Original subtitles

My entire life became NXIVM-related.

I was taking so many courses.

[Raniere] It is a vision. It is an understanding.

Our intent is to make a better world.

[cheers and applause]

[menacing electronic music]

He was this great philosopher.

I felt like I will die for Keith.

[woman] Hi.

They said, "Keith... he's a renunciate."

You know, "He's like a monk. He doesn't have sex."

If I had an issue with any one of their rituals,

they accused me of being defiant.

That, to me, was like a... a giant red flag.

People bond through pain.

[India] Allison pulled me aside

and told me about DOS,

this secret society of women

in which she would be my master and I would be a slave.

It was a lifetime vow of obedience.

Every woman needs this.

[India] Allison said,

"Your assignment is to seduce Keith."

[menacing electronic music]

♪ ♪

It's strange to think who lives in these houses now.

I stand out here, and I...

...just think of, like, the years that I spent here.

Part of me thinks I really wish

that I would have taken another path.

Like, I wonder what my life would have been like

if I had just stayed in college...

...pursued a career, had a boyfriend,

things like that,

but then I also...

...wonder if, like,

in some strange way, I needed to do this,

like maybe I needed to know these things.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

Maybe I would have always been very sheltered

from this kind of stuff if I had never experienced it.

♪ ♪

Maybe it would happen later, or, like, maybe to my daughter.

I don't know. It's hard to say.

Like, maybe things happen for a reason.

♪ ♪

In February 2016,

I had been in NXIVM for five years,

and I had been in DOS for a couple months.

I was living in Los Angeles, working as a coach,

but I was going to Albany constantly

to take more classes.

I was in Albany when Allison told me

that I had to seduce Keith.

It kind of sh... just put me into a state of shock.

She told me, basically,

I would be having some encounter with Keith

where I would feel vulnerable and rejected.

She said that pushing past my comfort zone

would make me stronger and more capable

in all areas of my life.

I believed that Keith didn't even have sex,

so I didn't assume that I had to have sex with him.

I didn't think that that was gonna happen then.

I didn't think that was going to happen ever.

[woman] The seduction assignment

had different variations.

These women who are already collateralized

were tasked by their masters,

by another woman, with seducing Keith Raniere.

Everyone's assignment wasn't the same,

but the end game was the same:

some sort of sexual contact with Keith Raniere.

[India] Allison told me that I needed to have Keith

take a naked picture of me and send it to her

as proof that the assignment was completed.

[disquieting music]

♪ ♪

This was Allison Mack's townhouse,

and this is where Keith picked me up.

♪ ♪

He drove me to the next set of buildings.

It's so close.

We walked in.

I tried to make small talk

to just kind of calm my nerves.

♪ ♪

He talked to me about what I wanted

and how he could help me.

♪ ♪

I just tried to get the assignment done.

♪ ♪

I asked him to take a naked picture of me.

I kind of, like, blurted it out nervously.

♪ ♪

I remember him standing there and staring at me.

I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable.

♪ ♪

I didn't feel like I had a choice.

I just wanted to get it over with.

♪ ♪

So I took off my clothes,

and I sat on the edge of the bed,

and I just sort of leaned back,

and he took a picture of me like that

and sent it to Allison.

♪ ♪

I felt like I was in some kind of altered state.

♪ ♪

I did feel like it was weird,

but this was a practice for me to push against my fears.

I thought that this was gonna help me.

Then Keith said that he was Allison's master

and my grandmaster.

And I thought, what the hell does that mean?

♪ ♪

[Cangro] The way that DOS worked was

a pyramid structure, basically,

and the person that was actually the puppet master

of this entire thing was Keith Raniere.

Next Saturday, we will have a larger group,

and we will start doing enslavement... um,

exercises amongst people.

So any... no more questions?

Shop.

Tomorrow, we need to get together.

Yes. Sure.

[menacing electronic music]

♪ ♪

[Hassan] Keith Raniere,

like many other destructive cult leaders,

used women as an extension of his needs

for power and control,

and it all comes out of a malignant,

narcissistic self

that's incredibly insecure.

They're acting out their insecurities

on everybody else.

[Allison whispers]

Yes, when do you want to talk?

Whenever...

When are you available?

Now.

- You're free right now? - I'm free right now.

Right now, what else... when else?

I don't have anything else going on tonight.

How late are you up?

As late as I need to be.

Allison told me I would have to stop going back and forth

between LA and Albany.

It wasn't really much of a decision.

It was more like a command.

♪ ♪

[Ross] Keith Raniere's most devoted members

would move to Albany and live near him.

That was pivotal in making

a really intense commitment to NXIVM.

[Lalich] If you drove through the area of Clifton Park

where Keith and many of his followers lived,

you would think you were in

just some nice suburban neighborhood,

but the cult could be right next door.

And that's a form of the control.

If you do something against the rules,

someone has surely seen you,

and they're gonna report on you.

So it sets up a very tight structure

for people to be living in.

I remember the day that India told me

she was moving to Albany

like it was yesterday.

