The Megyn Kelly Show - Fraud Week： Two Former NXIVM Members Speak Out on True Horrors of the Cult...And How They Got Out

00:00:00.440 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.760 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's Fraud Week episode.

00:00:18.220 My guests today were searching for self-improvement and a way to contribute to the good of society

00:00:23.760 when they joined an organization called NXIVM. They found each other and got married.

00:00:29.280 But they also found utter darkness and depravity in one man's desire for ultimate power and control over women.

00:00:41.040 Sarah Edmondson and her husband, Anthony Nippy Ames, are former members now of the cult called NXIVM

00:00:47.680 and the hosts of the podcast, A Little Bit Culty, and they join me now.

00:00:55.020 It's so nice to meet you, Sarah. Thank you for being here. You as well, Nippy.

00:00:59.280 Thank you so much for having us. And thank you also for being such a proponent of anti-NXIVM

00:01:04.540 from the beginning. We appreciate that. Of course. I remember so clearly where I was

00:01:11.480 when that New York Times article hit featuring you in a lengthy article of you coming forward

00:01:18.000 about what you'd been through. And I had chills. I just couldn't believe it. You were so beautiful.

00:01:24.640 You were accomplished. You were so raw about how you'd been sucked into this thing.

00:01:30.300 And not for nothing, but it happened in my hometown of Albany, New York, which was just so strange to me.

00:01:36.220 Like, Albany? You don't think of Albany as like, yeah, I don't know. It doesn't feel culty, right,

00:01:41.900 to use your word. It's like the hardworking people. It's kind of like the Midwest. You know,

00:01:46.180 I would think something like this would happen more in California, but it happened in Albany and

00:01:51.840 you were in it too, Nippy. And I know, you know, on the bright side, it brought you together, but

00:01:55.820 not without a hell of a lot of trauma. So thank you for telling the story. I guess let's start at the

00:02:02.280 beginning for the audience members who've never heard of, you know, this, or at least if they've

00:02:06.220 heard of it, they don't really know what it is. Because I do think much like some other cults,

00:02:09.940 many other cults, it had some pluses, which is why smart, vibrant people like you got drawn in.

00:02:18.480 So talk about how you first heard about it and what was attractive about it to you.

00:02:22.900 Sure. It was 2005. I was an aspiring actress and I was looking for more meaning and purpose

00:02:29.420 community in my life. I met a really talented filmmaker who I admired. I'd just seen his film,

00:02:35.740 What the Bleep Do We Know? And the long and short of it is he said, well, if you like my

00:02:39.920 film, then you'll probably like this course I just took. And as somebody who is into self-improvement

00:02:45.120 and workshops, my parents are both in the therapy field. It seemed like a no-brainer. I did not do

00:02:50.760 any research, unfortunately. I've learned from that mistake now, but I jumped in. I really wanted to

00:02:56.580 develop myself and work through limiting beliefs. And that was the beginning. And it was wonderful at

00:03:02.840 first. Yeah. How about you, Nippy?

00:03:05.700 My story is less glamorous. I had an old high school girlfriend who I went to boarding school

00:03:12.200 with and she's from the area and she had taken the training and I'd run into her in New York and she

00:03:18.220 kind of hounded me for about a year and a half. So I kind of went kicking and screaming to the training

00:03:24.900 in part because of what she was saying and in part because she knew me when we dated and she knew I was

00:03:30.860 into the leadership stuff and all that stuff. And it was aligned with me and my principles. And

00:03:35.920 finally, after kind of being hounded about it, I said, fine, I'll do your cult. So I called it a

00:03:41.660 cult from the get jokingly, but I didn't really.

00:03:45.140 Did you have any hints or that was just purely a joke?

00:03:48.580 It was purely a joke. Well, it sounded like a cult and I didn't really have a strong understanding of

00:03:53.580 what a cult is. It just sounded weird and it sounded like you're following this guy. And I was like,

00:03:57.260 yeah, I'll do your cult. And I kind of jokingly went up and did it. And it didn't seem, I mean,

00:04:01.080 it was weird. I mean, it was, it was the whole time. Um, but I kind of took it, you know, in stride

00:04:07.220 and was like, well, you know, what's the worst thing that could happen? Well, cut to, right.

00:04:12.820 Right. So it is true. This is kind of the study in, in how, how people can be manipulated,

00:04:19.800 you know, how very bright, intelligent, accomplished people can be manipulated

00:04:24.620 beyond what they ever thought possible, manipulated into doing things like self-harm

00:04:31.240 against their better instincts and so on. It's like, they, they separate you from yourself.

00:04:37.880 They don't, they not only separate you from your family and your friends, they separate you from

00:04:41.760 yourself, which is really one of the, probably the worst things that they can do. But all right,

00:04:48.100 again, I'm getting ahead of myself because before we get to that chapter, there's the,

00:04:51.860 there's the wonderful chapter. You know, I, I talked to Catherine Oxenberg about this,

00:04:55.340 um, princess and famed Hollywood actress. And she was saying the reason she got into it with her

00:05:03.300 daughter, India was they were just looking for female empowerment and to do better in business.

00:05:09.060 They are both business aspiring business women, and they offered a lot of classes along these lines.

00:05:13.920 So it's kind of, where do you go, right? Where do you go for female improvement or better business

00:05:18.740 acumen? If you're not going to take a full MBA program, Sarah, right? I mean, was there any of

00:05:22.980 that sold to you? Oh, absolutely. In fact, they even sold it as a more practical and useful MBA.

00:05:30.040 That's what I thought I was getting. And I remember when Catherine and India came and did the program.

00:05:35.660 I'm so happy because I loved the both and wonderful, bright, beautiful energy. And that was such a big

00:05:41.120 part of it as well. It wasn't just learn how to do business, learn how, what success is from the

00:05:46.000 inside out, how to map out your goals and work through things that you're, you know, you're

00:05:49.600 limiting blocks, your beliefs about yourself and the world, but also as a community of like-minded

00:05:53.720 people and people who were going to achieve big things and wanted to do it with people that were

00:05:59.560 in a similar mindset and, and do it together. So I, I have very fond memories of that time period.

00:06:07.700 Right. It always starts. Well, that's why people.

00:06:10.800 So explain what happened with the money, because I think this story is very telling

00:06:15.840 and I am also attracted by this woman's message. Like I can already see why you were like, Oh,

00:06:22.700 okay. Well, cause you tried to complain or object a little to the expense of it when you were first

00:06:29.720 being recruited and they had an answer for everything. Oh yes. I was recruited by the best.

00:06:37.840 I actually put a deposit down because I wanted to take advantage of the 48 hour discount,

00:06:42.880 which is a red flag. I've warned people about with sales pressures tactics. I didn't know that

00:06:48.040 at the time. And then I tried to get my money back because I was, you know, an actress living in a

00:06:53.440 basement suite. I didn't have $2,000 to pay for a five day training. And they said, wait, you're in

00:06:58.440 your twenties and you don't have $2,000. What's up with that? And basically was questioning why I didn't

00:07:05.780 have money, why I had money issues and wanted to know if I was ready to change that. And do I want

00:07:10.200 to be the master of my own ship? Of course I did. And then you said something like, well,

00:07:14.200 what if I'm in there and my agent calls with a role for me while I'm in this training? And they

00:07:19.180 had an instant answer for that too. Yeah. You'd be waiting by your phone,

00:07:23.200 your whole life, or you want to create your own, create your own life, be the master of your own

00:07:27.800 destiny, the captain of your ship or something like that.

00:07:29.780 What's your first experience with gaslighting?

00:07:31.280 My first experience of gaslighting did not know what that was and high, high sales pressure

00:07:36.560 tactics, but I, where your instincts are telling you one thing and they're, they're trying to tell

00:07:43.220 you, you're basically a fool not to listen to your instincts. Those are the things that are holding

00:07:47.500 you back. Exactly. And what you said earlier about separating you from yourself, that was the

00:07:52.740 beginning. That was the beginning right there when my internal gut was saying, eh, something's not

00:07:57.840 right here, but I also have the belief, and this was fortified further on in the curriculum that

00:08:03.600 when you're uncomfortable, it's something to look at. It's a, you know, um, you're hitting up against

00:08:08.580 the limitation, no pain, no gain, which is true, but that doesn't give any room for gut instinct.

00:08:13.460 And when you're separated from yourself and separated from your moral compass, that's when

00:08:18.940 things can go awry. And that was a very slow process. That was from day one, uh, dripped out until,

00:08:25.240 you know, 12 years later. This is why it's so important to keep away from these people to begin

00:08:32.880 with, you know, to like, yes, the secret is almost just don't get near them because they're so effective

00:08:37.820 and we're all vulnerable to messages like this is same. Honestly, weirdly when it comes to news,

00:08:44.840 like I, I'm very careful about my news sources because before you know it, I mean, you can be

00:08:52.280 a little crazy. If you take in too many news sources from the wrong people, it can really drive

00:08:59.120 you a little nuts. So the whole answer to it is the, the screening upfront before you would let

00:09:06.080 people access your brain and your heart. Great advice. Yeah. I would, I would add, you know,

00:09:13.260 all these things are case by case and people are susceptible in different ways. And the predators

00:09:18.360 like Keith Ranieri who are very good at it are very good at spotting that and they're proactive

00:09:24.060 in doing it. What they have going for them a lot of the times is they know what it's like to be you

00:09:28.780 with your vulnerabilities and they know how to spot them and exploit them. Um, people who are more

00:09:34.380 susceptible, they can probably spot and they spend more time with and with people like Keith, you know,

00:09:38.880 for me, I wasn't targeted in the same way he was targeting women. So I was more peripheral to some of

00:09:45.100 his abuse, but the people that were susceptible to what he was looking for, the people that he spent

00:09:49.280 more time with. And he was, you know, if you could turn pro and abusing people, he was a professional

00:09:54.100 at doing it. And that's ultimately what came out, you know, when, when everything came out about what

00:09:59.220 he was doing and how he was doing. Well, people talk so much about how he was this gifted, brilliant

00:10:04.580 man. And it's true that in this one lane, right? Yes. Yes. Not the lane. Look at him now. I mean,

00:10:12.740 this is like, this looks like somebody who's trying to be a cult leader. He's got the Jesus

00:10:17.100 hair, the beard, you know, is like in retrospect, yeah, of course. Yeah. That picture doesn't do him

00:10:24.820 any justice. No, he did get a makeover by the way. And I want to say 2010 or 11, where he was a little

00:10:30.240 more clean cut and would wear like polo shirts and nice jeans. And yeah, cause the people around him

00:10:35.740 are like, you got to clean up a bit because you're not, but he would spend that, you know, he would spend

00:10:40.240 that in the same way that say, you know, Einstein was quirky and he didn't care about that stuff.

00:10:44.560 You know, that's Keith. He's just Keith. He's being him. He doesn't put value on material things

00:10:50.280 and he's spiritual himself and all that stuff. And that's the total. Yeah. Yeah. It's,

00:10:55.400 it was built in. You've, you've, you've talked on your podcast about the steps to realize you're in

00:11:02.400 a cult or getting recruited by a cult and people do need to be aware. There are tons of cults.

