Original subtitles

How do I do something that makes the world better

beyond what I need today?

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

[Clyne] The three words I would use to describe NXIVM

are magnificence times infinity.

[India] I went into NXIVM looking

for a more purposeful life,

and I thought that these people wanted that, too.

An EM is a stimulus-response disconnection.

[India] But then I went through something

that I don't wish upon anybody.

[woman 1] Keith Raniere, NXIVM's founder,

created a secret sex slave ring.

[woman 2] Female members of NXIVM were branded

in their pelvic areas.

[Lalich] NXIVM is one of the worst,

most harmful cults I've ever heard of.

[India] How did we all end up in the clutches of a monster?

I'm still trying to figure it out,

and I need to go back

so I can deconstruct the last seven years of my life.

[Keith] Do you understand how you could rape a baby?

I can make it a baby that's very rapable.

[India] It's taken me over 50 hours

of working with a therapist

to even be able to say something sexual did happen

between Keith and I.

[disquieting electronic music]

[siren wailing in the distance]

Confronting all of these memories

is just bringing up a lot for me.

[Bernstein] Mm-hmm.

Like, I feel robbed sometimes.

[Bernstein] You were.

You were robbed of a lot of things

that if you had known ahead of time,

you would've run for the hills, right?

-My God. -Right?

[laughing] Like, I can't even imagine

what my- what my life would've been like

if someone was like, "Hey, come to this course

"where eventually you're going to feel crazy

"and you're going to have to be somebody's slave

and you're not gonna have your own life."

[sniffles]

-How did that happen? -[Bernstein] Yeah.

You've been influenced in so many ways

because Keith created

a very deliberate methodology for indoctrination,

and so the more you understand about what happened to you,

sort of the system that you were put in,

then I think the more you get why it is that you did this

so that you're not beating yourself up.

[spacey music]

♪ ♪

I've really been struggling to figure out

how NXIVM really worked.

It's like, what the hell happened to me?

It's like the curriculum totally changed my brain.

How did I get indoctrinated without even knowing it?

[sedate rock music]

♪ ♪

NXIVM seemed so legitimate.

They had centers all over the world,

but their headquarters were in Albany.

Albany-Rensselear is the final stop for this train.

Make sure you have all of your personal belongings.

Albany is where Keith and a majority

of the higher-ranking members lived.

♪ ♪

It's not easy to come back here.

♪ ♪

455 New Karner Road, NXIVM headquarters.

The 55 is gone.

A lot of my life was spent in this place.

This is super weird.

How are you different than your indoctrination?

How are you actually different than you believe you are?

[uneasy music]

Oh, that's freaky.

Still says "Executive Success Programs."

♪ ♪

[Keith] A psychopath, doesn't have any empathy,

just sees something that feels good--

raping a person, raping a cat.

♪ ♪

You know, whatever it is.

I feel like the blood

is leaving my arms.

Not totally dizzy, but just, like, a li-little bit weird.

Oh, that's so weird. Even the lights are still on.

It's like they just left.

♪ ♪

In this room,

we would have the higher-ranking members

promote people.

The only way to move up in NXIVM

was to recruit other people

and to continue taking more and more classes.

♪ ♪

The Stripe Path was NXIVM's ranking system,

similar to a martial arts studio,

where you master one level and then the next and the next

until you're proficient enough to teach.

People worked really hard to earn their next stripe

or the next colored sash.

[Kelly] There were different goals

you had to meet, and enrolling was part of it.

I was enrolling clients

and friends and acquaintances

and family members

because I believed in this so much

and because I had a huge network of people.

[India] When I was first promoted to coach,

it felt great because I thought that I was rising

through the ranks

of this innovative humanitarian organization.

So welcome to the rank of proctor,

with all the rights, privileges,

and responsibilities that come with the rank.

[India] The only way that you could make money in NXIVM

is when you became a proctor, which was an orange sash.

That was the dream, to have an actual career

where you could help people.

Senior proctors,

wore the green sashes,

like Sarah Edmondson and Mark Vicente,

were making a good living

running the centers and enrolling people.

They were making commissions off of anyone

that they brought into the organization,

and they were making commissions off of anyone

who those people brought in.

[Ross] This is the way indoctrination works.

In order to get so many people

to go even deeper and deeper into the course curriculum,

Keith Raniere would hold out a kind of carrot

and say, "Look, you know,

"this might be tough,

but there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow."

Welcome to the rank of proctor.

[India] The first time I saw someone

be promoted to proctor,

I felt a little jealous.

I thought, "I want that.

How do I even get there?"

[Lalich] The illusion was,

to be able to rise up in the ranks.

It was a merit-based system, but, in fact,

Keith was really pulling the strings

from behind the scenes,

and so it really had

nothing to do with merit

but to Keith's preferences.

And as you might imagine, it was the more beautiful,

slender women who were chosen

to rise up more quickly in the ranks.

And that's how Keith eventually built up

the stable of sex slaves.

Those were well-earned promotions.

With respect to motivating mules,

I just set up the circumstances.

Most of the time, if they're motivated

for the first time in their life,

they go too far, which is fine.

Yeah.

-So anything else? Are we done? -[man speaks indistinctly]

-[clapboard snaps] -[man] We're good.