She was so excited, it broke my heart.

She said Keith was gonna mentor her

in this business that he was giving her, and...

everything just felt wrong about it,

but she was 24 years old.

There was nothing that I could do to say,

"No, you can't go."

It was all of them on her.

I had zero influence, basically.

She let go of all her furniture.

She let go of her apartment.

It was literally like she was leaving the planet.

I just felt, like, this wellspring of despair.

[melancholy music]

I had no idea that the worst was about to happen.

♪ ♪

[India] I moved to Clifton Park in the spring of 2016,

and I actually lived with Allison in her townhouse.

I paid her for rent occasionally,

but most of what I did was take care of her home,

kept it clean, cooked for her,

managed anything that she needed.

♪ ♪

And I became more integrated into Allison's life

and the community.

My life became very much like her life.

♪ ♪

It was all about having this rigorous lifestyle.

I was taking classes as a student

and working in others as a coach,

but I hadn't gotten to a rank

where I could be paid for any of the coaching.

Allison kept me very busy with these so-called goals.

I had to be accountable to achieving these goals,

and there were consequences if I didn't.

In the beginning, it was sort of the punishment

of disappointing her.

Like, I would forget to say "Good night, master."

She would send me a sad face,

and it was like little tiny disapprovals.

Later, the punishments got more severe.

I had to do planks, ice cold showers,

standing in the snow at 3:00 a.m.

You had to be okay with it. It was part of the program.

[shoes squeaking]

This is The Sports Barn,

where Keith and other community members

would play volleyball a couple times a week.

It was, uh, late night volleyball games.

Allison was always pressuring us to show up and watch Keith

because there was some kind of competitive nature

between her and the first-line DOS slaves,

and having us be there meant that she was the most devoted,

the most committed.

[onlookers cheering]

I wanted Allison and... and Keith to be happy with me,

and so I made it a point to try to come as much as I could.

Keith started paying more attention to me.

It started with us just walking

around Clifton Park and talking.

♪ ♪

[Vicente] You know, I asked him once,

"How do you come up with some of these things?"

He says, "Yeah, I walk a lot," and I go, "What do you mean?"

He says, "Well, I walk and I walk and I walk.

And I said, "When?" And he says, "I walk at night,"

you know, and then I found out recently,

he sometimes walks, like, the whole night,

and he problem-solves, and he thinks and he thinks

and he thinks.

[India] Sometimes he would talk about philosophical concepts.

We would also talk about being dyslexic,

'cause apparently he was dyslexic too.

So we would kind of bond and connect over that.

[Raniere] So what would have been most meaningful,

deep surrendering, focusing, for you?

[India] The seduction assignment was behind me,

and I never thought anything like that

was gonna happen again.

I thought that Keith was gonna mentor me

on building a new business,

so we would walk and talk about that

and achieving my goals and dreams.

[Raniere] Do you know what your strengths are

and what your weaknesses are?

[India] I felt like when I was with him,

all his attention was on me, and that felt really good.

♪ ♪

[Ross] Raniere used these walks as a way of controlling

and manipulating the women.

They would confide in him,

and he would pry things out of them.

[India] Keith was like a charismatic friend,

like someone who just listens to you,

and you feel engaged with them,

and I felt like I could share anything with him.

He was someone that I really trusted.

Allison instructed me to take a picture in my underwear

and send it to Keith.

He decided that I had to be 106 pounds.

I couldn't remember the last time I weighed 106 pounds.

I thought maybe when I was 12.

Allison said I could only eat

500 calories or less per day.

Half a cup, 90 calories.

And then before eating anything,

I had to ask permission,

so, "Master, may I please have 90 calories?"

It was supposed to be a practice in discipline

and self-restraint.

My entire day was about how much I could eat,

how little I could eat, how hungry I was.

And I had no time to think about anything else.

...Seven, eight. A hundred calories.

[Hassan] Control of sleep, control of food,

control of access to information.

What is being done to you

is actually a mind control regime

to reprogram your beliefs and to foster obedience.

[India] I was also sleeping very little

and having to exercise on top of it,

and I would always reach out to Allison.

I would be like, "Oh, I'm feeling really hungry."

Like, "My stomach hurts,"

or "Feeling really tired."

And she would just kind of, like, text, like,

"You said that you were committed to this weight goal.

What is it gonna feel like if you break your word?"

[Kelly] At the time, I didn't know about DOS,

but when I was taking some classes in Albany,

I noticed that Allison and many of the women there

were losing weight like crazy,

and they were putting food either on their hand

or on a plate and taking pictures,

and I thought that was really odd,

and I said, "Why are you taking pictures of your food?"

"Oh, I just wanna keep track."

[disquieting synth music]

[India] It was basically starvation.

We were being deprived of calories

we needed to function.

After a few months, my hair started falling out.

I talked to Clare, Nancy, and Allison

because I wasn't getting a period.

They were telling me that similar things

happened to them

when they were on diets.

Allison didn't have her period for ten years.

♪ ♪

I trusted them. They were my authority figures.