00:11:07.320 It is not just this one. They're all over the United States and you get, usually you get roped

00:11:12.260 in the way you two did unknowingly. So one of the first red flags is what we just talked about,

00:11:20.100 which is a lot of money. They want you to pay and it tends to be escalatory, like a pyramid scheme,

00:11:26.800 like more and more and more for the next level. Because ideally what they want you to feel at the end

00:11:33.180 of the five day is it was super valuable, but also there's something in you that needs to be fixed.

00:11:37.740 And of course they're providing the answers to fix you. And that's the only way, or that's another

00:11:42.620 red flag. This is the path forward. This is the, this is the way to evolve whatever it was that you've

00:11:48.400 just realized about yourself is broken. And that's by the way, like very commonplace. NXIVM is,

00:11:54.340 I don't know if you are afraid of Scientology or not. We're not anymore, but Scientology landmark,

00:12:02.280 like all of these programs are all based on the same premise. You know, if you want to transform

00:12:07.560 your life, then you have to pay money. You have to pay to play. And this is the path.

00:12:12.580 And to justify the buy-in too, you know, you're there working for five days. You want to make sure

00:12:17.120 that you feel that your investment was worth it. And so they'll say stuff like, well, was having that

00:12:22.780 awareness about yourself worth the price of admission. And you're kind of going, well,

00:12:26.220 maybe I could have gotten that from a book, but I did spend two grand to be here. So

00:12:29.760 you have confirmation bias. Yeah. So here's a question for you now in retrospect, knowing what

00:12:36.240 you know, do you feel like take Keith out of it? Do you feel like the emissaries around Keith

00:12:42.440 were all along like knowingly pushing a pyramid scheme or whether everyone was brainwashed by this guy?

00:12:52.780 You know, was, I believe he was at the top actively manipulating, but how about everybody

00:12:57.860 around? Allow me to feel that one. Nippy loves answering this question.

00:13:00.680 So here's my delineation and you can take it for what it's worth. I think there's a lot of people

00:13:06.720 there. I'd say 98% of them, 99% of them who were there because we thought we were doing something

00:13:12.280 good. And the closer to Keith Raniere you got, the more abuse you experienced. And in cases of the

00:13:21.460 worst case scenarios, he was sexually abusing them and they didn't think they were doing it

00:13:24.760 being sexually abused. They thought they were going on a spiritual path with someone sexually.

00:13:30.140 So, um, and they were told to keep that secret. So 99% of the people stayed in the organization

00:13:36.920 based on the capacity of the people around him to lie. And we underestimated the people around

00:13:42.740 him, their capacity to lie to us and keep us loyal to someone that they knew who wasn't,

00:13:48.320 they knew he wasn't who they were pretending he was. Meaning he presented himself as celibate.

00:13:54.100 He presented himself as these things. And the people around him knew that he wasn't that.

00:13:57.920 And they were propagating the lie and they were propagating the lie because if they didn't believe

00:14:01.880 in the lie, they had to admit to themselves, they were being abused. So the buy-in for them was

00:14:07.560 my entire life is a fraud and I'm, and, and I'm propagating this myth, uh, knowingly,

00:14:16.060 but if I let other people know, that means I have to admit I'm abused. So it's like knowing and not

00:14:21.660 knowing. So, but a lot of people made major life decisions based on their capacity to lie. Cause if

00:14:27.520 I had known that's what he was doing and I found out afterwards that some of my friends that, you know,

00:14:32.000 someone I knew was sexually abused by him and all that stuff, if I had known that stuff when I had

00:14:36.640 first done it, I'd have been in there raising hell from the get. But because I didn't know that

00:14:41.320 stuff when I was peripheral, I didn't think this stuff was going on. Cause I didn't think the people

00:14:45.260 that I knew and were friends with were being abused because I thought they would have said something.

00:14:49.920 So, you know, and I didn't know what I was looking at. So, and I would have protected them.

00:14:54.140 I would have been the first one in there. And I think they knew that. So I think that that's why

00:14:57.960 they didn't want to tell me that. So there's a lot of things keeping this thing propped up.

00:15:03.360 And once the truth came out, you know, everything fell apart. And so that's my delineation. Like

00:15:09.000 it's hard for me to, I never knowingly lied about Keith Raniere and who he was. I was unwittingly

00:15:17.800 aligned with someone abusing people. And that was, you know, I had to go fix that, you know,

00:15:21.740 and Sarah and I, you know, have done everything we can to fix that. But the people that were close to him

00:15:26.400 have to reconcile being abused by him and then lying about who he was to keep people loyal to him.

00:15:31.960 So can I tell you guys, it's kind of a double whammy. Yeah. I've said this before. In fact,

00:15:37.220 whenever I talk about NXIVM, this comes up for me because in many ways it reminds me of Fox News,

00:15:43.880 my time at Fox News when Roger Ailes was running it. He was like a cult leader and Fox News when I was

00:15:52.840 there was in many ways like a cult. It was definitely, quote, culty. He was the leader

00:15:58.540 whose judgment was not to be questioned or to defend him at all costs and not question his

00:16:04.020 genius. Anybody who left was otherized and demonized immediately. You know, even just a

00:16:11.100 correspondent who like got fired, you know, who didn't want to go. Doesn't matter. You're on the

00:16:15.480 outs. It's us versus them. And I, as I got higher in the organization, you know, closer to the sun and

00:16:25.180 got to know him better and better. All I could think of was that Carly Simon song. Sometimes I

00:16:32.360 wish often I wish that I never knew all those secrets of yours. I, I was getting exposed to the

00:16:40.680 reality. And I had a real wrestling session with myself on an ongoing basis about who is he, who is

00:16:48.520 this man? You know, is he this all knowing television genius or is he this frail conspiratorial

00:16:56.140 paranoid guy who's a genius at messaging and I've been sucked into it and to be a cog in this massive

00:17:04.860 wheel. And honestly, I don't, I don't know if I have a clear answer on that even right now, but I'd

00:17:10.660 totally get what you went through. Yep. Well, the questions you're asking are, are, are valuable.

00:17:16.400 And that's why our podcast is called a little bit culty because the abuses of power that went on in

00:17:22.440 cults or go on in cults aren't proprietary to cults. They go on a lot of places and putting language to

00:17:28.300 it and shining a light on it is kind of in our lane. And the fact that you can make those connections

00:17:33.160 is, is great. I think valuable for a lot of people. Absolutely. And it's so important right now,

00:17:38.560 because I think even if you use the word cult, people get a little defensive and they go,

00:17:42.140 it's not a cult. Traditionally doesn't have all of the markers, but another way of saying it is,

00:17:47.940 is this a healthy place for me to be? I remember when, when you were dealing with that publicly,

00:17:53.200 I got, I got goosebumps just now, as you were talking that I started to make those correlations

00:17:58.360 without obviously knowing everything that you just said. But anytime that there is someone who you

00:18:03.180 can't question without getting in trouble. And there's this, this air of fear in an workplace

00:18:09.000 environment, don't have to call it a cult. It's just not good for you. You can't express your true

00:18:14.360 opinions. You don't want to say what's really on your mind. And like you said, you're separated from

00:18:18.720 yourself because you know, you want to keep your job. That's not, it's not healthy. Nevermind

00:18:23.840 healthy, whatever. Does that make sense?

00:18:25.920 And, and at Fox, similar to NXIVM, it came out in the whole Me Too scandal that he had this

00:18:33.460 secret floor at Fox with these private detectives and others who would be digging up dirt on his

00:18:41.140 enemies. Anybody who turned on him was a very risky thing to do to challenge him in any way,

00:18:46.920 which is why, you know, his Me Too scandal went on for so long without anybody speaking up about it.

00:18:52.200 People understood you didn't cross him. And these leaders, they have that ability of scaring you

00:18:58.160 through their emissaries, through their messaging, you know, they have ways of letting you know that

00:19:04.520 you'll pay if you cross them or the group. And it's amazing how, again, you can be pulled into this,

00:19:12.660 even, even though you don't think you're one of them. At NXIVM, it was a step further where you guys

00:19:19.420 actually called him Vanguard. You know, he had like the, the name. Was that, at first,

00:19:25.780 did that feel silly? Were you like, what? Oh God. At first and at last, Megan, the whole time it was,

00:19:32.220 it was that, you know, it was. But also it became normalized. Like, you know, people would say

00:19:38.040 Vanguard means it's the leader of a philosophical movement and that's what he's done. So,

00:19:42.820 you know, you call them Vanguard. Some people called him V out of school. I know out of the

00:19:48.840 center, we called him Keith. But it, it just became normal. Like all the things that were

00:19:55.020 weird at first, the sashes, the bowing. And that was introduced on day one as these are the things

00:20:00.940 we do. As in, you know, if you go to someone's house and they take off their shoes, you take off

00:20:05.120 your shoes because that's the polite thing to do. So you go to their center, you wear the sash,

00:20:09.040 you call them Vanguard. You kind of just like, I'm just doing it because you're asking me to,

00:20:12.960 and I'm taking off my shoes. And then it becomes a courtesy. Yeah. It's a courtesy. Yeah. And then

00:20:19.040 it's a dojo. So this is like a martial arts system. We wear these sashes, denotes what level of rank

00:20:25.520 you are, just like in a dojo. Well, you don't want to wear one. Well, let's look at that. But what area

00:20:30.020 in your life do you feel like you might have an issue with authority? You know, and then you, again,

00:20:35.280 you don't know that you're being gaslit because they're saying it nicely. They're there to help you with

00:20:38.600 your authority issues, which by the way, some of us may also have. So there's like truth mixed in

00:20:44.920 with the gaslighting. And then you're questioning yourself and you're like, whatever, it's a piece

00:20:48.820 of fabric. I'm just going to wear the stupid sash. And it was done effectively. I mean, Lauren Salzman

00:20:52.900 was, was a really good head trainer and she would teach it in a way to, to normalize it pretty

00:20:58.080 quickly. Um, she's like, you know, she was the daughter of one of the co-founders, Nancy Salzman go on

00:21:03.740 to become Sarah's best friend. Keep going. Yes. And she would do it in a way. It's like, look,

00:21:09.060 we do these things at work. We do these things, you know, we, we have titles like your honor

00:21:13.560 injustice systems. And so she was drawing parallels and the curriculum drew parallels in society of

00:21:19.200 like where you could go as a student. Okay. I'll wear it for this training. Right. And so slowly

00:21:26.500 you're starting to become acclimated and indoctrinated into a culture that you haven't seen anything bad

00:21:32.680 about yet. You just think it's weird. And some people would be okay with it. I was never really

00:21:39.280 comfortable with it, but we always, I mean, for the most part, we all thought it was weird. And

00:21:43.100 all of us were like, look, we got to lose the sashes. We're losing students. So it was kind of

00:21:47.540 like one of those things where we, we all knew the optics of it. And then at Fox news, it was

00:21:52.240 polyester, bright colored dress, uh, dresses. Oh, there you go. There you go. Could have been worse.