By 2013, I had been in NXIVM

for about two years

and a coach in training for about a year.

I put in hundreds of hours in teaching and coaching,

and I wasn't making any money doing it,

but I believed that I was working my way up.

They said it was like an unpaid internship.

All coaches had to work without pay.

So, to make money, I'd pick up any odd jobs

and assistant work that I could fit around coaching.

Eventually my entire life became NXIVM-related,

including my friends.

And then I met a guy, and I thought it could be

the beginning of something really great.

His name was Michel Chernitzky,

and he was also in NXIVM.

Enrolling is like sex.

It feels good, and if it doesn't, you're not doing it correctly.

[laughter]

[India] When we first started dating,

Nancy Salzman was super opposed,

because he was a higher-ranking coach

and I was not.

And so she kind of, like, inserted herself

in our relationship

and put all these parameters in place

in order for him to date me.

So we had to split everything 50/50, for example,

to make sure that I wasn't dependent on him.

Nancy told me that being dependent on people

was a problem that I needed to work on.

[Lalich] There was a great deal

of what we call the systems of control,

telling people who they could date

and who they couldn't date, how they should behave.

Every little part of daily life was controlled

in some way or another by the group.

Over time, you begin to lose

your critical-thinking abilities.

Through this indoctrination process,

you don't really know who yourself is,

and they're creating a new self for you.

[Catherine] I-I do feel unbelievable guilt

because I was the one who introduced India to NXIVM,

and it took me years to realize how dangerous it was.

After India became a coach,

she started to recruit everybody.

She started to recruit all my friends on Facebook.

Her personality changed, and it wasn't her.

I didn't know what I was up against,

and I thought, "Okay,

I don't want to fight with her,"

but I would try and remind her that

before she joined the group, she had other interests,

including the entertainment business.

So, when a friend of mine told me

that they were producing a film with Pierce Brosnan

and it was gonna be filming in Belgrade, I thought,

"What a great opportunity for India,"

because they were looking for an assistant for Pierce.

[gunshots]

[India] When I decided to take the job,

Mark Vicente made it impossible

for me to feel good about my decision.

I remember him even crying over the fact

that I was bailing on my ESP team.

There was so much guilt-tripping

about doing anything

that NXIVM didn't want you to do.

So, even when I was leaving to do this job,

they were chasing after me, telling me,

"Can't you see how this is your issue?

"You're giving up on your ideology

"'cause you want to take this job

and get your parents' approval."

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪

I even remember being in Belgrade,

and I was getting constant feedback

that I was a shitty coach

because of my lack of commitment.

So then they ended up giving me an ultimatum.

They said I could continue to placate my family

or commit to NXIVM and achieve my full potential.

♪ ♪

I did end up finishing the job,

but when I was done,

they made me go straight to Silver Bay

so that I could go to my second V-Week

and then stay in Albany another three weeks

for back-to-back trainings.

[all cheering]

I had really hoped that this Pierce Brosnan project

would inspire her to go in another direction,

but my plans backfired,

because the minute she was done with the project,

her involvement with NXIVM only deepened.

Those two weeks are $20,000.

There is a 20% discount going on for V-Week.

It is an investment in your internal world,

in your life.

[Tabby] I didn't ever take the $10,000 course,

because that is just a big no,

but I frequently took the $5,000 to $6,000 courses.

And so I got into debt pretty easily,

about $80,000 to $100,000.

In order to pay off that debt, I worked for NXIVM.

Once I was ahead, they would say,

"Tabby, we just started this brand-new intensive.

"We think it's the next thing that you need

to get to your next stripe."

[sighs] Okay, okay, I can do this.

[India] My grandfather

had so generously left me money for college,

and I ended up spending it all on NXIVM courses.

They convinced me

that their education was better than college.

They wanted me to enroll in a series of courses

called Jness Tracks.

♪ ♪

Jness had been around for a while,

but it was just for women.

These new tracks were like Jness on steroids.

It took the curriculum to a whole new level.

Even though we had been with Jness since 2006,

we didn't understand, really, the men's side of things,

and having the men with us, it was life-changing.

[woman] Three, two, one, clap.

I feel like more of a man today

than when I started this intensive.

[India] NXIVM said the purpose of the Jness Tracks

was to improve relationships

and to understand the gender roles.

It's day one, and I felt so exposed, I felt nauseous.

But there's a potency

to the way that this is structured

that's really, really, really effective.

I believe Jness Tracks really helps understand

some of the-the gender roles that males experience

with respect to sexuality.

It was a lot about how men

are not naturally monogamous,

and it's normal for men to want to sleep

with many women

and that women really shouldn't question what their husbands,

men, boyfriends, partners are doing.

He can be serious with one woman

and still do things with other women,

whereas he knows you can't.

I remember having a problem

with the open-relationship idea,

and when I said anything about it,

they would just tell me, "Well, go get an EM

so that you don't have that reaction anymore."

[Salzman] Once you have an EM,

the issue not only isn't an issue anymore in your life,

but after a short period of time,

you forget that it ever was.

[India] To be honest,

my relationship got worse and worse

as I continued with the Jness Tracks,

although I wanted to tell myself that it got better.

I think what I gained is a perspective

that allows me to exercise my free will

in a very different way, actually exercise my free will.

