaming him.
He's flat out on the couch. You wiped him out.
Keith is not going to talk to you
until we work through this issue with you,
and we give you the green light."
They made me think that I was just crazy.
That went on for years.
I remember one time they came in 60 days in a row, groups, to mentor me.
So, what is blame?
An excuse.
- A way to be right. - A way to be right.
Not taking responsibility.
- Being a victim. - Being a victim.
NXIVM released a statement saying they firmly oppose violence and abuse.
They also say the allegations are unfounded.
I'm looking at India's Facebook.
Okay, so she posted the official NXIVM statement.
MIGHT BE A CRIMINAL PRODUCT OF CRIMINAL MINDS
She says, "For anyone who's read the recent articles in the New York Times,
this may help answer some questions and alleviate any confusion."
Which it doesn't, it doesn't address anything.
It makes us even more confused. "Thank you for your care and concern,
it's been an incredibly sad situation and I've anticipated this article.
I'm absolutely fine. Great, actually.
I would never put myself, or the people I love into any danger.
These are my friends and colleagues.
I've never seen anything but good come out of this work.
Please share if you feel compelled
to let people know what's really going on. India."
- Did she write that? - I doubt it.
They probably had a work session where they all wrote it together.
I think she has people pushing her.
I mean... This is so hard. Oh my God.
So, this woman says, "I don't know you as a woman and sister,
but I'm compelled to write to you.
We live in intense and confusing times and we've all a drive to feel
that we play a meaningful part in this mysterious life.
Being without meaning can be scary,
not knowing how to navigate this life can be scary.
But maybe ask yourself, what exactly are you so invested in,
guarding, hiding, keeping in the shadows?"
THE BAY AREA
Come on...
Before I quit, I broke up with Keith
and then we needed to figure out how I could work within the organization,
which I still thought had a lot of good,
where Keith and I had a platonic relationship.
Well, Keith stopped talking to me.
And you cannot be a high-ranking person in an organization
where the leader is not talking to you.
And then Keith and the inner circle, secretly told people
that the reason they saw me distressed and emotional
was because my soul had an ethical breach.
They actually told people I was going crazy.
And nobody told anybody that I had had a relationship with Keith.
And that it was all because I broke up with him.
How dare I?
I was just waiting to talk to you before I left.
NEW YEAR'S FORUM
By using sex and intimacy with women,
it allowed him to then unduly influence them
and gain more control and power.
Keith's role, not having an intimate relationship
with someone key in the organization was the kiss of death for him.
He's losing control of me, fast.
I had about 40 NXIVM coaches and proctors,
who confided in me issues with leadership and hierarchy.
And I was gaining momentum with this.
- What is this? - This is my V meter.
It tells you how close you are to being fulling integrated.
One of them was Susan Dones, who ran the center in Seattle.
Two 16 days, four level twos and about 500 EM's.
It's like I had one foot in and one foot out.
What's the difference between 100% honesty and 100% disclosure?
What's the difference between those?
For me honesty is truth and disclosure is information.
You can't have 100% disclosure with 100% honesty,
but you do not have to have 100% disclosure to have honesty.
And I spent hardly any time at all with Keith Raniere,
but I didn't like the whole guru-y kind of thing with him.
So back to the whole thing about titles.
So, we all got together, and Vanguard got the highest number of votes.
And I didn't want to be called master.
I asked Barbara, I said, "Why is Keith not talking to you?"
And she said, "I can assure you that I haven't done anything bad,
but I can't talk to you about why Keith and I aren't talking."
And so then, I shared with her that I was thinking of leaving
and she said, "Don't leave yet.
Come back to Albany. And let's talk."
And I held a forum at my home to discuss the issues of NXIVM,
with the intent to address and confront Keith.
And that's when I found out the board consisted of all the women
Keith had been sleeping with.
And there were nine strong women who wanted to confront him.
Who wants to start?
I can begin by sharing that
each person here in this room has conveyed with me the work
that we do and how essential it is to their lives.
Okay, so the first issue is the control strategies.
There's a conflict of interest caused by intimacy and secrecy,
that perpetuates a circle of people close to you
that do not question your authority.