00:21:58.980 Um, I was going to say, which is worse. They said all these wonderful things about Keith. He's this,

00:22:04.980 he's that the other thing. And I remember talking to Catherine Oxenberg about when she got her first

00:22:09.400 look at him. And of course she comes from Hollywood. She's like, you know, she's, she knows what an

00:22:13.660 attractive person looks like, you know, in, in a way Californians know acutely. And I remember her

00:22:19.740 being like, she was like, that's it. That's him. Did you like, that's Vanguard. Do you,

00:22:26.000 did you have a moment like that when you first got? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he just looked

00:22:31.460 like a schlubby, you know, volleyball playing. I think he actually had knee pads. I'll take it.

00:22:37.980 I'll take it to an degree. I mean, look, I played sports my whole life. I was a college athlete and

00:22:43.640 they were trying to sell this guy as an athlete. And I went and showed up to one of the volleyball

00:22:47.400 things. You know, my friend took me one night and I was, it was late and I was kicking and

00:22:52.040 screaming, going to that because in my mind, I was going to take a training and peace out.

00:22:56.160 And I saw him moving around. I was like, do you guys really think this guy's an athlete? Like,

00:23:00.980 look at him. Like, and they were like all marveling at how he played volleyball. And I'm

00:23:04.840 over there just kind of going, Oh my God, like what is going on here?

00:23:09.700 Wait, stand by because we have, we have a little video of this. I'll show the audience then pick it back

00:23:13.740 up. Oh, great. Yeah. Don't take my word for it.

00:23:17.400 Yeah. We can practice generating an extreme feeling of joy over anything.

00:23:24.820 There's Alison Mack of Smallville.

00:23:26.380 Our methods that we have, especially in 2C.

00:23:28.580 Meeting him for the first time.

00:23:29.900 It's one of our intentions.

00:23:31.840 Thank you. That was really, do I hug and I kiss?

00:23:35.300 Oh my gosh.

00:23:42.520 Yeah. Not a strong selling point. And he had, you know, I always joke about this and I, and I always

00:23:50.100 gave the people that person that enrolled me a lot of crap for this because I was like, why is he

00:23:54.980 putting the fact that he's a judo champion in sixth grade on his resume? Like, why is that a selling

00:23:59.500 point? It was like, I, you know, there's a lot of things that I did in sixth grade that were as

00:24:03.440 successful that I've forgotten about. Like, I don't like, it's just, he's a judo champion.

00:24:07.900 I was like, well, get over it. Why didn't he continue? Why didn't he go into like, you know,

00:24:11.420 mixed martial arts in his 20s? That would be more impressive. But the sixth grade achievements on

00:24:15.540 his resume is a middle-aged runner-up for a class president in the fifth grade. I lost him.

00:24:20.420 I'm really proud of you, Megan.

00:24:21.400 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I feel really good about it.

00:24:27.880 All was said and done. I, I don't think he hadn't yet been tried. So it wasn't all said and done,

00:24:33.000 but after we get to, you know, and we'll get to this, but he got arrested. Um, I had an interview

00:24:38.460 with his lawyer, Mark Agnifolo. It was contentious. Yes, we saw that. I forgot about that. Yeah.

00:24:43.700 Remember that? Can we cuss? Is it okay to curse on here? Yeah, you can curse. That was bullshit.

00:24:51.400 I was pissed. I was so grateful for you though, for asking the tough questions.

00:24:56.300 Yeah, that was great. You were like, seriously, Mark? He was like, this is New York. We don't do

00:25:01.680 slavery here. What do you mean? We pick ourselves up. We're, we're strong. New Yorkers are, I'm like,

00:25:06.480 okay, you can be strong and be sexually manipulated as the women are alleging here. He was like,

00:25:12.280 what do you mean? New York jury's not going to buy that. Well, okay. So here's a little clip where I

00:25:17.400 got into it with him about what was amazing accomplished man. Keith Raniere supposedly was

00:25:24.640 check it out. About Keith Raniere and his tenuous relationship with the truth. He claimed he

00:25:30.680 graduated from high school and started RPI at age 16. That's not true. Yeah. I don't know. I don't

00:25:34.800 know when he started. He claimed he could make full sentences by the age of one. If exaggerating about

00:25:40.240 one's resume is a crime, I think we're all in trouble. No, I'm not. I'm probably not either,

00:25:45.300 but other than the two of us, this guy is a liar. He has a long history of lying about himself

00:25:50.420 and his achievements, including his time at RPI where he was a 2.2 GPA and not a triple major

00:25:56.420 who set records at the school. That doesn't worry me in the least. No, no.

00:25:59.900 Oh my God. Well, my hero. My favorite line is no, I'm not. And he's like, yeah, no, me neither.

00:26:08.340 I know. And actually none of us really do that. That was like 19 year old stuff.

00:26:13.020 Oh, that was so great. You made him. He's not the brightest bulb. Even you have like,

00:26:19.640 we're kind of like, I don't get it. Is this the genius? But okay. You know, but the women around

00:26:23.720 him seem to have been really on and meant to, but like on and kind and warm and offering something.

00:26:30.700 So it wasn't all about him. Sarah, is that correct? Well, I want to add one caveat here,

00:26:35.580 just because it's, it's important. Like it's easy to sit back in hindsight and make fun of it and,

00:26:41.440 and kind of distance ourselves from what we had fallen for. I will say for me personally,

00:26:48.000 I was all in on the curriculum. I was all in what I thought we were doing. So I, one of the things

00:26:54.580 that I don't like is when people don't own what they fell for and try to distance themselves from

00:27:00.160 like, you know, I fell for this and it kind of minimizes the story and, and the magnitude of,

00:27:06.580 of what can happen. You know, for me, I was somewhat evangelical about like, Hey, this is,

00:27:11.280 these are ethics. These are changing the world. Yes. I thought Keith was, was weird, but I was,

00:27:15.080 I was hook, line and sinker bought into what we were doing and not totally sold on Keith,

00:27:22.120 but like, didn't think there was bad things going on there in the way that they were. So I think it's

00:27:26.680 important to own that. That's, you know, how I got myself in the situation and not minimize the fact

00:27:33.140 that I did fall for this thing. And it's easy to laugh at now. So anyway, I just think it's important

00:27:39.820 because I don't want to, I don't want to punch down on people that are in that situation. Cause I do

00:27:43.780 think you have to go take the bite out of that and really lean into it to understand what happened

00:27:48.160 to you. So all it's fun and kidding, but just putting that out there. Yeah. And it's therapeutic

00:27:54.800 to laugh after the fact too. It is. It is. I have plenty of, I would not be through this trauma if

00:28:00.740 it wasn't for the way that Nippy and I can laugh about it and continue to. Uh, but to answer your

00:28:05.480 question, I think for me, it was a little different. I, even though he was a schlub and it wasn't

00:28:09.820 attracted to him, I was greatly respectful of what he, I thought that he'd built. I thought

00:28:15.340 his mind created this tech, which is another red flag, by the way, the curriculum, it's not a

00:28:21.000 technology, but we had been so changed by it. And I thought that came from him. And I obviously now

00:28:27.400 know that he stole that from a number of other modalities that already exist and packaged it as

00:28:31.840 his own. But then he was also propped up by these women that seem to have their, their lives

00:28:37.040 together and people that I really liked and respected. So I was getting so many of my, um,

00:28:42.340 social and emotional and spiritual needs met very, very quickly, uh, community meaning I was,

00:28:49.440 I was helping myself. I was growing, but I got to help others. I got to give people the

00:28:53.680 transformational experience that I was getting, which totally filled my cup. I felt special.

00:28:59.000 I got taken under the, the, the wing of women that I really looked up to, and they were going

00:29:03.220 to help me grow. And also it was measurable. The straight path.

00:29:07.040 Um, the martial arts system of growth was so different than acting, which had what I'd been

00:29:12.220 doing before, which is, you know, you never know if you're going to book work or not book work. And

00:29:16.580 now I knew I could just do boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I would evolve. Like that's what a great

00:29:21.640 promise. I didn't, um, again, like Nippy said, I underestimated that, you know, how much bullshit

00:29:28.020 that actually was, but if it was what it said it was, it would have been amazing.

00:29:31.720 I know I'm ready to sign up right now. I hear you. And I'm like, yeah, I want, I want it all.

00:29:37.820 And so he, you and he interacted quite a bit that in the, um, the show, the vow, which was on HBO,

00:29:43.780 which is an excellent documentary about all of this and how he went down has the scene of you and Keith,

00:29:50.240 Sarah, you and Keith interacting in as part of like your training. We've cut a little bit of it just

00:29:55.220 to give the audience a flavor. It's top two. I keep drawing a blank. That's okay. And I know I'm

00:30:01.560 giving you unbearable grief. It's okay. But if you could do it here, you can do it in New York.

00:30:08.440 I know I should know this. Um, all right. Who's ready to have fun? Yeah. All right. Okay. So in

00:30:17.800 order to have fun, we don't want anyone to get hurt. Right? No, not fun enough. Who here is here to

00:30:24.460 have fun. Fun. Come on. Fun. Okay. You shouldn't be trying to turn up their energy level. Okay.

00:30:34.620 When the audience gives you the signal that they got it, you move, you move, you move.

00:30:41.540 This is actually good. I mean, I'm listening to him like that's all good advice. I think

00:30:45.500 he was teaching, um, basic rapport skills of how to like lead a group, uh, in the room,

00:30:52.520 but I haven't actually seen that since the vow came out. I forgot how painful that was a to watch

00:30:56.340 and be in the moment. And that was actually one of the only times that was ever trained by Keith

00:31:00.900 personally in sales. And it's crazy that it was beautiful. You are. You're so beautiful. Like

00:31:06.820 your angle, the angles of your face and your, the earnestness of you standing up there,

00:31:10.920 actually trying to learn it. And I see it though. Like he's charming. And what he's saying to you

00:31:15.060 makes sense of how to relate to a crowd. He's actually trying to improve you. He's trying to improve

00:31:19.140 you, I think to sell his products and get more buyers into his cult. No.

00:31:24.380 Yeah. Yes. But also he was humiliating me. I don't remember if you see it in the whole clip,

00:31:28.640 but like he pushed me and pushed me and pushed me trying to get me to break down. And I refused

00:31:32.960 to cry. And at the end he gave me a little crumb and said, good job. And that's when I remember

00:31:37.900 like looking back that that's how he controlled so many of the women. He was always humiliating them

00:31:43.340 subtly under the guise of trying to develop them. And then would give them these little crumbs of,

00:31:48.520 um, attention and affirmation that they were on track and that he didn't really mess with me

00:31:54.800 much, mostly because I think I was out in Vancouver just bringing new fresh students to him. So he

00:32:00.560 didn't do that a lot with me, but that was a particular painful moment that I'd actually

00:32:06.120 completely forgot about until I saw the vow and was horrified. I also don't think you're susceptible

00:32:11.020 in the same ways. I was not susceptible in the same ways. Well, we've since learned through,

00:32:18.100 mostly through our podcast and interviewing other, you know, survivors and experts, especially

00:32:22.620 experts on gaslighting and narcissism and cults that a lot of these guys really look for, uh,

00:32:29.140 it's such a, I hate to use the word, but like daddy issues, but like a bad attachment with their father

00:32:34.540 in some case, or bad, not good attachment with the parents. So then Keith would step in and be that

00:32:40.560 father figure to a lot of these women, uh, you know, to, to grow them, to coach them similar to how he

00:32:46.160 was doing with Alison and that clip. He never reached me in that way. Uh, partly I think

00:32:51.360 because I have a great relationship with my dad and, um, strong attachment, if you believe in those

00:32:55.880 theories with my parents. Um, so, I mean, he got me in other ways, but not that way. Thank goodness.