Keith wanted to advise and instruct people

to do what he wanted them to do,

but really, it was more about his sexual interest

and his personal desires to have women be thin.

♪ ♪

What did DOS even look like to you from the outside?

What did you think was going on?

-Like... -I just remember in Albany,

when I was there in the center,

I could tell you weren't eating.

I could see it in your hair, in your face.

As a mom, and my kids being around your age...

...I wanted to call your mom.

I wanted to call some adult in your family

to tell them that- that something wasn't right.

I sat down with you, and I'm like, "Are you okay?"

And then someone came up. She's like, "She's fine.

She's just fine. She is fine."

-And I was like, "Okay, okay." -Jeez.

I, like, didn't even realize that all of that

was going on around me.

I feel bad for not pushing.

[India] I know. I can...

I mean, I didn't do anything,

but what I didn't do is what I feel bad about.

I wonder if I would've even heard it or listened.

-I just don't know. -Oh, yeah.

I could have made it more of an issue,

although it would have been shut down.

I think I could have,

and I'm sorry I didn't.

I'm sorry. I know.

-[India] That's okay. -I know, I know.

I know it's not.

[somber music]

♪ ♪

[India] I had been living with Allison and in DOS

for several months,

and I thought that this was just me and Allison,

and then she revealed to me that she had other slaves,

and that I would get to meet them.

She described it like they would be my sisters,

like we were in this sorority together.

♪ ♪

There were three other women in Allison's pod.

Dr. Danielle Roberts was an osteopath.

[Porter] You're, like, the first doctor

that I've enrolled,

and it's like, "Holy moly. And now you're a coach."

[India] She was a coach in NXIVM...

And exhale.

[India] ...and she ran a fitness and health program

that Keith created called Exo/Eso.

Michele was a coach from New York City,

and so was Nicole.

She was pretty new to NXIVM.

I felt instantly bonded to her.

When we were then given permission

to really speak to each other,

it was such a relief,

because it felt like a layer

of the burden of secrecy had been lifted.

Like, I finally felt like I had friends

that I could talk to.

♪ ♪

[Mack] There's a magnificence to women

that is totally untapped.

It's that essence, that something,

that each woman carries with her

that makes her unique.

[man] There was a...

a pernicious fly in the beginning.

Pernicious lie? Which is...

-[man] No, a fly. -Ah, damn.

Damn, damn.

I was like, "A lie, okay. That's possible, I do that."

[India] Sometimes, Allison would be totally fun

and like, playful,

and then other times, she would be like a viper

and just sort of berate you,

and you didn't really know what to expect.

[low electronic music]

♪ ♪

[woman] I remember seeing Allison in the community.

She just always seemed so exuberantly happy.

It's almost like she was always on stage, performing.

I'm an actress. That's what I've always done.

Actually, it's more than what I've done.

It's who I considered myself to be.

It's what I identified myself as.

[India] I think that Allison was most comfortable

when she had a role.

From the time she was three years old,

she was a working actress.

And I think that Keith probably saw that

and gave her this role...

-[Tabby] Yeah. -...and she flew with it.

How was Allison with you when you were in NXIVM?

Allison definitely treated me poorly,

just constant, putting me in my place.

-Like a power play. -[Tabby] Yeah.

She even told me many times

that she actually liked the role of master,

and she... she would transform.

Like, she would take that on,

and she would become a different person.

[woman] Okay, let's go.

Okay.

From my vantage point, in my experience,

Allison seemed to struggle with authenticity,

and I think she completely lost touch

with who she was outside of being a performer,

and Keith took advantage of that.

How far do you allow yourself to go into a character?

And with the worry that, "Oh, my God, that's really me."

Yes, it is really you.

I can't do it.

No, I'm sorry, I can't. I just can't...

[woman] He took probably the most malleable person

to push to very extreme lengths.

She not only made India,

but other women, into commodities for Keith.

[singers vocalizing]

I'm only flesh and blood.

♪ ♪

But I can be anything that you demand.

[India] V-Week 2016

was the first V-Week since I had joined DOS,

and you could tell that Allison

really wanted to please Keith.

♪ ♪

♪ More than you'll ever know ♪

[India] I remember sitting in the audience

and I knew that for her,

it was as if she was singing a love letter to him,

but that no one else would know,

and they would think it was just a song.

No one within the community

was supposed to know about DOS.

It was a secret.

In the fall of 2016,

Allison took the pod

to the Berkshires in Massachusetts.

It was Danielle Roberts, Michele, Nicole, and myself,

Allison called it a bonding trip.

We would just get to spend time together.

We would hang out, we'd take walks,

maybe do a little bit of DOS-related studying.

We actually had a nice day.

[electronic music]

After dinner, Allison sat us down

and told us that the trip was not just for fun.

♪ ♪

Allison instructed us to take

what she referred to as a family picture,

which meant all of us girls standing together fully naked

while Allison took a picture.

♪ ♪

Allison then sent the photo to Keith,

and I saw his response.