[India] I believed Michel and I had a monogamous relationship.

I was only, like, 23 years old,

and I-I hadn't had

a lot of experience with these things,

and the majority of these people were,

you know, 30s and up.

And what I started to learn

was that many of the couples within NXIVM and ESP

were frequently swapping.

All of these ideas about sexuality

and blurring boundaries

were repeated constantly in all of the classes.

It was like a- you're in a revolving door

that never ends.

It's like, we're going around

in this, uh... in, uh, some kind of merry-go-round,

and it's just-it just gets more enjoyable.

[uneasy music]

[Edmondson] When I got here, I was a ball of stress.

On day one, I turned to my fiancé

and said, "I just got my money's worth."

[cheers]

It's my turn.

Every woman needs this.

This is true empowerment.

Take the Jness Tracks. [laughs]

The Jness Tracks were

incredibly lucrative for the company,

and I got a lot of pressure from Mark Vicente

at the time to continue taking more tracks.

He was making commissions

off of any of the trainings that I took.

This training is, uh,

a very, very, very safe environment

for men and women to be together.

[woman] Um, you're hired.

-[laughter] -Yeah?

[Keith] Most people scream abuse,

and they have no idea of the morality

that they're talking about,

and a lot of times,

the screaming of abuse is abuse in itself.

One of the Jness Tracks was actually about rape,

and Keith would blur the lines between rape and consent.

[Keith] You physically could rape.

Really, the issue is, why won't you let yourself go there?

[India] The idea that rape wasn't rape

if the victim didn't choose to see it that way

started to become normalized,

and it wasn't like you just heard those "lessons" once.

You heard them over and over and over again.

So that just became normal.

[Keith] Molested, abused.

The worst thing that ever happened to you.

You know how I know it wasn't that bad?

'Cause you're all sitting here.

In Jness, one of the things

I had to struggle with

was how they spoke about rape.

W-what happened to me

should never have happened to anyone.

Growing up, my family was part

of this religious cult called the Children of God.

At the time, when I was five, I was living

in the Philippines at this commune.

We were all separated by age,

and we all had these...

caretakers... [sniffles]

...these people who enforced the rules

and taught us.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

This caretaker raped me...

and took away my innocence...

♪ ♪

...and violated me in the most inhumane way.

So how NXIVM talked about rape--

now it was--

just happened to my body.

Did not make once- one ounce of sense to me.

The person that's the victim, self-victimizing, is abusing.

The person who is complaining is abusing.

So the question...

[Naomi] I wanted to leave NXIVM,

but I didn't.

It was very confusing.

When you're the only one in the room

who thinks something is wrong,

are you the wrong one?

Are you the right one?

After what happened to me as a child,

it's hard to admit that I was part of another cult,

especially an organization like NXIVM.

Uh, yeah. Why do I look green?

[Naomi] Looking back, I see how they were slowly creating

this environment for Keith

to achieve his horrible, barbaric goals

by completely manipulating

the minds of women and men.

[man speaking foreign language]

[men groaning]

[cheers and applause]

[Ashley] Probably one

of the most horrifying programs of NXIVM

was something called SOP,

because it was really militant.

[disquieting music]

[Ames] Throughout history,

most movements have been led by men.

They go grab their pitchforks, or they grab their muskets,

or they grab something.

Imagine knowing that you have thousands of men,

maybe even millions of men,

that will fortify the principles that we stand for.

[applause]

[cheering]

SOP stands for "Society of Protectors."

It started off as the male counterpart to Jness.

[Keith] Primitive parts of us

are hungry fucking beasties.

I mean, that's what we want to do,

is fucking, fucking, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Feel like fucking something today.

"God, I'm pissed! I want to fuck something!"

You know?

If we conquer a woman,

if we grab the thing we want to fuck,

whatever it is, and fuck it, they enjoy it.

[cheers and applause]

No one has ever taught us how to relate to women

nowhere in all the education my whole life...

and this is, in my opinion,

the Harvard of trying to relate to women.

You have to come.

Cult indoctrination is actually

a mind-control regime

to reprogram your beliefs and to foster obedience.

What you see in NXIVM is the same indoctrination

and coercive persuasion process

used by terrorist organizations

like ISIS and al-Qaeda.

[in Arabic] We were beating each other because it would make us tougher,

and they said it wouldn't hurt next time.

[Ross, in English] Where was Keith Raniere really going with all this?

Because it appears that he was going to weaponize

his most devoted followers.

People bond through pain.

They don't bond through "ha ha" happy.

[India] Next, Keith developed the SOP Complete program,

and he invited women

to take this curriculum with men.

[Ashley] SOP Complete was an intensive

that was six days long

for women to understand what it was like

to be treated like little boys.

Because we weren't raised the way little boys were,

we had to learn how to be disciplined.

I actually sat right there when I took SOP.

That was probably

one of the more disturbing programs.

[Ashley] Every day we were just supposed to wear

the biggest, baggiest clothes.

It was all about not drawing attention to your body.

[India] There were a series of physical challenges,

like planks and push-ups,

and we weren't allowed to eat or drink or pee

unless we asked permission.

We were told that as women,

we couldn't just get away with things

to achieve success in life.