00:33:01.040 And also, you know, being with Nippy, uh, long-term protected me. Um, and which I think also infuriated

00:33:08.900 him knowing what we know now. Yes. Yes. Oh God. I can relate to all of this too. I was just thinking

00:33:14.780 like when Roger L started to feel like I was getting out from under his thumb and I was not,

00:33:21.940 you know, just going to do whatever he wanted me to do or say whatever he wanted me to say.

00:33:25.760 He started to insult me like a fair amount behind the scenes to try to, you know, cut down my

00:33:31.640 confidence. And it just, I don't know if I'd identified that. I, I was just sort of attributed

00:33:37.320 it to anger, but it, you're giving me a new way to think of it almost, you know, like it's,

00:33:44.300 it's a manipulation almost like to change you so that you'll go back to the way you were.

00:33:50.720 There's a term negging. I don't know if you've heard it. And it's, I don't, I don't know the book.

00:33:56.480 Yeah. It's from the game. And the idea is, as I understand it is I'll give you a little bit of

00:34:02.080 approval. So it feels good. And then you always be chasing that approval. And then also you would

00:34:07.380 start and sell like the person it's, it's actually a dating training for men to try to get women,

00:34:14.020 like men who can't just like date women normally would learn this way of like, yeah, it's basically

00:34:20.300 dropping these little breadcrumbs of approval, but then also the negging is sort of like an insult,

00:34:24.880 these little insults. It's like establish interest and then take it away so that you'll want it more.

00:34:28.840 It's why you see sometimes women with these men, you're like, what is going on there? Cause they're

00:34:32.720 like giving, it's almost like a microcosm of, um, sex trafficking and grooming. It's, uh,

00:34:39.200 love bombing. And then a couple of episodes where women have described this, you know,

00:34:44.220 the cult of one, you know, we've had some episodes where people, um, have described this

00:34:49.280 strategy, um, where men target women, find their vulnerabilities and exploit it in that way. And,

00:34:55.740 and depending on, I'm giving, I'm kind of out of my lane here. Um, but, but depending on your

00:35:01.920 attachment, say with, you know, a loved one or previous loved one or something like that,

00:35:06.440 they recognize now that, that you might be, be vulnerable to that strategy. And if not,

00:35:11.800 you might be vulnerable to another one. So, and this is how they operate and this is how they work.

00:35:15.320 And this is how they filter a room. I think they can, I think they can walk into a room according

00:35:19.280 to some interviews we've had and spot the person just by the way they look by the care of themselves,

00:35:25.040 because they have such in so much Intel and such a body of work on people that they can kind of

00:35:30.840 scan a room and go, this person probably is susceptible to this, this, this, and this.

00:35:35.900 Yeah. Right. And they do find out what your issues were. I mean, I was like you, Sarah,

00:35:39.920 where I didn't really have that many. I mean, I, thankfully I come from a great family,

00:35:44.060 though. My dad died when I was young, but a very loving family. And I was a strong person,

00:35:48.680 but you can still get sucked in. It, it, it doesn't just happen to weak people. I like,

00:35:54.840 it happens to strong, weak people with issues, people who have almost no issues. It's that's

00:36:00.720 one of the things I hope people take away from your story is absolutely. Yeah. A lot of these

00:36:05.240 women were very strong, very smart, accomplished. And before they knew it, you know, they were on the

00:36:11.760 table without their clothes on saying, it would be my honor if you would do this thing to me.

00:36:16.200 Um, right. So let's, let's push it forward a little. Can we just talk one minute about the

00:36:21.240 Seagram's heirs? Because he, he had strong and powerful and very wealthy backers too. Because

00:36:31.160 that, you know, you wonder like NXIVM wasn't just in Albany. It was in quite a few places here. You're

00:36:35.480 Canadian. Um, he branched out quite a bit and he had some important financial backers. So can you talk

00:36:42.500 about these, this pair of sisters, the Bronfman's? Yeah. Feel that one. I mean, you can chime in when

00:36:50.440 you, as I understand it. Um, cause again, Sarah and I weren't the inner circle, right? So you have

00:36:57.860 to understand we, we, we are observing it from the outside, but what we've gathered and what court

00:37:03.540 documents have gathered is that I think, and this is what we've kind of ascertained is once they came

00:37:10.420 men, they became made that they, the admit powers that be made them special and promoted them very

00:37:16.080 quickly. And then as I, as I understand it, it's like getting a Bezos or a Gates wants to

00:37:22.340 join the organization and help them. Sure.

00:37:24.320 They were VIPs and they were targeted. And I think Claire from my assessment was a little

00:37:31.220 bit, uh, susceptible, more susceptible when she was put in a position of authority and power

00:37:36.140 and kind of ushered to the top where she was making decisions, but really it was Keith making

00:37:40.960 decisions. Um, Sarah less so because I think Sarah, you know, wanted other things. I worked with

00:37:47.020 Sarah a little bit in New York city cause we ran the center there for a little bit. And I just

00:37:51.100 think she constantly struggled with her commitment to the organization. I think she wanted a husband,

00:37:56.420 a family, and that's ultimately what she ended up doing. So she ended up being peripheral

00:37:59.800 ultimately, but her sister was in. Claire was the one who held on to the bitter end. I mean,

00:38:05.860 she was like, yes, we're taking him away. She's still like, no, still till now. Yeah. Yeah. Still

00:38:11.360 now she's in jail and she got the maximum sentence for her crimes. She got tripled the suggested

00:38:18.240 amount because she refused to disavow Keith in court. Incredible. I think I said, but there,

00:38:27.120 this is the heir to the Seagram's liquor fortune and beverage fortune. Yeah. Um, okay. So you guys

00:38:34.120 were, things were kind of rolling along and then something critical happened to you, Sarah, where

00:38:39.000 your, your best friend who we mentioned, who was the daughter of the co-founder Lauren came to you

00:38:46.280 and wanted you to do something that would make you extra special, like sort of an exclusive thing.

00:38:53.220 She wanted to share with you as your best friend and in this lane of female empowerment. Can you

00:38:59.320 explain what happened? Sure. And there's a lot of steps that led to this point. And this is often

00:39:05.060 where people stop and go, sorry, what happened? And I need to give a little backstory, which is,

00:39:10.160 this is, you know, 12 years into the organization. We've had our first child. I'm starting to pull

00:39:15.080 back. I'm starting to recognize. I want other things. And being a mom is more important to me

00:39:19.480 than growing this, this company. And I get invited to a secret sorority. I've never been in a sorority,

00:39:26.460 a secret club for women by women, badass sounds so dumb now, badass bitch bootcamp, but we're going

00:39:33.340 to work on ourselves and take the tools to a whole new level. Although it's got nothing to do with

00:39:38.280 NXIVM. And I sign up thinking this is going to take everything I've been working on to the next

00:39:45.660 level. Also Lauren invited me and I trust her implicitly. She was also, you know, she's our,

00:39:49.720 our son's godmother married us at our wedding. So, you know, I say, why not? And it's, it was many,

00:39:58.280 many, many steps that occurred from saying yes to that. And then being fully committed to this

00:40:04.200 organization called DOS, which I didn't know what it meant until after the fact.

00:40:12.480 Yeah. I, my body, my, I can feel my body. I haven't talked about this in a while. My

00:40:16.120 body started to go into like a little bit of a trauma response and I'm aware that I have to be

00:40:21.440 careful, but tell me what, what can I tell you about it? Oh, I'm sorry. I, I can see it. And I,

00:40:28.020 I know people who have been through like really traumatic things, this can happen. It can have a

00:40:32.260 physical effect just to speak about it. Um, so I can help fill in some of the blanks. Oh,

00:40:38.780 I can see you're getting upset. I'm sorry. I know. It's okay. I, I thought it, I thought it was,

00:40:44.300 it's been seven years. I thought it was past it, but it's just been a while to, to revisit it.

00:40:49.980 Well, it's deeply traumatizing because it's this organization to which you've devoted your life,

00:40:55.140 your best friend, a person you trusted, a person you thought loved you,

00:41:00.020 who asked you to do this extraordinary thing and manipulated you into doing it.

00:41:07.220 So I, why don't we run a clip from, um, the vow from HBO is the vows in which, um, this explains,

00:41:15.380 she came to you with a proposal that you be her slave quote slave. She would be your master.

00:41:21.800 And here's a little detail on how that was supposed to work.

00:41:25.180 Okay. It's like a heightened level of a coaching relationship, which makes sense that she goes

00:41:31.400 into, and we call it master slave. So what I knew about this point is that Lauren had sisters. She

00:41:39.820 was part of a pod. I knew there were other sisters under Lauren. She said, one day you'll have

00:41:47.200 slaves and you'll have six slaves and then you'll be a grandmaster. And I'm like, no, keep in mind,

00:41:55.020 every step along the way is totally weird. Just like sashes are weird, but then Lauren explains it.

00:42:00.660 And it's like a little less weird.

00:42:05.900 And I think we should tell the audience about collateral before we talk about what,

00:42:10.000 what happened next, because this was an important piece of the story. Can you explain what

00:42:14.540 collateral meant within Nexium or within DOS? Sure. So even before DOS was introduced,

00:42:20.700 there was this term called collateral and brilliantly Keith set this up for years before

00:42:28.120 this ever happened. I mean, think about if I joined in 2005 and they would have told me that 12 years

00:42:33.660 later, I would have the leaders initials on my body. I probably would have run for the Hills,

00:42:38.380 but it didn't happen that, that way. And I would say in around 2010, 11 is when collateral got

00:42:45.400 introduced. And it was, it was earlier. It was much earlier than this was 2017 that I got branded.

00:42:50.800 And, um, collateral was basically a term that, well, it's a term in the English language, but Nexium,

00:42:58.320 it was something that you'd put down as a commitment against your word. Is that same?