♪ ♪

Nicole saw the text, and she was furious,

and she said to Allison,

"If they're supposed to be for us,

"like, why is Keith even getting these texts,

"and why is he sending a devil face emoji

if he's supposed to be so holy?"

She asked Allison if he was getting off on them.

Allison then defended herself,

"How dare you accuse me of something perverted like that?

"He's not getting aroused by these pictures.

"This is your problem and your projection

"that you think that he would actually think

or feel like that."

Like, she got totally reprimanded,

and myself and the other girls were kind of paralyzed.

Like, we didn't know what to do or how to respond.

♪ ♪

Allison was angry,

and she said, "As a punishment,

"I'm gonna take up-close pictures

of your pussies."

So I took off all my clothes again and stood in line...

...and we just went one by one.

♪ ♪

And Allison said to Nicole,

"Are you still throwing a fit over this?"

♪ ♪

I was really uncomfortable, and I was sort of frozen,

but I just wanted to get it over with,

and I didn't want her to think that I was being defiant,

so I just shut up.

You really don't know how you're gonna behave

or act in a situation like that.

You want to think that you're gonna be brave

and stand up against whatever injustice is going on.

But at the time, I couldn't.

[Lalich] You're living in a world of fear, essentially,

and so it's very difficult to say no

or be any kind of oppositional force.

If you're doubting or you're standing up,

it just shows how much more discipline you need.

[India] We were instructed by Allison

to give monthly collateral,

and if we missed the deadline,

we would have consequences.

♪ ♪

There came a point where we didn't even know

what to submit as collateral anymore,

so Allison

or the higher-ranking members of DOS

would just tell us to just make shit up and send it.

For instance, you might have to make a video

accusing your father of molesting you,

even if it wasn't real.

It was often worse,

because it could be even more damaging

than the things that you said that were real.

So a lot of us started to just send

more and more explicit photographs

because the burden kind of fell on you.

It didn't compromise anyone else.

[Lalich] Turning over this collateral...

well, that would make it really hard to leave

or really hard to say no.

Collateral was demanded,

and it was held over people's heads.

So it was an absolute threat that people lived under.

It was purely a blackmail situation.

I mean, you can hardly call that free will.

[India] It was like the compounded amount

of collateral that you were giving

and had behind you.

It was the credit card, the photos,

the videos, the recordings,

the demeaning messages about your loved ones.

It was everything that was always with you,

I feel, like, on top of me all the time.

Of course you're not gonna do anything wrong.

Of course you're not gonna want to mess up anything.

I would get random texts from Keith

all hours of the day.

He started to demand explicit photographs,

mostly up-close pictures of my vagina.

[uneasy music]

The first time this happened,

I said to him, "Well, I'm in the car," and he said,

"Well, find a place to pull over.

Do it now."

If the picture wasn't explicit

or close up enough,

or I didn't look happy,

he would make me do it over again

until he said it was good enough.

♪ ♪

I was very uncomfortable with the fact

that he was asking me for these explicit photographs,

but Keith told me that sending these pictures was a practice

in pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

So if you're comfortable, you're not pushing.

So if you're uncomfortable, maybe you're doing it right.

[Lalich] Even though this is incomprehensible to us

on the outside,

we have to remember that these women

were in a very closed reality,

and everything around them,

every input, was reinforcing this one belief:

do everything to make Keith happy.

So even doing something shocking,

like taking a photo

of your vagina to send to him...

they truly believed at that point

that that was the right thing to do.

You were conquering, you know, one of your greatest fears.

Right? This was making you

a better, stronger person.

[Catherine] When she was living in Albany,

she became more distant.

If I tried to pin her down

about what she was doing,

seemed a bit vague,

but maybe I didn't want to admit to myself

how much she was drifting away.

I'd been to Albany, and I had seen

that there was this group of women,

women who were in their 40s, 50s, 60s,

who had given up everything in their lives

to serve Keith and the organization,

and I would...

I just couldn't wrap my head around that this

was gonna be my daughter's future.

I felt sometimes like my mom was judging or prying.

It was easier for me to just ignore her

than to actually have to discuss

what was going on for me in Albany.

[desolate music]

Allison told me that I should ask Keith

to work on what she called

my problems with sex.

I didn't think I had any problems with sex,

but saying no to her was not an option.

It's hard to put myself back there

where I would just say yes to that,

but I believed

that the things that they were having me do

were, at their core, good.

Everything. I didn't question it.

♪ ♪

And if Keith was going to initiate

that kind of relationship with me,

I knew that I had to participate.

♪ ♪

That's the... that's the library.

The library was one of Keith's many townhouses

in Clifton Park.

It was sort of his office.

Keith told me he would meet me there

at some point in the evening.

He instructed me to remove all my clothes,

and I was just sort of lying up there in this loft,

just waiting.

He asked me a few questions

about certain sexual experiences

that I had had,

and then he began

to what he referred to as working on me,

which was him performing oral sex,

which felt like hours,

and I just sort of lied there.

Didn't feel good.