We had to agree to accept 100% feedback

when you signed up for one of these courses,

and I remember, in one of the courses,

I was wearing these pink Converse,

and the man who was running my group

made a comment to me.

He said, "Every time you wear those pink Converse,

all I can think about is fucking you."

And I felt totally humiliated and embarrassed,

like I had done something wrong,

like the fact that I was a girl

wearing pink shoes

was taunting him and torturing him as a man,

but I bought that, and I believed that.

I believed that my action was hurting him.

-[insects chirping] -Ah.

[Lalich] Using that kind of misogyny was a way

to get the women

to hate themselves, in a way,

and-and behave in a subservient way,

which is what Keith Raniere was promoting.

[Ashley] They made fun of you, demean you.

If you talked back, you had to wear a crown or a mask.

[India] They even made Clare Bronfman

wear a jockstrap.

They gave us nicknames and mantras.

Mine was "I am nothing, and I have no real emotions."

In order to speak, you had to repeat that mantra

over and over again,

sometimes yelling across the room.

♪ ♪

I basically just fell into a pattern of compliance

because that was the safest thing I could do

to not be pointed out and humiliated.

SOP was a very abusive curriculum.

[India] The freakiest part for me about that training

is that at the end of it,

you love your male mentors,

and you feel like,

"This is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

I still don't understand it.

How did they make us feel grateful

for that kind of abuse?

[Ashley] At the end of SOP Complete,

they want you to sign up for $50 a month

to be part of a team.

You practice something called "readiness drills."

Every day somebody in the chain of command

would send in the word "ready"

to team members all over the world.

And then everyone on the team would have to respond

with the word ready within 60 seconds.

I was in a group of six women that included India.

[chiming]

If one of the team members missed the drill,

you would have a fail.

When our group failed the readiness drill,

we would get what they called a penance, like a punishment.

[synth music]

[Ashley] Sometimes you're taking cold showers

or you get up at, like, 4:00 in the morning,

stand for half an hour.

So, if you're traveling, if you're sleeping,

if you're driving, like, you're always on edge,

you're always thinking, you're always going,

"Is it going to go off? What's next?"

That was what we did to build character.

[Vicente] And at the highest levels

of current readiness testing,

629 members in 96 teams are ready for action.

They are tested at random

at any time day or night.

[Bernstein] You're not saying, "Okay."

You're not saying, "Here."

You're saying, "Ready,"

which is like giving your consent.

"I'm ready for this.

"I'm ready for whatever is about to happen to me.

"I don't know what's gonna happen to me,

but I need to be ready."

To this day, if I hear an iPhone go off

with a certain ringer,

like, my whole body goes

into, like, fight-or-flight mode.

It was about, "Don't think.

Just react."

[Keith] We can be ready.

[Ross] There is a parallel

between Jim Jones and Keith Raniere,

where they wanted people to obey and obey immediately.

[Keith] There are no other organizations

that practice readiness other than the military.

[Ross] He wanted his followers weaponized

to take on his enemies.

[Yusko] In 2003, a remarkable story

was published in Forbes,

which should have opened

a lot of people's eyes.

[Cangro] The head of Seagram's Liquor,

multibillionaire Edgar Bronfman,

whose daughters, Clare and Sara,

were deeply involved in NXIVM,

He came out in that article

and said that he thinks this group is a cult.

Keith then turned the sisters against their father,

allegedly making Clare

install spyware on their father's computer.

But even after that article was published,

nothing happened.

NXIVM kept going.

Whatever shit goes on with us, we do what's necessary.

[Cangro] Keith had created the support network around him

that would always stick by him.

[Lalich] His followers did internal damage control,

where they would say to people,

"You might see something by so-and-so.

"Well, so-and-so's a declared enemy

"because they're really just jealous

and they don't want to see us succeed."

[Ross] Over a period of years,

the Bronfman sisters have spent

huge amounts of money

on damage control to defend NXIVM.

I know, because there was information about Raniere

that I published on culteducation.com

and was sued over.

[Yusko] NXIVM filed a $10 million lawsuit

against Rick Ross.

It was shocking, the extent in which NXIVM would go

to silence their critics.

[Ross] They had me under surveillance.

They actually went through my garbage.

They set up a phony client

to retain me for an intervention

in an effort to get me out on a- on a cruise ship

in the middle of the ocean.

What their intention was regarding that,

I-I'll never know.

[India] A lot of people were labeled the enemy,

so anyone who left NXIVM or disagreed with them

would be put into that category.

I remember Nancy specifically singling out Rick Ross

as a suppressive.

[Nancy] A full suppressive is

the worst possible thing that can occur,

because these people look like you

and they seem to act like you, but they're nothing like you.

[lock clicks]

[India] Why didn't I even question it?

-Hi. -Hi, there.

It's nice to meet you.

Keith and Nancy told us to think of you

as a devil, like Lucifer,

and I'm embarrassed that I- I believed that.

I don't think that's anything to be embarrassed about.

There are many groups that teach

that whoever opposes them is evil,

they're Satanic, they're possessed by demons.

And it wasn't about you.

-It was about Keith. -Mm-hmm.

It was about what he wanted everyone to believe.

- What he was a genius at... - Mm-hmm.

...was tweaking and working this curriculum

with the deliberate intent of breaking people down.