00:43:03.200 Yeah. Yeah. Like if you were going to do a goal around weight loss or writing a screenplay, you'd

00:43:08.980 say, if I don't do X, Y, and Z, I'm putting this $500 down and it's going to go. Yeah. I'm going to

00:43:14.440 go to charity or something, or I'm going to donate it to the center or I'm going to whatever. And that

00:43:19.220 was also mixed with penance, which I think if anyone's religious, I would not religious. I didn't

00:43:23.960 understand the term or have any background to it, but penance was a part of it as well. People were

00:43:28.400 doing penances and putting down collaterals against their word. And in Nexium, your word,

00:43:35.520 your commitment, your integrity, it was one of the highest values, which may not make sense to the

00:43:42.880 average listener, but there's just certain components of the belief system that was slowly

00:43:48.800 infiltrated into our belief system over time that was of the utmost value. And one of those things was

00:43:54.780 commitment, your word. Um, and so it was very normal to, to give collateral, to back something

00:44:00.560 up. And then it went next level in, in DOS, as I understand it, where they didn't want you to just

00:44:08.100 give $500. They wanted something much more personal and potentially damaging. Yeah. And every step along

00:44:16.520 the way with DOS, there was more and more collateral. And then once I would finally fully committed,

00:44:21.300 I found out that there was going to be collateral collected every month. So people were giving

00:44:26.480 things like nude photos, um, like sexual videos, um, false testimonies, false accusations of like the

00:44:35.280 worst possible thing you could say against your parents that your master would hold. So that if you

00:44:40.360 ever defected or left the group, that those things would be released. Those letters would be released.

00:44:45.660 One person I think that wrote that their parents had molested them, um, or that, uh, there was a

00:44:51.460 lawyer involved who said that she had falsified evidence of a trial that would have gotten her

00:44:54.860 disbarred. Terrible, terrible things. But these things were meant, we were told to keep, help you keep

00:45:01.600 your word never to be released. Otherwise that'd be blackmail, which is what it was. That's the

00:45:07.300 appropriate word. Yeah. Speaking of Scientology. Yeah, exactly. And when, when we, just to jump to

00:45:14.160 later, did deprogramming and watching going clear and all the Scientology content, I was

00:45:18.500 just blown away by the similarities there, the collection of all the secrets, which also

00:45:24.340 happened in NXIVM even before DOS was introduced. When you, when you came to do a training, you'd

00:45:29.280 write down on the intake form, like what your goals were, why you were there. What was your worst moment

00:45:33.820 ever in your life? What was your worst decision? I mean, depending on bad things you may or may not

00:45:39.000 have done in your life, those, those things in the wrong hands, a hundred percent be blackmail.

00:45:44.680 So scary. This is their strategy. Yeah. Very scary.

00:45:49.560 So your best friend, Lauren asks you to engage in this ceremony where you're going to take off

00:45:57.600 your clothes. And first of all, that must've been like, you know, women will change in front of each

00:46:02.600 other or going out or like, you don't ask your friend to get naked in front of you. So was that,

00:46:06.840 do you remember having a big reaction to that moment?

00:46:11.900 Yeah. So when she invited me to DOS originally, what she told me was that I was going to be having

00:46:16.580 a special, very special ceremony with my other sisters who hadn't met yet in the sorority,

00:46:21.780 you know, initiation. She didn't say anything about being naked. She said, we were going to get

00:46:25.600 a matching tattoo that was really pretty. And she showed me the location on her body and told me it

00:46:31.520 was dime size. That's what she told me on the night of is when she asked me to, to get naked and put a

00:46:38.660 blindfold on. And it's just like, you know, even, even now to this day, it's, it's difficult talking

00:46:45.200 about it, obviously, but explaining why somebody would say yes to that. And ironically, recently,

00:46:50.940 just talking to somebody who was in a fraternity, I've heard my story. I was like, Oh, I get it.

00:46:55.160 Like when I was in a fraternity, like we're sort of agreeing to like, this is a game and like,

00:46:59.160 you're, you know, you're above me and I'm going to let you paddle me. And like, okay,

00:47:02.040 but as part of the, you know, we're just in a fraternity. You're not really my master. You're

00:47:05.240 not really, I'm not really your slave. And that's always how I felt about it. So when she asked me

00:47:09.580 to do that, it was kind of like, okay, okay, we're doing this. All right. Like, and I, you know,

00:47:15.180 I knew Lauren well, I had been, um, you know, I changed in front of her and like laid down naked and

00:47:20.880 like, it's just, it's crazy. It's, I understand how crazy it is. And, um, you know, it's,

00:47:28.320 it's hard to, it's hard to explain 12 years of indoctrination to lead one to this point,

00:47:34.080 to understand what could be going on in my psychology that I would say, okay. And not

00:47:39.500 like, this is fucking weird. And like call Nippy to come pick me up. Cause he dropped me off to have

00:47:43.500 what he thought was soup and salad girls night or something. Right.

00:47:47.520 Oh boy. You guys, you guys are married at this point, right? You're, you're married.

00:47:50.900 We were married.

00:47:51.960 With a two year old.

00:47:54.120 He was three. Oh yeah. Almost three.

00:47:56.260 Turned three, five days after we blew it up.

00:47:58.780 I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly show on Sirius XM. It's your home for open,

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00:49:02.000 So you, I mean, I mean, this is just like you, you know, you did absolutely nothing wrong. What

00:49:08.020 your decisions are completely understandable given the context. And she was the villain here.

00:49:12.180 And so she, so now she reveals it's not a tattoo. It's a brand. And that too was misrepresented.

00:49:20.280 Like, what am I getting branded on me? Like what, and she did not, what did she tell you it was?

00:49:26.500 She told, so at this point I'm with all my sisters. So there was four other women and Lauren and then

00:49:33.160 the doctor, I say that loosely, um, who was branding. Yeah. Um, and she showed all of us and she said it was

00:49:40.880 a symbol for the elements and it was, I still can't remember if she said Greek or Latin or something,

00:49:45.740 but it was another language symbolically and also looked like the elements, like a symbol for water

00:49:50.400 and air and earth and whatnot. So it was, it was a symbol. And, but what we were told it meant

00:49:54.880 overall is it was a commitment to our growth, which is where the, the indoctrination leading up to this

00:50:00.780 moment kicks in because not only am I committed to this group and I'm committed to Lauren and I'm

00:50:06.420 committed to my growth, but I have also learned through the many, many years of programs and

00:50:12.700 workshops that I've taken that no pain, no gain. And there's all these other correlations that I

00:50:17.660 don't believe anymore, that pain is love and love is pain. And you have to experience pain to grow and

00:50:23.520 to love and all these other, you know, word salad bullshit meanings that were part of our belief system.

00:50:29.280 And then in addition to that, we have the female male training that we'd been learning that women,

00:50:36.500 and this is Keith's misogynist beliefs around women is that the, you know, we are always looking

00:50:41.100 for the back door. We lack commitment. We're too feelings driven and we don't have any honor or

00:50:46.680 character. And this is my opportunity to prove that I'm not that way. So even when I'm like literally

00:50:52.400 looking for the back door in this little complex, this duplex that I later found out belonged to

00:50:58.960 Allison, I'm in my head, I'm gaslighting myself and saying, you know, this is what women do. You

00:51:04.940 can't back out now. You said you were going to do it and you got to do it. Just fucking do it.

00:51:08.360 Just get on the table and do it and prove that you can do it. And, and I did it. And I did probably

00:51:13.300 one of the most difficult physical things I've, I've ever done other than childbirth to be

00:51:19.620 branded with a clatterizing iron in a ceremony that took somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes

00:51:25.660 without anesthetic. And that is something that I was only able to do because I completely

00:51:31.760 disassociated. I didn't know that at the time, but I was thinking about love of my family,

00:51:36.240 love of my son, getting through childbirth, knowing that I could do that. I could do it again. And I'd

00:51:40.480 also seen what happened to the other women who went before me. It looked like torture. And I was

00:51:44.540 determined to, to be strong and, and prove to everybody that I could do it because I'm

00:51:49.880 strong fucking woman and I'm a badass and I'm going to be part of this group. And that's what

00:51:53.700 it takes to be part of the group. Yeah. And so I did it. Why did it take 30 to 40 minutes?

00:52:01.600 Because, um, she would do a line and then stop and then Lauren would recite something and I would

00:52:09.020 repeat it back. Um, it may have been, it may have been less. So one of the reasons why I was not a

00:52:14.400 witness in the trial because branding, I thought it was just one brand. So it was repeated branding.

00:52:21.440 And in other words, burning of your skin. I thought it was just one mark, you know, that

00:52:25.400 it was like, imagine a clatterizing iron has a tip, like a pen and every, it basically slices through

00:52:35.360 your flesh in a, in a line. So you'd be like, like, so the, every line that you see in that

00:52:41.000 diagram was done individually. And some of the lines took longer than others. And that's why I

00:52:46.420 was determined, um, to do it quickly because I wanted to be over with. So it may have, it may

00:52:51.420 have been less for me, maybe 25 minutes or so. I know some of the women took almost an hour because

00:52:56.800 they had to stop and like gather their wits to keep going. So you weren't the only one getting

00:53:03.420 branded that night. I was the third of the fourth. I recall. Wow. That's kind of worse

00:53:12.160 in a way, you know, it's like, I'd rather be first, I guess. So you don't hear the shrieks

00:53:16.440 before you. Yeah. I, I honestly don't remember that much about the night, but I, I remember

00:53:23.100 looking at one of the women that I was branded with. And at first we were wearing surgical

00:53:26.780 masks, um, because of the smell. And I remember looking, seeing her eyes like over the top of

00:53:32.240 the mask and just, and like, just pure terror in both of our eyes of like what in the actual fuck.

00:53:37.140 And then we just went for it. And yeah, you know, I, I, I do remember like, you know,

00:53:45.240 making light of it and trying to, you know, muscle through it with humor and completely

00:53:50.400 disassociated. Um, later I got to see the video because there was a trial against the doctor.

00:53:56.800 And, um, I mean, that was horrific also that that even still existed and that was kept,

00:54:03.920 which was also for the video of her branding you. I had to watch it for the trial. Whoa.

00:54:11.880 Whoa. Yeah. And I'm by the way was the only woman in DOS that would speak to that because they were

00:54:18.540 still, um, either too afraid to speak or still loyal to Keith and had believed that it was,

00:54:24.840 you know, a good thing to do. What was this lunatic doctor saying? How was she defending

00:54:31.820 her branding of you? Um, there actually, there's, there's some, she went on, was it 2020

00:54:39.240 with Nikki? She went on Dateline, um, to defend herself, uh, and is still loyal to Keith,

00:54:46.080 even though she's had her doctor's license taken away. Um, and would be, I, you know,

00:54:54.220 I I'd let it go and forgive her. Um, and it would have had a very different approach. Had she just

00:54:59.800 been like, Hey, that was a major fuck up on my part. But she, even to the day, to the end,

00:55:05.540 so now says that we, um, we committed to this thing, knowing that we wouldn't know the details.