And I don't know if you want to address this,
or if you want me to just go ahead...
Not only that, but there's nothing to address per se.
It is true for you. So therefore, it is true to some degree.
Because it's a part of our transparency issue.
Transparency doesn't mean everything is seen by everyone at all times.
What you present to the community is very scientific.
However, you have often times told me
that should I have emotional reactions that's negative,
that I am altering your health in some form or fashion.
That's a half-truth for me. But...
I will state that I don't necessarily believe, or not believe in mysticism.
I think you've given us all the tools.
I believe I have.
But I think the tools get used against us.
It was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm in a cult."
The nine of us after 11 hours with Keith all resigned.
I shut my center down and I told the people I trusted.
And then we wrote our resignation letter,
asking for money that we believed that was owed to us.
Some were commissions, some were trainer fees.
I asked for the value of what I believe my center was.
Keith and Nancy personally owed me $1.6 million.
And so, we wrote, "If these requests are not met,
we're going to move forward by contacting the press."
BY CONTACTING THE PRESS
Thank you. Please be seated.
Am I sitting here? Okay. I almost sat on the table.
So, I'm here to give you... It's sort of a mixed thing.
I had a series of meetings.
The meetings were to give me feedback on myself,
on the organization, on a number of different things.
And all the feedback's valid by the way.
Now the long and the short of it is,
I think there are a group of people
who are probably going to leave our community.
It is believed in this group,
that I have a group of intimate relationships, some sexual, some not.
And they say this intimacy is a control strategy.
Well, clearly is. I have to be able to trust them.
And there are things that are secret.
I believe in strategic secret, especially when I believe
that there are people with bad intent.
And I do believe that a very, very small minority
in this group may not be well-intentioned.
And in a specific case,
there is a personal issue that I have with one of them.
And I've worked to try to fix it, worked to try to fix it,
to the best of my ability, and I failed.
Where did it cross the line?
It crossed the line when the executive board get a letter.
And essentially the letter says, "We want..."
Works out to over $2 million.
"And if you don't give us, coming up this Thursday,
a certified check for the $2 million, we're going to the press."
This is extortion. So, we are filing criminal charges.
It's already in process.
This is very difficult for me, because these are people I care about.
And people I've known a very long time.
I just wanted to ask, how are you?
In some ways it's a death, in some ways it's a birth,
and in some ways it's a relief.
I hate to say that, but there... A physical relief.
I can divert my attention, my focus,
even my physical being to some other things now.
I have a beautiful picture in here of the two of them. Let me find it.
That's Sara and Clare Bronfman.
In 2005, Keith convinced me to become a financial planner.
I left April 2009.
And then what happened is Clare Bronfman went to the Saratoga DA,
to tell them that her financial planner, Barbara Bouchey,
had an ethical violation with her, and she fired her because of it.
And that Barbara Bouchey, in revenge and spite,
tried to extort $2 million from her and blackmail her.
They used the resignation letter.
I had a knock on my door, and I was being served legal documents
that said that Keith Raniere, NXIVM and the Bronfman's
were going to bring civil and criminal charges against me.
How did they take people who should have known me
and experienced me? And how did they twist it?
We're winning, right?
- No. - Not yet.
Edgar Bronfman was a pussy cat compared to you.
I mean he just basically sat back in his Fifth Avenue apartment
and just licked his wounds.
Thank you so much, Rick. All right. Bye-bye.
- Who is Rick Ross? - He is a cult expert.
And he knows Keith intimately,
because they kept him in litigation for about 15 years.
He's been helping me all along.
- Hey Rick. - Hi.
So, this is Stanley. This is Rick Ross.
Stanley has been a friend of mine since I was 18.
And India actually, so she just texted me for the first time,
since the New York Times article. So, this is what she says,
"Mom, I love you. But I don't agree with your approach
publicly shaming me and people I care for.
That's not very considerate of our private relationship.
I've been cautious about our communication and don't think
the people you're working with have your, or mine best interests."
That kind of verbiage to me it's like, "It's all your fault.
NXIVM never does anything wrong.
Keith Raniere never does anything wrong."
They never have anything to address.