After I took one of the SOP trainings,

I remember telling Mark Vicente that I just felt very dark,

like I felt like I had gone into a depressed state,

and I thought, "Is this normal?"

And he was like, "Yeah."

They used to record people's brainwaves

and emotional reactions.

It was a cap that they would put on their heads

and then track what was going on with their brains

while they were either getting EMs

or while they were exploring in certain intensives.

I think it could help create, like, a new form of science.

[Cangro] Dr. Brandon Porter joined NXIVM

in the early 2000s,

originally to do tests

on how well

the curriculum was working.

Nancy Salzman and Keith had made a bunch of different claims

that their teachings would be able

to cure things like Tourette's and OCD.

It was Dr. Porter's job to see, do these things actually work?

[Porter] Every time we're putting the hat on,

it's like fishing.

I'm throwing something out

and then, like, seeing if I catch anything.

So keep wearing those hats.

Yeah.

[India] At the time, I didn't think it was all that strange

because they were saying that they were a scientific program

that was trying to track everything.

The cap with the electrodes is kind of like pseudoscience,

and it just kept getting more and more extreme.

Dr. Brandon Porter was doing these, like crazy experiments,

where he was exposing women

to these horrific scenes of violence.

He sat women in a chair.

He showed them horrifying images of people

being slaughtered and mutilated,

and then he filmed their facial expression.

[Glazer] If they expressed horror and wanted to stop,

it was suggested

that that wouldn't be good for the experiment.

They needed to continue.

And the very last scene

that the subjects were exposed to

was actual footage

of some drug cartel members

hacking up and dismembering five live Mexican women.

[in Spanish] They held the heads of the women and said,

"Look at what we did to your whores."

They showed their heads and their bodies.

It was traumatic.

[in English] One person seems to be alive for, like, 60 seconds.

So there's- there's having that done to you,

and then what is it like being the executioner?

[Meier] It was something out of, like,

a Goebbels experiment.

[Lalich] Makes one immediately think

about what the Nazis were doing,

where they carried out horrific experiments

under the guise of "great medical experiments."

This completely unconscionable,

illegal activity,

even if this were in a medical institution,

and of course, it wasn't.

In my opinion,

one of the most horrific things I've ever heard of,

and I've been studying cults for 30 years.

There's a part of me that is so scared to do this.

-[Keith] Good. -[light laughter]

[Ross] There were no boundaries as to what the group

might subject you to.

You could have a meltdown.

You could have a psychotic break.

You could fold, and people did.

[India] I had seen people have complete meltdowns

in intensives,

They were quickly escorted out. It was very hushed.

But I had never heard

of anything like Ana Cecilia's story.

My name is Ana Cecilia,

and I was in ESP

for six months in 2002.

This is the first time I talk publicly about this.

I had a psychotic event in one of the advanced trainings.

This was 2002, so, like, 18 years ago.

-Wow. -Yeah.

Oh, my gosh, this is, like, 10 years

before I even got involved.

[Ana] Yeah, wow.

My family and I were invited

by Alex Betancourt in Mexico City.

I was with my mom,

and I said joking, like,

"I feel like we're being hypnotized,"

And she said, "Nah," like, "Yeah"...

And that was it.

And six months later,

I'm, like, having a total mental breakdown.

[melancholy music]

♪ ♪

I was six months into the program,

and I was in Albany

in the level two intensive.

Usually Nancy spoke in class.

I'd like you to think

of the saddest thing you can think of.

Be aware,

you're experiencing the sadness...

yet at the same time, you're separate from it.

[Ana] I was feeling her tone of voice

changing and saying one thing,

but kind of meaning another.

Go deeper and deeper

into the emotion.

Something in my heart told me this is not good.

And I just said, "I'm done, I quit," and I left.

Nancy came after me, and I said,

"If I really dedicate my life to Keith and his mission,

"I feel like I'm gonna lose everything that I love,

"everything in my life, my family,

my friends, my relationship, my future, in a sense."

And she said, "Oh, don't worry.

You know, you're gonna see them on the other side."

In that state, I took it as I would meet them

in the next life or in the afterlife.

That's the last thing I remember she said.

My mind went blank, and that's when I...

I think that's when the psychosis really kicked in,

because then I- I lost clarity

of what was real and what wasn't.

[Salzman] Do you agree to take feedback?

[Hassan] If you're a psychiatrist whose-

whose oath is do no harm,

you would never mess

with people's minds,

but people like Nancy Salzman

and Keith Raniere used hypnosis

and neurolinguistic programing to manipulate people.

If someone is very effective as a hypnotist,

they can get very intelligent people

to turn against themselves and their true self,

as well as their family and friends.

[Ana] I was sent back to the hotel to sleep,

but I couldn't sleep, and my hallucinations got worse.

I heard my boyfriend talking on the phone.

They told him to bring me back to the center.

That's when I just ran.

[disquieting music]

Like, I literally ran out of the hotel room half naked,

and, like, did a whole horrible scene.

And as I was leaving in the ambulance,

I saw Alex and Karen and Raniere

just watching me.

And I knew that I was in trouble

and that I better shut up.

For fear of?

[Ana] Fear of them coming after me,

fear of them retaliating against my family legally.