00:55:12.200 She branded me knowing that the symbol was not what we said it was. And by the way,

00:55:17.300 that it's that evening itself is not what woke me up. It was finding out that it was Keith's

00:55:21.620 initials in the monogram. And there's proof that she, sorry. That's the big reveal about this,

00:55:30.940 right? Yeah. It wasn't a symbol of the elements at all. It was the initials KR for him. You'd been

00:55:38.120 branded with another man's initials. Yes. That's, that's my body. That's like one or two days after

00:55:44.440 the, uh, branding and that's us inside. I can see so clearly now just for the listening audience,

00:55:50.360 it's a K capital K on its side. So the straight line is at top at the top. And then the R is in

00:55:57.340 reverse inside the lower triangle. You can see it. If you zoom out, it's, it's clearly KR. So we

00:56:05.020 actually have a, we have a bit from the vow of you confronting Lauren, your best friend on the fact

00:56:11.320 that this is not the elements. This is Keith Raniere's initials. Uh, and here's that in top

00:56:17.660 five. I didn't make the brand. Okay. Yeah. I know you didn't make the brand. And now I just looked at

00:56:23.920 it from the side and it says KR. I have Keith's initials beside my vagina. Do you think Nippy's

00:56:30.180 ever going to want to go down there again? I mean, is Keith behind us? Is Keith the one who

00:56:37.620 organized this? It's not something that we discussed, Sarah. And it's not Lauren. It's a

00:56:44.780 relevant. Lauren started by a bunch of women and they got permission from Keith to use some of the

00:56:50.680 tools. He gave them permission to use collateral and penance. Okay. But he didn't know about the

00:56:56.060 branding. He knew about it, but he didn't cause it. And he didn't create the brand. The girl did.

00:57:04.320 Oh my God. I haven't seen this in a while. It's so absurd. What's that bringing up?

00:57:11.020 I mean, so what's not in the vow that it's not too super clear is that I knew more than I let Lauren

00:57:17.220 know that I know, if that makes sense. So I was trying to figure out what she was going to.

00:57:21.940 So like something had switched for you. Yes. Like I was more out than she knew. And so to hear it,

00:57:28.160 to, to hear me ask her straight up and to hear her pause and not answer me is just,

00:57:33.640 I just like my, my whole body is shaking. Just remembering that time period, those two weeks

00:57:40.840 where I, we, you know, we were out. We had figured out the Keith's initials were my body. We'd spoken to

00:57:47.720 Mark Vicente, the man who originally introduced me. We had shared what we knew. I knew about the

00:57:52.540 branding. He had heard all this stuff about the sex. We're putting it all together. And we were

00:57:56.220 like, Holy fuck. Like our worlds had just got flipped upside down, but we knew that we couldn't

00:58:02.200 just, you know, go to them and, and be like, you're a cult and you're a sociopath and you're a sex

00:58:07.900 trafficker. We had to play our cards, right? Because otherwise they were going to turn on us because

00:58:11.600 we'd seen them turn on people who defected. So we had to kind of figure out a strategy where we were

00:58:16.940 like, wait, what's going on. That's why when I'm hearing it, do you remember? It was like it, we

00:58:23.040 were, we were kind of double agents. We were like, wait, his initials are on my body. And do we know

00:58:27.620 about like, does he know about this? I knew he knew about the branding because I already figured that

00:58:32.640 out from a number of other, like we'd put things together. So I had to pretend to be kind of like

00:58:37.600 talking. Yes. Yeah. We all started talking. So, so yeah. You came home from the branding

00:58:44.280 and saw Nippy for the first time and Nippy, you like what described that moment when you find out

00:58:51.240 Sarah has been branded. So I was actually asleep with our son when she got home. Well, that's,

00:58:57.060 that's the night that I came home. But then, but six weeks later is when I found out I was in New

00:59:03.240 York city. She was in Vancouver and I got a phone call and she told me about it. And I was

00:59:09.700 driving with a friend of mine. There's no longer a friend. And she told me and my initial reaction

00:59:20.380 was, wait, what? Like I didn't, I didn't Mark tell you first. Mark told me first. Yeah. Mark told

00:59:25.760 him that she'd been branded or that it was Keith's initials. That she'd been branded with Keith.

00:59:31.120 He hadn't seen it yet. I hadn't seen it yet. And there was a part of me that was like,

00:59:36.260 there's gotta be more to the story. Right. And then I was like, okay, my wife potentially

00:59:42.080 got physically hurt here. Like I'm piecing it all together. And then it dawned on me,

00:59:48.840 we might be in the grips of something diabolical here and we need to get out and I need to get my

00:59:55.520 family out as quickly as possible from this. And Mark wasn't sure if I was going to be all in or

01:00:02.480 whatever, because you know, everyone had their doubts. Right. And they didn't think Keith was

01:00:06.440 going to be this and you have to admit to yourself, but it didn't, it was by the end of the conversation.

01:00:12.680 I was like, okay, how are we going to blow this up? And I was pissed obviously. And I had to,

01:00:18.800 you know, reconcile all the primordial reactions to having your wife physically hurt. I didn't know

01:00:26.120 that me being around Keith would have been smart because I don't know really what I would have done

01:00:31.960 had I had to confront him. Um, and we made a lot of really good decisions in a short amount of time

01:00:40.940 to blow this up. Um, but a lot of that is documented in the vow. It's very, it's very powerful

01:00:46.360 to see you all working behind the scenes. That was a gift to us all for you guys to start taping

01:00:51.540 and filming. And Mark, Mark was a videographer, right? Wasn't he? Yeah, he was the one who

01:00:57.900 filmed all this stuff that hung him. Yeah. Well, he, he was a filmmaker before he got into NXIVM and

01:01:04.260 then he was kind of hired internally to document everything because Keith wanted a library of his genius

01:01:09.020 to live on. And Mark was incredibly skilled DP and trained a bunch of people in NXIVM to film every

01:01:16.160 waking moment and sleeping moment sometimes of Keith and all the trainings and all his,

01:01:20.980 all his wisdom. So as soon as shit went sideways, uh, we just continued to film. So yeah, we didn't

01:01:29.540 know this was going to be an HBO series. We just knew if anything, we were filming things to protect

01:01:35.360 ourselves. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of how we thought about it at the time. We thought,

01:01:38.500 okay, look, we didn't do anything wrong here. The perpetrator is Keith Raniere, but we know that

01:01:43.520 they're going to come after us, start making stuff up about us, start gaslighting us, saying victimize

01:01:48.740 themselves to us. So we need to, which they did, which they did, which they tried. I mean,

01:01:53.480 Claire came to Vancouver to try to get me arrested. She flew to Vancouver to speak to the Vancouver

01:01:59.280 police and Bronfman and made up a bunch of things. I, I, I stole from them, uh, it was theft, mischief

01:02:06.960 and, um, fraud and all of those things. I think, you know, I had to hire a criminal defense lawyer.

01:02:13.460 I, you know, it was a very bad, stressful time. Some of my friends that, you know, ultimately,

01:02:18.340 ultimately people saw the truth that were, that were loyal to time. They called me and they were like,

01:02:22.260 yeah, she came to me and she said, okay, give me the dirt on Nippy and Sarah that you have.

01:02:27.260 And he's like, I don't have any. Like what? Like what have we been doing?

01:02:32.100 Yeah. That they were in an existential crisis that, you know, NXIVM and its fate hung in the

01:02:38.160 balance. Uh, we created a lot of problems for them that Keith knew that it was his initials that

01:02:43.960 were being used in the brand. There was evidence of that submitted during his 2019 trial. This clip

01:02:50.960 we're going to play here is via USA today. And it's, it's Keith and the actress, Alison Mack,

01:02:56.680 who we've mentioned a couple of times here. She was the start, one of the stars of the show

01:03:00.040 Smallville and was a critical part of all this, including DOS and the branding and so on. And

01:03:04.820 then my master of quote slaves and his sort of right hand person. Uh, and here's the two of them

01:03:11.900 on tape discussing the brand. You think the person who's being branded should be completely

01:03:20.600 nude and sort of held to the table, like a sort of almost like a sacrifice. I don't know if

01:03:26.880 that, that's a feeling of submission, you know, videoing it, uh, from different angles or whatever

01:03:37.500 gives collateral. So probably it should be a more vulnerable position type of a thing back

01:03:46.680 leg slightly for a leg spread straight, like being feet being held to the side of the table

01:03:51.920 and probably above the head being held almost like tied down, like a sacrificial, whatever.

01:03:57.700 And the person should ask to be branded

01:03:59.820 should say, please brand me. It would be an honor or something like that.

01:04:06.760 Not an honor. I want to wear for the rest of my life.

01:04:09.500 Right. And they, they did make say something like that, something along the lines of honor.

01:04:20.780 Master, would you brand me? It'd be an honor, which is basically him proving in his mind that

01:04:26.260 we asked for it, that it was a consensual thing.

01:04:28.480 Oh, that must be so galling to listen to.

01:04:33.620 Horrific. And also vindicating because he's in jail until he's in jail. And to that point,

01:04:38.480 there were still people saying who were defending him. He had nothing to do with the branding. This

01:04:43.220 is a bunch of women who made some bad decisions and they shouldn't have done it. And Keith's nothing

01:04:48.320 to do with the branding. And now there's video or audio evidence of not only that he knew about it,

01:04:54.400 but he came up with the idea of how to do it and pass it off to Alison so that she would take the

01:04:59.960 fall. So it's, it's triply, not, there's no word, uh, astonishing, horrific.

01:05:07.840 Well, you get the, you get the peek inside of a guy who's just diabolical. I mean,

01:05:12.460 but you know what, you know what we're missing? And like, I want to address that portion of the

01:05:16.140 audience. That's like, well, that was, that was not a great decision, but you made it, you know,

01:05:20.520 you accepted this brand. It went well beyond, that's not why he's in jail right now.

01:05:24.400 It's, it was a sex trafficking scheme. I mean, he was having young women who he was brainwashing

01:05:32.040 into starving themselves nearly to death and during this so-called sisterhood, which was

01:05:37.420 really a sex cult meant to service him. You weren't one of those, Sarah, right? That was,

01:05:42.820 but many other women were basically being groomed. I mean, not basically they were being groomed to be

01:05:49.660 Keith Ranieri's sex slave. Yep. And that's the thing when people say you chose it, you could have

01:05:55.340 laughed, whatever. It's really important to understand in my mind, I've committed to this

01:05:59.580 game, like in a fraternity or sorority where someone's telling me what to do. And I'm saying

01:06:04.220 yes, because that's the commitment. A vow of obedience is what I've done. I think this is an

01:06:09.520 exercise. And one of my exercises is to get this brand. So I do it. Other women had other things.

01:06:15.240 And so the collateral, this is a key point. It's like a gun to the head. If you don't do the

01:06:19.840 things, your collateral is going to be released. So that's not really a choice in the cult space.