I actually felt kind of paralyzed.

♪ ♪

And there was a lot of fear about what might happen next,

and then it... it was over.

And I remember even, like, reaching my leg

a little bit down

so I could see if he was maybe aroused,

and he wasn't,

which in a way was kind of reassuring,

because it made me think,

"Oh, maybe he is just doing this for me and my own benefit,

and he's not getting anything out of it sexually."

That's what made it all the more confusing.

It continued for a year.

I didn't know that he was doing

these same things to other women.

I had no idea.

[somber music]

He was just really good at having people keep his secrets.

♪ ♪

Later, I found out that he was doing

even more disgusting, demeaning sexual acts

to other women in DOS

and was threatening to release their collateral

if they said anything.

♪ ♪

I definitely lost myself for a little while, like,

believing that what we were doing was good for me.

♪ ♪

My experiences with Keith...

they didn't feel good, ever.

Really weren't sexual. They were manipulative.

[India] No, they felt, like, clinical,

like I was going to the doctor or something,

but I wasn't getting "better." [laughs]

Like, I kept thinking, "Why do I still feel so awful?

Like, why does this hurt?"

Or "Why am I not getting anywhere

with your teachings or with your techniques on me?"

I thought that I was pretty screwed up.

And I would say to him, "Hey, whenever you go down on me,

I get this massive ball of, like, pain in my chest,"

which kind of felt like... like this hot,

like, shaky thing right here,

and I asked him,

"Can you help me get rid of that?"

And he said, "No, that's your problem."

And I thought...

"Fuck, like, what do I do with this?

How do I... how do I get rid of this?"

And I actually thought maybe I would be like that forever,

maybe I would never be able to enjoy sex or pleasure

or my body.

[Wise] All of this is

psychological and physical rape,

in that case with the tongue.

[India] Is that a... is that a term,

psychological rape?

[Wise] Yeah.

Everybody in cults are psychologically raped,

and there's no consensual sex, however you want to define it,

in a cult.

So what do you think the sensations in the chest

at that time were trying to tell you?

[mournful electronic music]

[laughs weakly]

Now it makes me feel sad, because I think that it was

more, like, my own warning system

that I was just ignoring.

♪ ♪

[Raniere] Uh-oh. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

What do you think you're doing?

[man] Rotate that one set?

Oh, the lights. Yes, lights are fine.

[India] One of the things that we were told

was that Keith was celibate,

but really, he was sleeping

with all the women in his inner circle.

[Lalich] Controlling someone sexually

is the most intimate way

you can have influence over someone.

People are vulnerable at that point.

They're giving themselves over.

They may think they're in love.

Even if they know there are other partners,

it doesn't matter. You're...

you know, you're... you're having sex with God.

My goodness.

[India] Keith had this agreement

with all of his slaves that they knew

that they were gonna be monogamous with him,

but he was polyamorous.

[Ross] Keith Raniere could never get enough.

He could never get enough women.

He could never have enough sex.

A woman could never submit to him enough.

He wanted to see how far he could push it,

and that led to another escalation

in his torture of women.

[eerie music]

[India] No matter what rank,

no woman was immune from punishment.

It was part of the program.

I was forced to watch Dani Padilla,

a first-line DOS slave,

be paddled by Allison.

They asked me to film it

so that they could have a witness.

It was actually Allison's penance

because she had failed on her diet.

She had to paddle Dani.

♪ ♪

I remember just standing there...

sort of frozen.

♪ ♪

I knew after seeing that

I never wanted that to happen to me.

♪ ♪

[Cangro] These first-line slaves

that were directly under Raniere

had to hit each other with these paddles.

Raniere would sometimes be there,

or he would get images

or videos of them doing this.

[Penza] There are people who engage in this sort

of extreme sexual behavior,

but you have to take into account

the importance of consent.

In DOS, there was no safe word.

You had your collateral.

There was no way out of the situation.

[India] Dani Padilla was the first slave

Keith actually started to experiment with.

It later came out

that she had ordered these things online.

♪ ♪

Thigh sling wrist cuffs,

a remote shock puppy trainer.

Heavy-duty steel bar suspension kit.

[Cangro] Keith was at the top of all of this,

forcing punishments through torture

and also physical abuse.

He had one of these women purchase BDSM items

like a dungeon, an actual cage,

and women were encouraged to put their slaves in there

for however long they wanted to punish them for.

None of us consented to this type of thing,

especially with Keith.

I thought that everything that we were doing

related to vulnerability or related to submission,

related to our personal growth, was for us,

but really it was all just tools

to prepare us for something like this.

[Lalich] When you're in a cult,

you're in a social system

that, over time, closes in on you.

You essentially internalize the cult.

You get to the point that you yourself

become kind of a microcosm of that self-sealing system.

You can basically function on your own

without the cult having to tell you anything to do.

You chastise yourself.

You don't need anyone else there to criticize you.

You're holding yourself accountable

because you have internalized all this.

[India] Allison had this band that she would wear

to punish herself.

It's called a cilice.