So I kept silent.

I spoke to Rick Ross, and he said

that I wasn't the only person to come from NXIVM

having had a psychotic break.

[Yusko] I was the first person to report

on NXIVM and ESP,

starting in 2003.

People were saying that the courses

involved sleep deprivation,

mind-control techniques,

and a lot of the people that were calling me

and were telling me

they were experiencing this were women.

In 2003,

Kristin Snyder was taking a NXIVM course in Alaska,

and she started falling apart really psychologically.

No one ever saw her after that.

According to police, she took a kayak

into Alaska Bay, turned it over,

and killed herself.

State police found a devastating suicide note

in her truck.

[Ross] Before she was in NXIVM,

Kristin Snyder was happy.

She had a master's degree.

She had her whole life ahead of her,

but when she got caught up

in their endless maze of courses,

she had a meltdown.

Even though it appears that she killed herself,

they could not recover the body.

[Yusko] You would think that that would be enough

to get some investigation into the group

that allegedly caused this,

but we still have no answers.

I know that NXIVM had a lot of money

from the Bronfman sisters,

and public officials

didn't want to get on their wrong side.

Keith Raniere said the whole thing was a hoax.

Keith told his followers that Kristin Snyder was alive

and living in Mexico.

[India] By 2015, I had been in NXIVM for four years,

and I moved into an apartment in Santa Monica

near the NXIVM center with my boyfriend, Michel.

I had been a coach a while,

and getting to the next rank of proctor

felt totally out of my reach.

Michel really pressured me

into taking the ethicist course

that Keith was teaching.

He said it was a very exclusive opportunity

to be taught by Keith directly,

that this was a very special thing

that I was getting to do.

Keith became obsessed with having us watch these movies

that were all about people sacrificing themselves

for a greater cause.

In this cause, I, too, am prepared to die.

[Keith] You know, in some cultures,

people fought to die.

The Mayan culture where they had that that game

and the people who won the tournament

were all sacrificed to the sun god,

they fought for that.

They go, "I want that to happen to me someday.

"I want to get thrown over an altar

"and have my-myself slit from my throat to my guts.

"I want to drive a plane into the World Trade Center,

'cause then there's glory."

[India] I remember sitting

in this breakout group in ethicist,

and all of a sudden,

I felt like I'm-- will die for Keith.

-Yes. -Like I would sacrifice myself.

And I saw him sort of in this godly position.

[uneasy music]

[Ross] In a destructive cult,

there is an absolute authoritarian leader

who becomes an object of worship.

Everything in the group became,

"How much are you willing to do for Keith Raniere?"

And Keith Raniere was teaching a philosophy

that the ends justify the means.

If we lie, but our goal

is to save the world,

isn't that justified?

You can understand killing when you feel it is necessary.

So here you have these women,

and let's suppose these women are representative to you

of a gang that's killing your family,

and that you feel that if you don't do this,

your family's gonna die,

or people you know are gonna die.

So you feel they must die.

[Ross] Whatever I ask you to do,

don't worry about whether it's illegal,

it's criminal, it's unethical,

because our goal is to improve the world,

and as long as that's our stated goal,

whatever I asked you to do is justified.

Historically, the most terrible example

would be Waco or Jonestown,

where you have people willing to die

and let their children die

because the leader says, "This is what we must do."

♪ ♪

It's very scary to think where Keith Raniere

was really leading this group,

because year after year, it escalated.

[Junco] Vanguard, it is with great honor that today,

August 26 of 2015,

I get to present you with a gift,

and it is a commitment from myself

and from the whole of the NXIVM community

that before this year ends,

we will have started the construction

of your $20 million dream science lab,

a stem cell lab and a brain lab

with the MRIs and all the progressive technology.

Mr. Raniere is, for those who don't know,

RPI's first triple major.

He has degrees in mathematics and biology in physics.

[Lalich] One thing Keith always did

was exaggerate his intelligence,

and they always touted that he had three graduate degrees.

We later came to see

his actual college transcripts,

where he was on probation several times,

and his final GPA was 2.26, which is barely a C.

Keith was honored in 1989

by the "Genius" Book of World Records

in the category-category of highest IQ in human history.

I found this on eBay.

The highest score

in the admission test devised by Ronald K. Hoeflin...

It names a number of people,

with "Keith Raniere of New York,

"one of the only three members

who have scored higher than 45."

I'd love to know what the Hoeflin Test is.

I've never heard of it.

I'm sure that the Guinness Book of World Records

realized that it wasn't a thing.

This is the only edition

that he appears in,

and he's literally only

in the Australian version of this book.

Keith was born in Brooklyn,

and his parents divorced

when he was around eight years old.

He then became his mother's primary caregiver.

She passed away when he was 18.

His father was actually in advertising,

and Keith followed in those footsteps

when he went into sales.

Keith had been diagnosed as gifted,

and his childhood friends have said that he developed

a superiority complex because of it.

What do you think one common misconception is

that people might have about you?

I think because my life is sufficiently different

than a normal life, it's hard to read,

and if it's hard to read, people will read as they will

and think all the strangest things.

[Catherine] In September of 2015, I had invited India

to join my mother and I in Tulum for my birthday,

My husband, Casper, and I had been separated,

and during that trip, he filed for divorce.