Well, this is what I was going to say.
"You have every right to be angry with me.
In spite of that, I hope you can understand
that I am coming from love. I'm a mother afraid for her daughter."
Is there anything else I should change?
That's good. And you can say,
"I respect your right to make choices.
And I hope that you can do the same for me."
Except that my choice is to out her publicly. How do I justify that?
I think you have to be careful,
because once you start to get into an argument,
there is probably somebody coaching her on her text.
And this is the training.
So, he determines the parameters of reality
and the women that are the closest to him who live in the Albany area
are the most controlled people in the entire group.
We don't want to admit that that could happen to someone we love,
but the human mind is much more fragile than we would like to believe.
We are all subject to influence techniques.
And anybody, especially a woman that says,
"I'm done with you, Keith Raniere." He doesn't like that.
And I've seen people who he's utterly destroyed their life.
A significant cultural event for the Capital Region,
the appearance of the iconic spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
The Tibetan Buddhist monk who won a Nobel Peace Prize
and who has admirers all over the globe, came to Albany today,
as the result of an invitation from the World Ethical Foundation,
which is founded by two sisters,
heiresses of the Seagram's Liquor Corporation.
Two weeks after I quit,
the Dalai Lama agreed to tack on Albany
to his already 23 city tour.
DALAI LAMA PRIVATE RECEPTION
And then they milked it. I mean, it was all over their website
and articles went out and, you know, letters.
In the meantime, behind the scenes,
my whole criminal case was going on.
The Bronfman's and Keith had already networked locally
with many prominent law firms.
The name carried weight, and I couldn't find an attorney.
Who do you think wants to represent me?
Well, sometimes there are some people that come
that seem to have bad intent,
but I never want to believe that.
At what point do you take action, definitively?
I mean bad motivation.
Truly.
That sometimes it's necessary to take appropriate measure.
Without self-centered, sort of egotistic sort of feeling.
I get more sort of the fame,
or I get some more followers, then that is self-centered attitude.
And also, you all have to judge your Guru.
Don't refer to me as a Guru. I'm not a Guru.
Or teacher then.
Good.
And after that I have the actual NXIVM announcement.
They announced proudly that they were improving things,
and they're going to change the board.
He took all the girlfriends off
and then he put Clare Bronfman, Emiliano Salinas,
and Mark Vicente on the board.
That's what I'm talking about.
They kinda pulled Mark into the fold.
The person who was my field trainer originally Mark's field trainer
is no longer in the company.
So now in the meantime,
they lost Seattle because of Susan Dones quitting.
And you had all those people in Vancouver
that used to sometimes go down to Seattle for some classes.
And one thing, I was going to say speaking of EM's...
So, Mark and Sarah, Keith and Nancy,
very strategically took a stronger interest in them.
We are going downstairs,
the front which has a reception.
This would be like a study hall, whiteboard.
And they got to open the center in Vancouver.
You could say from image to financial, they got lots of benefits.
And as this went on, the Bronfmans started accusing me
of more accusations.
I stole their money, I misappropriated.
They were bombarding the court.
They said that, you know, I had done all of these crimes against them.
And so, I had to defend all of those.
I think there was 360 court filings
filed in that 10-month period of time. 360.
And I couldn't work during that time,
because I had to constantly write motions
and go to hearings and that kind of stuff.
SUSAN DONES BANKRUPTCY DEPOSITION
I'm sorry.
I am a weekend DJ because it fits into my lifestyle right now.
The lifestyle of having to learn how to defend myself against them.
I was broke. I didn't have $20 in my pocket.
I was shuffling between being able to buy food, or pay my lawyers.
I think it was like 2011, myself and a couple other people I know,
talked to the New York State Attorney General.
And we were asked to turn over lots of documents to them.
And finally, they said, "Stop sending us stuff."
And we thought, "Okay, they have enough information."
Nothing ever happened.
Nothing ever happened.
And the attitude was, "Well Ms. Bouchey,
aren't you and Keith just bickering like in a bad divorce?
And really this is just probably just a big fight
and we've got bigger fish to fry."
I am terrified every time the doorbell rings, the phone rings.