It's these tiny needle-type things

that you can strap to your body,

and it's very itchy and painful and sharp,

and she would wear that

when she felt like she needed to be punished.

♪ ♪

[Cangro] One of the most extreme examples

of Keith's cruel punishment

is what happened to a young woman in NXIVM named Daniela.

Her entire family

all moved to the Albany area from Mexico

and became deeply involved within NXIVM.

Keith coerced Daniela into a sexual relationship

in 2010, when Daniela had expressed

a crush for someone that wasn't Keith Raniere.

Keith told Daniela

that she had to remain confined

inside of a townhouse until she made amends.

Lauren Salzman, Nancy's daughter,

was in charge of monitoring Daniela

and enforcing that confinement.

Food was even left outside of the door for her.

Daniela was inside that room for almost two years.

[India] I've been in this house many times, because...

-[Cangro] Have you really? -Yeah.

I realized the other day

that when I was in Albany in January 2012,

she was still captive in this townhouse.

I had no idea.

It was like she didn't exist.

[ominous electronic music]

[woman's voice] I can understand the ethics

of the consequences.

They need to exist because it is right.

But the cost is so high.

I feel panic. I feel horror.

I can't even think straight.

♪ ♪

I feel dread.

I really feel like I'm in a nightmare.

♪ ♪

I can relate to a lot of her confusion and her pain,

because I go back and I look at my old journals or notes,

and they're totally, like, scattered and deranged

and a lot of self-hatred,

like, "I'm doing this wrong.

"I'm doing this wrong. I need to fix this in myself.

"I need to be better for Allison.

I need to be better for Keith."

Like, all of this sort of constant... just spinning,

this just over-consuming guilt of basically nothing

And thinking... yeah, and thinking

you actually really did something wrong.

And that you deserve this.

♪ ♪

[Lalich] So Daniela was in this room for two years,

but the room had no lock on the door.

Why would she stay in the room?

Why didn't she just get up and walk out?

And I think this is where we see the power

of the whole system of controls and influences

that get a person to the point

where they believe that that's the right thing to do.

And they believe that if they go against that,

the world is gonna come crashing down.

I mean, it really is... for that person,

it's a life-and-death situation.

[India] What do you know about what it took

for Daniela to leave here?

Basically, she was taken to the Mexican border

without her paperwork,

and she was kind of just let off.

-No identification, no money? -No identification, no money.

So cruel.

[Ross] People that understand sex criminals,

pedophiles, rapists, know that it's not about sex.

It's about power and control.

[woman] I met Keith Raniere around 1990,

when I was about 12 years old.

My mother became involved with a company he ran

called Consumer Buyline.

During that time, I got to know Keith.

He offered to tutor me in algebra and Latin.

Shortly after the tutoring started,

a sexual relationship

began between Keith and myself at the age of 12.

It happened mostly in his office,

at Rome Plaza, in the elevator,

and also at the house at 3 Flintlock Lane.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

The thing, for example, with sexual abuse.

In some states, it's their... their ages.

There's the age of consent. Some states, it's 17.

Some parts of the world, it's 12.

Some parts of the world. That's right.

So what's abuse in one area is not abuse in another.

But what is it, really?

Abuse is, does the person...

is the person a child,

or is the person adult-like?

Some little children are perfectly happy with it.

[Cangro] Daniela, who was kept in a room for two years,

says she was sexually abused by Keith,

and so were her two sisters.

All three of them became impregnated by Keith Raniere

and were encouraged to get abortions.

Let's talk about really gross things

like raping children, raping a baby.

Can you imagine what it would be like

if you were just a primitive,

someone who just was of the body?

It's not a baby. It's just something

that feels good.

What if it was just a lump of flesh?

I'm gonna be really crude, but...

"Oh, feels good to stick my dick in a steak."

[growls]

"Oh, yeah. Here's another flesh.

Oh, it's a baby." That's what it's like.

[Cangro] We don't know the full scale

of how many victims there could be out there.

You look back, and you see all of these cases,

and you see that there have been media reports

on all of these things, and nothing was done.

And a big reason was because NXIVM had a lot of money,

primarily from the Bronfmans.

The Brockmans made political contributions

to local elected officials,

and they also had a robust legal team.

All of that made people

reluctant to speak out against NXIVM.

[Ross] They spent millions and millions of dollars

on litigation,

private investigators, and surveillance.

[woman] When you have money and you have power

and you have resources,

it's very easy to delay justice,

and I think that's what happened here.

You had a litigious target who was willing to fight back

and spend money to do so and lawyer up

and do all the things you can do

to keep the situation under control.

I mean, you see the same thing with other powerful defendants:

Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein.

It took decades to get to those guys.

♪ ♪

[India] By this time, I had been in NXIVM

for five and a half years

and in DOS for nearly a year,

and daily life

was just getting more and more intense.

I was doing DOS check-ins, calorie restrictions,

taking classes, doing readiness drills,

giving collateral,

late-night walks, and sessions with Keith.

This was a whole new level of exhaustion.