So I was definitely distracted,

and I only wish in retrospect

that I had been more present with India

and that I had maybe noticed what was going on with her.

[India] There was not a lot of time off with NXIVM.

Even on a family trip,

I was bombarded with activities,

like my SOP group,

readiness check-ins, calls, admin work, you name it.

We were always kept very busy.

I was trying so hard to do well

'cause I just really wanted to be promoted.

[Elizabeth] I remember going for walks with India

and trying to talk to her, just chat away,

and I would say, "But what's it like?

What are you doing up in there?"

"Oh, well, we do this,

and we do that."

But I could never get

a-a total feedback.

She was faintly absent-minded. She didn't completely focus.

She seemed stuck.

It was right then

that Keith Raniere

took a very dark turn that...

...affected, impacted my daughter's life profoundly.

I wish I had known.

I wish I had known to be able to inter-intervene

in that moment.

[India] By the end of 2015,

I was going to Albany constantly

to take more classes.

I used to stay with Mark and his wife, Bonnie,

and sometimes Allison Mack would be there, too.

Allison was very expressive. She was really outgoing.

She seemed fearless.

[speaking indistinctly]

All these characteristics

that I felt kind of weak in...

[Allison] Principles.

If you have principles that you won't violate...

[India] Allison taught a series of advanced courses,

which I took.

It's always easier to satiate than build character.

She was progressing up the Stripe Path really fast,

and all of a sudden, she was promoted to proctor.

I think it's perfect.

[India] I looked up to her because of that.

I mean, what I did, I-I...

And I wanted that.

So, when she approached me,

I felt like the popular girl at school

was coming to talk to me.

Allison asked me, "How are you doing?"

So I just kind of answered her honestly,

which was "Not good."

I just felt like I was at a loss.

It had been a long time since I had been promoted,

but I was taking tons of classes.

I was teaching tons of classes.

I was doing everything, everything that I could.

I was exhausted, and I wasn't making any money,

and I was scared.

I was investing all this time and energy

into something that...

I couldn't make it work.

I just couldn't succeed.

My whole life was NXIVM, and I wasn't getting anywhere.

I felt completely desperate.

[man] Don't mess with perfection.

[laughs]

[India] And that's when she said,

"I have something that could be really great for you.

I think it could really help."

She really made it sound like she had the answer,

like she had exactly what I needed.

[Bernstein] The cult sets up a system

where people can have a little success at the beginning,

and then it stalls.

The cult will want you to feel

it's because of you that it stalled.

What you don't realize is that the group caused this.

It's like they knocked you down to the ground,

and here they're putting their hand out to you

to help pick you back up,

and you're so grateful

they're helping you off the ground.

[India] Allison said, "I really want to be able

"to tell you more about this thing,

"but I-I need something from you.

"I need collateral.

"I need something that's really important to you,

"so I know that when I tell you this secret,

you won't share it with anybody else."

[ominous synth music]

[Lalich] In the advanced courses,

they introduce the concept of collateral,

which was, if you didn't stick

to some commitment you had made,

you had to pay some price for that.

Say you had a gym buddy,

and if you didn't turn up every morning at 8:00,

then you would pay $100.

That was the deal you made.

That was turned into something far more severe,

things like the deed to your house,

compromising photos,

some kind of stories about your family.

Turning this over

was showing your ethical commitment.

It's always couched in this language

to get you to accept it,

when, in fact, it was just straight-out blackmail.

[India] The collateral I was going to give to Allison

was information about my family

that was very personal and damaging.

She asked me to have it in a letter format

addressed to the media,

like a New York Times or a CNN,

and then get it notarized.

These family secrets would be immediately sent to the press

if I ever said anything about what she was gonna tell me.

I just thought, "I believe Allison."

I wanted to do well in this program,

and I wanted to be promoted.

And I was never gonna share the secret.

♪ ♪

We were at this coach summit event.

Allison and I were, like, hiding

behind this little coffee table on a break.

I give her this collateral,

and she starts telling me about this thing called DOS,

this secret society of women

that is unlike anything else in NXIVM.

She believed that the other NXIVM programs

couldn't push me to become truly empowered

like DOS could.

Allison told me that Keith had no involvement in this.

She said it was women mentoring women

in a very specialized, deep way...

...and that it would be able to push me past the areas

that I hadn't been able to push myself to grow.

It felt heavy. It felt like a secret.

It felt like something

that I was getting the privilege to learn about.

This was the first step in the initiation process,

but there was much more to come.

♪ ♪

I went back to LA,

and Allison started calling me,

and we would have these long conversations,

where she would tell me more and more about DOS.

She wanted me to make a lifetime commitment,

which included ultimate obedience to her.

I asked Allison, "What does 'ultimate obedience' even mean?

"Like, does it mean that I have to ask you permission

to have a boyfriend or to travel?"

And she would say,

"You need to ask me permission to do anything in your life."

And then Allison explained to me

that the setup of DOS was a master-slave dynamic.

I had a physical reaction to those words.

She told me that was perfectly normal.

That was part of the program,

to feel uncomfortable and to do it anyways.

She told me to look at it more

as a mentor-student relationship

and that she would always be there for me.

I would constantly be taking these phone calls outside

so that Michel, my boyfriend, wouldn't hear.