01:06:25.280 They call it a bound, a bounded choice, a bounded, sorry, bounded choice, a bounded choice where like

01:06:32.120 there, there, there's no, actually no way out. You, you have to do the thing. Yes. So the other

01:06:38.700 women had assignments like, you know, go seduce Keith. India talked about that in, in her story,

01:06:44.620 that that was her assignment and other women had to do other things with Keith. And that was their

01:06:50.220 assignment. And that's what they committed to. And they went along with it as well, because

01:06:54.120 what are you going to do? You're going to lose everything and also admit, Hey, I just made a

01:06:58.380 really bad decision, which is one of the components of it that keeps people kind of,

01:07:03.180 you know, doubling down the, um, India Oxenberg story. She's Catherine's daughter. They joined

01:07:12.620 this again. Catherine has such guilt over this because she thought she was bringing her daughter

01:07:17.340 to a self-help program to help her learn business skills and did not foresee what was going to happen

01:07:24.120 shortly into it. Catherine recognized this is not for me. I, I don't know. I'm out,

01:07:29.440 but India was getting something out of the lessons and stayed. And before Catherine knew it, India

01:07:36.760 was completely untethered from her, was being intentionally separated from her, her loving

01:07:42.640 mother. And Catherine knew she's gone. And I, now it's turned from like, it's turned into a rescue

01:07:51.560 operation and it was doing everything within her power to try to get India back. But India at this

01:07:57.180 point is brainwashed and the mere threat of like, I'm going to take you out. You need to get out.

01:08:03.280 Keith is a threat would otherwise Catherine even more. I mean, that the person who's inside the cult

01:08:08.380 is like, Oh hell no. And Catherine spoke to me in her first interview about this before India had

01:08:16.800 got, got been, you know, pulled out before Keith had been arrested and India. I mean, Catherine is a

01:08:23.200 very well-known Hollywood actor and going to the media was truly her last resort. Here's a little

01:08:31.180 bit of that interview from, um, early or it was early. It was late 2017.

01:08:37.040 The program that seduces people to abandon their lives, to serve their agenda rather than empowering

01:08:43.960 your preexisting life. There's something off about that. So I watched her get sucked in.

01:08:48.520 And I, the more I learned because defectors came and told me about their experiences, the more

01:08:53.240 concerned I became. And I realized that I did, well, I did an intervention with her at the end

01:08:58.880 of May and I failed. This is my last resort going to the media. My daughter is very, very angry with

01:09:04.440 me right now. And she has every right to be angry with me because I would hate my mom if my mom came

01:09:10.560 out and publicly exposed her in this way, exposed me, but I love her to the end of the world. And I

01:09:17.780 I'm only doing this to bring awareness because without awareness, there can be no outrage.

01:09:22.620 And unless there's outrage, the authorities are not going to step in and do what they should do,

01:09:26.540 which is shut this down. Oh, what's your reaction to seeing that Sarah?

01:09:32.080 I remember that interview. I was so grateful. I don't know if you remember, but I was,

01:09:36.420 your team had asked me to be there and I wasn't emotionally strong enough to do live TV. I just

01:09:44.000 didn't think I could handle it. But I was so grateful that Catherine had the strength to speak

01:09:49.040 when we couldn't and brings back a lot of memories of a time when, you know, we were all just throwing

01:09:55.240 our punches and that media punch and, you know, Catherine's role in the takedown was, was really

01:10:01.520 important. We all had a very different role. Me with showing the physical abuse and, um,

01:10:08.400 Mark Vicente and Bonnie and Catherine, like Nippy, like there was, there wasn't many of us that were

01:10:13.080 willing to talk. People before us too. Yeah. And people before us who tried and in 2009, like it

01:10:18.180 just, like, this was a fight that took so much of our life force, you know, our life force in it

01:10:24.400 and resources and then afterwards and watching it, it's just, just brings back a lot of memories of a

01:10:30.920 very stressful time because we didn't know what was going to happen in the trial. We didn't know if

01:10:35.460 Keith was going to be convicted or not. Even now to this day, he's still appealing to, you know, a couple

01:10:41.140 this week found out his third or fourth appeal was denied. He's still trying. Like it's, it's an ongoing

01:10:46.880 stressor and that seeing that video is, um, yeah, it's a reminder of what, what we've been through

01:10:54.820 and, and, um, also so happy. Let me tell you something petty about me. You just said that you

01:11:03.080 didn't accept our invitation to come on because you were not ready for live, which makes absolutely

01:11:07.400 perfect sense. I remember at the time, cause I really wanted you, your story was amazing. And we

01:11:13.060 were really covering this case aggressively. And honestly, I was so disappointed. And I remember

01:11:18.420 thinking she doesn't want to come on because I was with Fox. Oh no, no, no, you know, we make up

01:11:23.900 these stories in our heads, right? I mean, I'm just sitting here. Well, I mean, that's the time we're

01:11:28.780 in too, right? Yeah. Oh, I'm so glad that we, we've cleared up this. I know this day now.

01:11:35.960 No, I, I, I had, I had, I just tell it because I bet there's a million women out there and guys

01:11:40.460 who tell themselves stories about, Oh, it's something about me. There's something wrong

01:11:44.260 with me. What I did, why I didn't get this thing or why I didn't get invited to this thing. Or this

01:11:48.440 person didn't say yes to my invitation. We make up the worst stories about ourselves. Like there's

01:11:52.720 something wrong with me. I'm, I'm branded too, right? I'm branded in a way. And then you, you know,

01:11:58.360 you talk to the person, you find out I'm a fucking idiot. Why do I do this to myself?

01:12:04.480 I love that you share that. And I love that I got to, to tell you because it's, you know,

01:12:09.280 it's been a long time, a long time coming. And I've been so grateful for your activism around

01:12:15.500 it because it was such a, that interview was such a, um, an extra punch in an already, um,

01:12:22.480 very, we, we just, we just didn't know what was going to happen. And that was,

01:12:24.920 that really helped us. So thank you.

01:12:27.420 Because the authorities weren't doing anything. They weren't doing anything.

01:12:30.080 No, no, no. I mean, they did.

01:12:32.920 For the record, I show Sarah clips of, of Meg and Kelly on, off Twitter. I go, see, she gets it.

01:12:38.280 Oh yeah. You get it. We, we, we, we, we, we know you get it. Yeah. Oh, thank you.

01:12:45.320 Especially the culty shit everywhere right now. Oh, I mean, it's terrifying. And the more vulnerable

01:12:50.860 people are post COVID and in our weird world where we don't know who to trust and the media

01:12:55.240 has fallen apart, uh, even more so. So finally the police, the FBI, they, they do get involved.

01:13:01.900 It took all of you, all the names you just mentioned, Catherine, all of you. And by the way,

01:13:07.100 I should mention before I forget India, thank God finally saw the light, got out and did her own

01:13:13.780 documentary that she did on her own terms. Um, and so I was very happy for her and for,

01:13:19.280 for Catherine too. I mean, that story individually is just about a mother's incredible love for her

01:13:23.980 child and what a mother will do, but she's in this about to all of you are there working,

01:13:28.740 as you say, your own pieces of it. Everybody had a different sort of gift and a risk to take.

01:13:32.980 And ultimately he does, he does get brought down. He gets arrested in Mexico and still the top

01:13:41.640 echelon of the women are like running after the cars. They take them away. They just were

01:13:47.920 completely brainwashed that he, he was some sort of Messiah. He was genuinely important to them.

01:13:54.160 Yeah. It was nuts. And did you ever think that there actually would be a trial or that he'd kill

01:14:01.060 himself or flee again, or somehow find a way to manipulate the system? Cause he's very good

01:14:06.180 manipulator to get the charges dropped. Well, narcissists don't kill themselves.

01:14:12.200 That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. I, I did think that he would, that he was a flight

01:14:19.140 risk there. You know, Claire owned this Island in Fiji. And, um, I did, we, I just really did think

01:14:25.980 that he would get away with it somehow, even with the, every appeal. I'm like, Oh my goodness,

01:14:29.780 we're going to, are we going back to square one? He is so manipulative. He's so conniving. He's such

01:14:35.100 a sociopath. Will he get out of it? I mean, there, there was a point where I remember thinking,

01:14:42.840 shit, this is going to be the next five to 10 years of our life with Claire Bronfman, just filing suits

01:14:49.380 against us, bankrupting us, you know, cause that's what she had done. That's what she did. Very

01:14:52.940 litigious on his behalf. Sorry. Keep going Nippy. Yeah. And I just remember thinking, shit, this is

01:14:58.060 not good. And then I remember thinking about my kids, you know, when my, my one son at the time was

01:15:02.840 like, his childhood is going to have this going on until he's nine or 10. And I just remember

01:15:09.080 thinking like, and then once the New York times article came out, I felt, I didn't feel entirely

01:15:18.000 safe, but I felt safer because I knew they had other problems and Sarah and Nippy weren't, you

01:15:24.480 know, enemy number one. We were, cause they had to put out a lot more fires because a lot

01:15:29.820 more people were speaking and a lot of other problems were happening and they took their

01:15:33.200 guns off us. I didn't know. I didn't know that we were in the clear and the way the FBI and

01:15:38.420 the way this thing happened and how quickly it happened, he was arrested in March of 18 and he

01:15:44.180 was tried and convicted by June of 19. So in under two years, really this whole thing happened

01:15:49.860 and he was sentenced to 120 years. And? Oh, and five years probation.

01:15:56.960 That's my favorite part of it. Um, and what, can you explain what, for what was he convicted? What

01:16:03.660 did, what did the, uh, there were seven counts. I don't know. I think it was, uh, a wire fraud,

01:16:09.200 sex trafficking, um, conspiracy to commit. Um, oh man, it's been a while since I've recited

01:16:16.620 these labor Rico. There were Rico acts. The manipulation of the young women into becoming

01:16:23.840 like his sex cult. Yes. Yeah. They didn't use it. I think it's important to mention Moira

01:16:31.600 Penza cause she read the article and it wasn't tried in the, um, Northern district. It was

01:16:37.960 tried in the Southern district, right? Eastern, Eastern district. Would Eastern, would JFK be

01:16:43.080 Eastern district? Where's the, where's the Portland? Yes. Yes. JFK airport. So that'd be the

01:16:48.240 Eastern district because that's where the sex trafficking happened at a JFK airport technically.

01:16:51.840 So that became their, their jurisdiction. So she was able to, to try the case because originally

01:16:57.600 we went to the Northern district and they were like, well, you agree to it. And then they were

01:17:01.440 like, cool story. Thanks. And there's a whole case there. Then the corruption in that district,

01:17:07.340 it's hard to tell it. It's hard for me to believe that he could have gotten away with the things that

01:17:14.060 he'd gotten away with, with the complaints that have been going on up there without greasing some

01:17:18.580 wheels. I don't know how that works. I'm kind of, again, I'm out of my lane in that, but it just

01:17:22.520 seems to me there was a lot of abuses of power that are going on up there. And if I were to pick

01:17:26.780 somewhere to try and get away with it, I think upstate New York would be kind of a sleepy place

01:17:31.880 where you could just kind of get away with it and no one would be suspect. That's my guess.

01:17:35.780 No, I know. We used to call it what small bony because it's like, it's a small, I think people

01:17:40.760 were shocked that anything like this could happen. And there may have been a measure of embarrassment

01:17:44.260 that it went on for so long, right under everyone's nose. So, you know, you may not be

01:17:51.060 wrong on that. So did you have to testify at the trial?