And just when I thought

that this was all I could handle,

there was always something new.

[electronic music]

I was on a walk with Allison and Keith in Clifton Park,

and they told me directly,

"You need to enroll your own slave."

And I remember thinking, "I don't want to."

[Cangro] DOS really started ramping up around 2016,

which is when all of the slaves within DOS

were told that they needed to bring other members in.

The way that Keith Raniere envisioned DOS

was that it would be thousands of women,

and that one day, they'd be able

to have a DOS member

as an elected official.

He wanted to have power at every single level,

and that included government.

[Raniere] The slaves should look also

to really find

women of influence.

I imagine, for example,

we could change the presidential vote

of the United States in four years or something.

[Cangro] He thought that he would have

all of this power and all of this control

because of all of the collateral

that he would have.

I started to realize

that DOS was much bigger than I thought,

and it started to grow quickly

'cause they were not moving slow.

There was active pressure to enroll all around me.

[Debora] My coach flew in to LA, and she said,

"Well, I've been actually wanting to meet you

to tell you about an amazing woman's group."

A person that I was close with

within the organization approached me.

It didn't feel like it was something I had to do,

but it sounded like something that I might want to do

because she kept saying that these women were exceptional.

[India] Allison instructed myself

and the other girls in my group

to create lists of people

that we thought we could enroll into DOS.

She instructed us to get pictures of their faces

from social media

and send them to her for approval.

We didn't know that those pictures were going to Keith.

My first question actually was, "Is Keith behind this?"

Because he was part of everything,

and she was like, "No."

So I go, "Okay, is ESP behind this?"

And she said no.

[dramatic electronic music]

And I was like, "Well, who are these women?"

And she said, "Well, I can't really tell you much more

"unless you give me some kind of collateral

so that I know you will keep this a secret."

And I thought, "Okay, that's kind of strange.

And I said, "Well, you know, I want to think about this."

She says, "No problem. No problem."

You know, "Go ahead and think about it."

[India] There were punishments to me

and the other girls in my group

if we weren't actively trying to enroll people into DOS.

[woman] It was painted

as if we didn't reach certain enrollment numbers

by a certain date, we would be failing my master.

and that she might even face the consequence

if we don't enroll faster.

Just told me directly,

"Will you work with all the women

"and figure out, you know, who they know

"and who they're trying to enroll

and project out at what date we'll get to 100?"

[India] I'm trying to understand why I kept going

when others said no.

I remember Allison and, I believe, Lauren, too,

coming to me and saying that

[bleep] tried to enroll you,

-Mm-hmm. -[India] And I was like,

"How did it go?" And they're like,

"It didn't go well."

No.

Once she started the pitch,

she kept looking down,

like, literally like this, talking to me,

if you were me, like... and not looking at me.

And I was very like, "Hmm, that's weird.

If you're so great, why can you not look at me?"

Right.

And then that night,

the creepiest thing happened.

I went into the bathroom,

and you know how the phone's open

and the text messages are open?

And I was washing my hands, and a new text came in,

and I looked down, and I saw, like,

"I love you, my master."

And I was like, what is this?

Wow.

It was really eerie. It felt very bad,

like here, like in my gut feeling.

My alarms went off

and I was like, "No, I don't want to do that."

I wonder that if one of the warning signs are,

"Are you overriding

the feelings that you're having in your body or your gut?"

Yeah, I think it is.

So I'm trying to learn that. I'm trying to get better.

I'm so proud of you.

Thank you.

[uneasy music]

I did not want to recruit people into DOS,

but there was a lot of pressure

from Keith and Allison,

and when I resisted, they would tell me,

"Go get an EM on that."

If there was any issue that you had with the diet,

with collateral, with recruitment, with DOS,

you were sent to go get an EM

so that you would eliminate your reaction to it.

So I would constantly be getting EMs

until eventually, I just felt numb.

♪ ♪

I ended up having three slaves under me,

and I was strictly instructed

to not tell them that Keith was involved.

I had to ask them for collateral,

the same that I was giving,

damaging things to their reputations,

to their careers, to loved ones or family.

One of them sent me

a very explicit video

that I then sent to Allison,

and I assume that it went to Keith.

♪ ♪

Now I feel horrible that I lied to them,

but at the time, I thought

we were doing practices for our own good.

♪ ♪

One of my slaves was someone that I knew from Los Angeles,

and we had a couple mutual friends.

I did not like her calling me master.

I didn't like referring to her as a slave.

I didn't even really like giving her assignments

or practices.

A majority of what I had her do was just journal.

Allison would tell me that I was too soft on her,

that I let her walk all over me,

that I had to become a stronger master.

I felt uncomfortable disappointing Allison,

but I felt more uncomfortable

giving those types of commands to my slaves.

Allison demanded that I give my slave, who was my friend,

the seduction assignment,

but I kept putting it off.

I didn't want to give it to her.

♪ ♪

[Penza] In these types of cases,

we often see that the line between victim and victimizer

is not quite clear, and that was true within DOS.