So I was pacing up and down my street

in front of my apartment.

I got on the phone with Allison, and I said,

"I'm really embarrassed to tell you this,

"but before I say yes,

"I just need to confess something to you,

"which is I'm afraid that you're gonna try to hurt me.

"I'm afraid that you're gonna use...

[voice breaking] ...this stuff that I've given you."

Sorry. [sniffles]

[sighs softly]

It just really disturbs me. [scoffs]

[sniffles]

It's really hard to, like...

just think about her lying to me so much.

[sniffles] But I told her.

I said, "I'm giving you this stuff,

"but I'm afraid that you're gonna try

"to hurt me with it, and I don't know you very well.

"And I'm trusting you that what I'm sharing with you,

you're gonna keep private."

And she said, "How can you think of me like that?

"You know me.

"You know the things that I stand for.

"You've taken intensives with me.

"You've stayed in my house.

"How could you ever think that I would try to hurt you

or exploit you or do something violent against you?"

[sniffles] And I thought, "How stupid am I?

Like, how stupid am I to think that of her?"

And I actually, like, felt really bad

that I even had that thought,

and right after that, I told her that I was in

and that I wanted to be in DOS and that I committed.

That moment is, like, so significant for me

and where I felt like I really didn't trust myself.

Like, I really-- I had an instinct.

I had a feeling that told me that...

maybe this wasn't good, and I...

I denied it, but she also lied to me.

Like...

[sighs] Like, I actually convinced myself

to trust her.

[sniffles]

[foreboding music]

♪ ♪

[Ross] The women who were recruited

were literally worn out

by the training and all of the coursework

and the intensives

and everything that these women were subjected to,

so that when they came to that point

of making a commitment to DOS,

their critical-thinking faculties

and their ability to judge that ask

was not in place.

They were not the same people that they were

when they came through initially

into the coursework at NXIVM.

♪ ♪

I was giving my all to NXIVM.

I was doing everything

that I thought I could do to progress,

and I was not moving,

My master just looked at me and said,

"There's another way."

She told me DOS was not a part of NXIVM,

but that it would help me achieve my goals in the group.

She said, "Well, you're already a slave,"

like, "You're a slave to your fears and attachments.

"Wouldn't you rather be a slave to something that's more noble

"and to your actual values?

This is the training program to teach you how to do that."

The term DOS wasn't told to me

until after I joined the sorority.

My master said "It's called DOS."

It stands for Dominus Obsequious Sororium,

which kind of translates from Latin, um,

to "master-slave sorority."

And I was like, "Well, that-- yeah, that makes sense.

It describes exactly what we're doing."

-[man] And to come... -[woman] Oh, good idea.

Is that good?

[woman] It's, like, right here.

[India] Allison started me on little activities

that began to make DOS more and more real.

You have an experience of what it feels like

to be committed to something beyond what's convenient

and what's comfortable

and all of the benefits that come from that.

My role was the student who had to humble myself

in order to learn and to grow.

Allison would send me articles that Keith had written,

and I had to journal

about how they all impacted me.

She required me to share something with her

that I felt vulnerable about every day.

[uneasy music]

She was especially interested in the things

that I felt uncomfortable with

that were sexual or that felt intimate.

She referred to us as bonding.

♪ ♪

Allison told me that I needed to lose weight

because it was a practice in building character

and self-restraint.

If I couldn't meet the weight requirement,

I would have to spend 30 days in Albany,

and that happened.

I had to make up a bunch of excuses

to why I wasn't coming back home.

but Allison told me that my relationships to my family

were just examples of where I was dependent,

and I needed to separate myself from them,

is what I was being told.

What you learn is the art of life

and how to be a true student of that

and practice that every day.

♪ ♪

[man speaks indistinctly]

[India] Allison ordered me to start texting her,

"Good night, master," and, "Good morning, master,"

every day.

It felt very uncomfortable for me to do that,

and I started to abbreviate it to an M

so that I could feel

a little bit more normal about it,

but we knew what it meant.

It wasn't like I was gonna sit there

and object to Allison.

At the time,

I was still living with my boyfriend, Michel,

and Allison told me that my relationship

was one of the things that was keeping me

from getting stronger and more empowered

and encouraged me to end that relationship.

So I did.

It was implied that you would be celibate

as a way to practice self-restraint and discipline.

It seemed to be a major focus for her.

[cell phone vibrates]

She would tell me, "Everything I do,

I do for your own benefit."

"Everything I have you do is for your own good."

[Keith] Look, Mark.

Did you notice one of the women wasn't wearing panties?

[Mark chuckles] How do you notice those things?

[Keith] And all these weddings that say it's official.

You know, you can say a woman's official to...

to tease a woman about her odor,

saying that she's...

About fish. She's "a fish hole."

[Mark] Mm-hmm.

[both] Official.

[laughter]

[Keith] She's official.

[Mark] Yeah, I like the way you led me there.

[India] I was sitting on Allison's bed with her,

and she told me, "I have a new assignment for you.

It's about leaning into fear and discomfort."

She made it sound different

than anything I had ever done before,

but I knew that whatever it was,

I would have to do it.

She told me, "Your assignment

is to seduce Keith."

[electronic music]