01:17:55.080 I did not. I was one of the first people to speak with Moira and her team at the FBI and spent two

01:18:02.260 and a half days with my lawyer and just gave them everything I knew. I set the scene, like how the

01:18:07.420 company worked, the stripe path, everything I knew about DOS, all my photos, all my text messages,

01:18:12.720 everything. I think I actually gave them my phone and my computer to mirror and said, have at it.

01:18:17.820 And then that brought in other people and subpoenas and everything. I ended up not having to testify,

01:18:23.800 I believe, because I would have been testifying against Lauren and Lauren in the end turned on Keith.

01:18:30.420 So I didn't need to. I think also I would have been a bad witness because I had done a lot of

01:18:36.600 press at that point. And that would have been something that Mark Ignifolo would have gone in

01:18:43.160 on. Like, isn't it true, Sarah, that you've written a book, you know, that kind of thing.

01:18:47.860 And I was like, yeah, I wrote a book. So I wasn't a good witness at that point. And what had happened

01:18:52.780 to me wasn't even so bad compared to what had happened to other women. So I didn't have to test if I

01:18:58.820 also had a newborn infant and was breastfeeding and I did not want to have to go to Brooklyn and

01:19:04.280 testify and see that motherfucker's face. Did you ever get the chance to like have the

01:19:09.200 come to Jesus moment with Lauren, like friend to friend? No, I wish I had. The closest we've had

01:19:16.500 is she wrote a letter just before her conviction, a very heartfelt apology, which I totally believe

01:19:24.960 she's seems to have completely woken up, takes full responsibility for what she was going for,

01:19:30.640 how she was able to maintain the cognitive dissonance and, you know, basically lied to me to

01:19:36.200 bring it, bring me into this thing. So she could be in Keith's good graces. Her testimony did put the

01:19:41.460 nail in the coffin for Keith. Yeah. Her testimony meant that I didn't have to testify. And yeah, it was

01:19:46.700 the final straw for the prosecution. What specifically do you remember? Like what, what was the crux of what

01:19:50.100 she said that was so damning for him? Oof. Um, I think she laid out his psychology pretty well.

01:19:57.740 Yeah. And, and just how specifically I'd have to go back and look at the transcripts. It's been a while,

01:20:02.700 but I think specifically how he mastermind the whole thing and how it was like that from the beginning,

01:20:08.920 not just with Doss, but this is the world that he created. And that's, um, I don't know legally what

01:20:16.300 it was that, that Ford, like why she was the star witness. Exactly. But, um, she knew all the

01:20:22.860 bodies. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember when we did our NBC primetime

01:20:28.580 special on this, a separate show. Um, we got into, he has this long history of being a pyramid scheme

01:20:34.000 guy, a failed businessman. Like this was not his first fraud or attempted fraud. He'd had actually a

01:20:41.080 couple before this. He was a con man. Yep. A hundred percent. Yep. Yeah. He, he, he'd been

01:20:48.360 caught. And then of course, when we heard about that story, he spun that, that, you know, he was

01:20:53.120 a threat to the government and they had to shut him down. And of course, that's what happens when

01:20:57.060 you teach ethics in the world, you know, he was good at getting, he had a lot of good people advocating

01:21:03.120 for him. So Lauren said that again, jail too. Didn't, didn't she, or she, she got three years

01:21:08.120 probation. Probation. Probation. Yeah. Oh, and just to wrap up. Yeah. Sorry. That overlap that

01:21:15.480 what, what you asked earlier, I, I've been begging my lawyers to be able to have, um, um, you know,

01:21:21.560 heart to heart or zoom or see her, but, um, until there's a civil case still, until that's wrapped up,

01:21:27.100 we're not allowed to communicate, but I hope that one day we will don't know if we'll ever be best

01:21:31.480 friends again, but I, I'd love to just close that chapter with her personally. Please give us a

01:21:36.980 heads up when that's going to happen because we will listen to, and, uh, we'll definitely talk

01:21:41.060 about it here on the show. Um, so she gets probation. Alison Mack, the small veil actress

01:21:46.240 actually got, I think she got, uh, three years in jail. She served two. She's out now. If my math

01:21:52.400 is correct. Yes. Uh, Claire Bronfman got sentenced to actual jail time a year. Did she get a year?

01:21:59.920 She got triple the maximum sentence. She's still in jail. Triple the minimum sentence. She's still in

01:22:04.820 jail. She'll be in jail, I think till 2025. And she just got moved to a halfway house. I think

01:22:10.000 like two, three weeks ago in the Bronx or the queen or Queens far, far way away from Fiji. Um,

01:22:18.980 so there's been actual accountability. There's been actual punishment for those involved. And then Keith

01:22:23.800 in jail for the rest of his life. Plus the probation, as you point out at the end. So where does that

01:22:29.900 leave you guys, right? You, you tamed the tiger. Like you got it. It happened. He, the NXIVM is

01:22:37.020 done. It's been exposed and he's in jail and all of his enablers are in jail. You've come out publicly.

01:22:43.740 The world knows. So what happens to you after that? There's a lot of therapy, a lot of time in

01:22:51.120 nature. Uh, COVID was actually a wonderful heat. It was a blessing for us actually to pause and just go

01:22:58.260 for hikes and make pancakes and be with our family. Sorry. Oh, we have a beautiful family.

01:23:08.080 Um, and we had time to enjoy it. We'd been in the group for so long and then fighting to expose the

01:23:15.640 group for so long. We hadn't actually had a break and that was, um, much need to break.

01:23:20.800 Um, and then, um, the HBO documentary came out in COVID and then our lives blew up again in a very

01:23:28.000 strange and, and also very meaningful way to be, um, to have people reach out to us and, and say,

01:23:34.060 holy shit, I didn't realize I was in a cult or in a, in a course of, or abusive relationship until I

01:23:39.660 saw the vow and like thousands of messages and letters. And, uh, because it was COVID and we'd stopped

01:23:45.700 acting, we decided to start a little podcast, uh, to keep the conversations going.

01:23:51.260 Well, we had someone reach out to us whose birthday it is today. Actually, our, our, our associate

01:23:55.980 producer, Jess Tardy wrote us, uh, an email and said, you guys should do a podcast and laid out

01:24:01.760 a season for us. Call it a little bit culty, call it this. And I was in the inertia of no,

01:24:05.920 I was done having my personal life becoming other people's entertainment. It was kind of my reluctance

01:24:10.720 to be a part of a documentary in the first place. Um, and Sarah was kind of like, well,

01:24:15.500 maybe. And then we spoke to someone else about it. Citizens of sound or ex evangelical Christians

01:24:21.560 also reached out to us. So those two people kind of came together and sort of laid out this path

01:24:26.560 for a podcast. And we, you know, we love talking about it and it was a healing, like another,

01:24:30.900 another, other people that we know needed to go not talk about it. And for us talking about it was

01:24:36.380 very cathartic and helping others see the red flags and heal was our recovery. So that's, that's

01:24:43.760 been our recovery. And, um, I wrote a memoir to that encompasses my time in the book, but now we're

01:24:50.280 working on a, a, a more of a part two of everything we've learned since the podcast, kind of a pay

01:24:56.380 it forward to all the experts who've helped us. And serendipitously, a lot of the, Oh, I'm sorry.

01:25:02.460 So I said again, I was just saying, I'm sure it's going to change like what you, what you've

01:25:06.960 learned and you're going to change. I'm still pretty close to it all. Oh yeah. I mean, that's

01:25:11.600 the thing. When I look back at the memoir, I was like that. I did not, I was still healing. I was

01:25:16.400 only a year out when I decided to write that, which it was in many ways was a draft, a draft of

01:25:21.960 an understanding. I know so much more about cults and coercion and narcissism and gaslighting and

01:25:28.100 all of these things that have become such a huge part of the zeitgeist now, uh, and

01:25:33.120 serendipitously, a lot of friends talk about this and their dating partners. I think this could be

01:25:36.880 helpful. Yeah. Well, we had episodes on that. Go ahead. Nippy. I was going to say, you know,

01:25:43.280 serendipitously, as we've educated ourselves on what goes on in cults, you know, a lot of the

01:25:49.540 parallels that go on there going on, you know, everywhere you look for, you know, whether it be

01:25:54.420 in politics, whether it be, you know, with the vaccine, with all, you know, there's not any real

01:25:59.560 field that's not immune to what these abuses of power look like and sound like. So putting language

01:26:04.740 to it has been, uh, educational and it's also been, you know, a really important, um, journey for us

01:26:13.560 because we're running into it in our day-to-day lives. And, you know, I want my kids to know what

01:26:16.980 this looks like and sounds like, and I want other people to know what it looks like and sounds like.

01:26:20.700 And I think if people are armed with this education, armed with this language, they can walk into

01:26:24.920 situations and point it out in real time. So when you're faced with something like in your situation

01:26:30.100 or other people's situations, they can go, Oh, that's just like this, just like this. And it can

01:26:35.000 at least attempt to have a civil discourse about it. And when the flat red flags come up, they'll know

01:26:39.720 what they're looking at so they can make an informed decision. It's a way of inoculating yourself

01:26:45.300 to be informed and to recognize these warning signs and just know when it comes to you, whether

01:26:50.700 it's in a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a business, an employer, or a real live cult that you may have

01:26:57.740 inadvertently fallen into. Thank you both so much for coming on and telling this story again. I know

01:27:03.860 it wasn't easy, but I really hope you've done some good here too. I know that you have, and I hope

01:27:08.660 you feel okay about it. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Megan. Maybe one day you'll

01:27:14.880 come and tell us your full Fox News story on our podcast. Yeah. I'll come on a little bit culty.

01:27:20.640 Yeah. I've got a couple of folks. Fox News, a little bit culty. Oh, I would die. I'd be happy

01:27:26.400 to. The more I learned, the more I'm like, Oh my God. Yeah. There was no Kool-Aid, but we were one

01:27:32.280 step away. Lots of love. There's a water cooler. That's right. Good luck with it. I'm glad we got to

01:27:39.660 clear up the misunderstanding from six years ago. Oh, there wasn't even a misunderstanding. This is

01:27:45.200 my own deranged thinking. So thank you for helping me learn to be better. See, there you go. Still

01:27:49.880 empowering other women. Wow. What a story. Thanks so much to all of you for joining me today. I want

01:27:56.100 to tell you tomorrow we conclude fraud week with my own story. Yes, I have a story that not only fits

01:28:07.620 the theme of our true crime week, it could have been the centerpiece of it. Arguably it is. I think

01:28:14.320 you're really going to enjoy hearing this. I have never told this story before. And let's just say we

01:28:21.200 went all out for you so that you could experience it in the same way I did. We'll see you then.

01:28:30.280 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

01:28:37.620 Thanks to

01:28:40.860 you.

01:28:45.200 Yeah.

01:28:46.060 You

01:28:46.660 You

01:28:48.780 You

01:28:54.200 Yeah.

The Megyn Kelly Show - June 13, 2024

Fraud Week： Two Former NXIVM Members Speak Out on True Horrors of the Cult...And How They Got Out ｜ Ep. 817

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