You have women who have been victimized

recruiting other women

into the sex trafficking organization.

♪ ♪

[Catherine] India is my most sentimental,

family-oriented child,

and she loves holidays.

She's the first to call me on my birthday.

She's the first to call me on Mother's Day.

And so when she let me know that she wasn't coming home

for Christmas 2016,

I was really worried.

This is my porch!

It's very, very snowy, very Christmas-like,

and I love you guys, and I miss you,

and I'm sending you a big kiss.

[Catherine] That video was all we saw of her that Christmas.

I watched it over and over again.

Her eyes were vacant.

It was as if there was nobody home.

She was beyond my reach.

Love comes not from the satiation or the comfort.

It comes from the sacrifice and the pain.

That's how we know it.

When we most feel love, we feel pain,

and the depth of pain that we feel

measures that love.

[India] In January 2017,

Allison told me that there was gonna be a ceremony

that I was gonna have to be a part of.

She said it would involve a mark on our bodies,

and that it would be a permanent commitment

to DOS.

Allison and the other first-line slaves

had already done it,

and now it was the second line's turn.

We were going to be branded.

That window is where Allison's bedroom was

and where we had the branding ceremony.

[Jill] I was told by my master

that I would need to be branded,

that this was part of the sorority.

Literally, you would have these reminders on your body

every day that this is not only a lifetime serious vow,

but it's also

the most important relationship in your life.

[Ross] The women who entered into DOS

felt that what they were demonstrating

is their absolute commitment to each other

and to the philosophy

that Raniere had indoctrinated them to believe.

In that environment,

accepting the brand becomes logical,

it becomes reasonable,

and they simply see it as their commitment

based on all the training that they've gone through.

[India] Maybe a week before we actually got branded,

Allison started to talk about the details

of the branding ceremony.

I was told that the brand was going to be a symbol

of the elements,

like fire, earth, water, sky,

and that it would be a bonding experience

for myself and the other women

and the practice of building character.

[Jill] My master told me it was very small,

like held up her fingers

like... like that, like... like a quarter.

So it freaked me out, but I honestly thought,

"Well, it's gonna be stamped on.

This will be seconds of my life."

None of us really had any...

idea what this was gonna be like,

and so Allison

brought out these videos.

[man] One, two, three, four, five.

[India] And I remember watching it and thinking...

-[man] Here we go. -[India] Wow, that looks awful.

[man] One, two, three, four.

But I made no connection to the fact

that that was gonna happen to me

and that it was gonna happen to me

within the next couple of days.

Dr. Danielle Roberts,

who is in my pod, was taught how to brand.

[man] Three, four, five.

I had listened

and watched Danielle practice

on oranges in the bathroom,

and it looked scary.

The day of the ceremony,

I began to feel a lot more fear,

and I even remember saying,

"Are you sure we have to do this?"

And Allison was like, "Yes."

[uneasy music]

We walked one by one into Allison's bedroom,

fully naked.

I was instructed to lie on the table.

I had Michele holding my feet,

and Nicole held my hands

so that I wouldn't convulse.

Allison was reading the ceremony script,

[woman] The best slave derives the highest pleasure

from being her master's ultimate tool,

independent of use.

[India] Danielle put a stencil on my skin,

and then she began to trace the stencil

with the cauterizing pen.

♪ ♪

I was the first woman that Danielle Roberts ever branded.

[flesh sizzling]

The smell that came

from the cauterizing pen burning my flesh

was so intense

that it filled up the entire townhouse.

I didn't feel the pain

of what was happening to me right away,

but then, when the pen would reach the edges of the line

and close to my bone,

that shocked me. Like, I felt jolt... a jolt.

I wasn't screaming.

I was just kind of watching myself experience this...

...and I just remember...

I felt like I was out of my body.

♪ ♪

At that point, I could tell that this

was gonna be much larger than a quarter.

♪ ♪

I kept looking up at Allison

while she was repeating these words,

and I don't even really remember much

except for one line,

which was "Feel the pain, feel the love,"

and she had us repeating that to her.

[women] Feel the pain. Feel the love.

Feel the pain, feel the love.

Your greatest joy is to surrender completely...

all things in all ways.

I surrender my life,

mind, body, and possessions for unconditional use.

[India] The branding lasted for about 30 minutes,

and then I had to watch the other women

have that done to them.

[distressing musical crescendo]

After all the adrenaline came down, came the pain.

♪ ♪

When Keith first saw my brand,

he commented on how well it had healed.

He would touch it.

He would say things like he liked how tiny I looked.

He seemed pleased with the brand.

At the time, I felt positive about the brand.

For me, it represented something that was challenging

that I had done with women that I loved and cared about.

And then Allison announced

that it was time to brand my slaves.

[dark music]

[Catherine] I always felt that India would wake up on her own

and that she would leave NXIVM of her own volition.

But in April of 2017,

I received a phone call that changed everything.

It was from somebody who had defected from NXIVM,

and she said to me,

"You have to save your daughter.

"You have to save India.

She is in grave danger."

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