Every time I open up my email,
that it is another voluminous filing.
Groups that litigate like this can drag out these lawsuits for years,
hoping to exhaust you and drain you
and ultimately to gag you.
It took me seven years to pay off the $700,000 in legal debt.
I finally was able to move here and rebuild my life.
I am totally out. I mean, and I am out in a big way.
In February of 2014, Kristin Keeffe quit NXIVM and left.
And I was the first person she called.
Are you safe, though? Are you okay?
Well, I think so.
You weren't scared to call me?
- No. - Why?
Because I know the truth.
You know Barb, he was undermining you
behind your back the whole time.
He undermined you to all of us.
He lured you in, just seduced you,
to get his company off the ground.
Then he used your business
to get complete financial control of the Bronfmans.
And then, he blew things up with you, I think deliberately.
He used them to get you to break yourself psychologically.
And I never saw you do anything
that I ever thought was even remotely questionable.
He could have been great.
There was so much potential.
And he did do a lot of great, good things
and did help thousands of people, including me.
It's unfortunate that his addictions and flaws
destroyed his own consciousness,
and that, I forgive him.
But I want to say to him,
"You belong in jail for the rest of your life."
You know, I don't begrudge anybody, anything, and I don't feel bitter.
I totally get how each one of you
at a young age was influenced.
It's like he's moving out the old and he's bringing in the new.
Like, a whole new group of women, young.
We're headed to a 30 Rock, 30 Rockefeller Plaza
to do the Megyn Kelly Show.
Everything that I'm doing right now is targeted
to pressure the authorities to start to the right thing.
My daughter, she said, I made her look like a lunatic.
How did you feel when you heard that?
Sad. I mean, because... I mean, this is the thing
and this I want to get across on the show.
there are times in one's life as a parent
where my child's safety comes first.
And her safety is more important than her liking me right now.
And that's a price I have to pay. And it's a big price, as a parent.
Several of the women went to the authorities
and the authorities dismissed their claims.
They said, if a woman consents there's nothing they can do.
I'd like to counter that because to me, brainwashing is not consent.
Blackmail is not consent.
So, what do you do now?
Well, this is my last resort going to the media to bring awareness,
because without awareness, there can be no outrage.
And unless there's outrage, the authorities are not going to step in
and do what they should do,
which is shut this down, and stop this from happening.
The fact that they had all the pictures of us,
like that was really hard.
I felt that I failed her.
Hi, Barb.
So, going after them criminally would be number one.
And I can be in the background,
providing knowledge, information and evidence.
Because I'm not safe until he's stopped.
- Okay. Big hugs. Okay. - Big hugs.
- Love you honey, bye-bye. - Bye.
What the...
In 2009, when Barbara Bouchey, left and everybody left, I got a promotion.
I believed the lies about them.
- Are you a victim? - Yeah.
I mean, I'm a victim in terms of a victim of a con.
But I definitely had made choices,
I definitely have a lots of responsibility
in many bad things that happened,
but it's not black and white, you're not one or the other.
- Let's have a pillow fight. - You want to have a pillow fight?
- Yeah. - Okay.
There is a big huge monster coming.
Let me come in with you,
because I'm going to get eaten too.
Get the pillows. Get the pillows.
- Oh no. - Get the pillows.
I got you, and we're safe in here. You're safe.
Yay, thank you. This is the wonderful and amazing goddess, India.
Oh my God, it's the Attorney General!
Oh my God. I'm speechless. Holy shit.
One of the parents of a girl who escaped
has been in touch with the Chief Investigator
in Eric Schneiderman's office and he's ready to talk to me.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
Out on the streets Of Mary Sally old road
Can't get me out Unless you use a shoe horn
Eve of destruction But you still talking free trade
You give me lemons And I'll make lemonade
So I pray
Though I'm tired
Well this can't wait
So we fight
They say you earn a penny Each one you save
Easy to save it When you don't need a dang thing
Freedom and justice Well they ain't your play thing
Prop up your puppets And you kill the real kings
So I pray
Though I'm tired
So tired
Well this can't wait
So we fight
We have to fight Fight
We have to fight Fight
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