Valuetainment - ＂Treated Women As Sex Slaves” - NXIVM’s Shocking Abuse & Trafficking UNCOVERED by Cult Deprogrammer

00:00:00.000 So unlike a seminar, you know, let's take NXIVM.

00:00:04.200 NXIVM was a seminar selling company that did self-help, motivational kind of seminars.

00:00:13.140 People would go off, they'd do a 13, 14-day intensive, they would be assigned a coach,

00:00:19.820 they would go through a training process that was dictated by a manual.

00:00:25.880 And behind all of this was Keith Raniere, who they called Vanguard.

00:00:32.420 What the difference is...

00:00:34.040 This is from NXIVM.

00:00:34.940 Yeah, this is the leader of NXIVM, which really was congregating around Albany, New York.

00:00:43.760 And Raniere would eventually be arrested, tried for sex trafficking, fraud, various things,

00:00:52.100 and now he's in prison for 120 years.

00:00:54.980 But when the people became involved, they had no idea what Raniere's darker intentions

00:01:02.280 were, where he really wanted to take them.

00:01:05.300 They thought it was like other self-help groups, motivational speakers, etc.

00:01:12.200 Where it changed was it became more and more demanding, and it became a complete way of life.

00:01:20.420 In other words, you don't just come here and learn what we have to teach you and then take

00:01:26.540 it home and then use it and goodbye and get on with your life.

00:01:30.940 We become your life.

00:01:33.120 We consume your life.

00:01:35.440 We expect you to move to Albany, New York so that you can be close to Vanguard, Keith Raniere.

00:01:43.620 We want you to recruit people, and if anyone in any way, shape, or form is criticizing what

00:01:51.260 we're teaching, we want you to cut them off, disconnect from them.

00:01:56.600 And so that's very different than a Tony Robbins or some type of motivational speaker.

00:02:03.860 Tony Robbins certainly has his critics, but I don't think anyone would say that he has

00:02:13.360 a compound.

00:02:14.960 People have given up their lives to be with him and live near him and that their life becomes

00:02:21.400 completely controlled by him.

00:02:23.900 Got it.

00:02:25.460 I just found a clip of his most recent thoughts he shared before he went away, sentenced to

00:02:33.320 120 years in prison.

00:02:34.900 Is this it, Rob?

00:02:36.060 Yes.

00:02:36.580 Can you go back to the one you just had?

00:02:38.700 I just want to know how the guy speaks.

00:02:40.060 What's his tone the way he speaks?

00:02:41.440 Can you press play?

00:02:42.760 They called him Vanguard, the founder of NXIVM, a shadowy self-help organization described by federal

00:02:48.780 prosecutors as cult-like.

00:02:50.740 Keith Raniere has not spoken publicly since his arrest more than two years ago.

00:02:55.840 But now, just days from being sentenced on federal charges, he is talking.

00:03:00.340 You know, one of the things that's most important in our country is the justice system.

00:03:05.920 And although, you know, people can hate me and do and think I'm an odious type of a character,

00:03:13.580 you know, awful actually, both the devil and the saint.

00:03:21.320 You should be able to get the exact same treatment under our justice system. 0.96

00:03:25.840 Today, Raniere spoke with, of all people, the man who helped bring him down, web journalist

00:03:31.120 Frank Parlato, a former NXIVM spokesman.

00:03:34.320 Parlato himself has pleaded not guilty to tax and other charges that originated from his

00:03:39.020 NXIVM involvement.

00:03:39.900 You plan all 14 steps ahead.

00:03:42.220 If you have seen the HBO docu-series, The Vow, Parlato's name may ring a bell.

00:03:47.080 Parlato broke the story that a group within NXIVM was treating women as sex slaves and branding

00:03:52.720 them with Raniere's initials.

00:03:54.320 You've got to be kidding me.

00:03:54.920 Raniere was convicted in 2019 of sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and racketeering.

00:04:00.640 Do you intend to make a statement at your sentencing that you are innocent?

00:04:09.060 Yes, I am innocent.

00:04:11.420 And although it is, this is a horrible tragedy.

00:04:15.720 We can pause it right there.

00:04:16.780 You've spent a lot of time with Keith.

00:04:18.940 Oh, yeah.

00:04:19.540 How many hours have you spent with Keith?

00:04:21.140 Many hours.

00:04:22.420 I sat through his deposition.

00:04:24.700 He sued me.

00:04:26.140 Interesting story.

00:04:27.920 Basically, I deprogrammed people that were involved in NXIVM for families.

00:04:33.500 I worked with victims.

00:04:35.640 And I facilitated reports being written by a clinical psychologist and a forensic psychiatrist

00:04:43.880 analyzing the seminar training that Keith Raniere used, which, by the way, he ripped off Scientology.

00:04:51.680 He was really a plagiarist because many of the things that he taught were lifted directly

00:04:58.240 from Scientology.

00:04:59.560 For example, calling people that were critical of NXIVM suppressive people or suppressive persons.

00:05:07.520 SPs.

00:05:08.220 SPs.

00:05:09.080 Urging people to disconnect from SPs.

00:05:14.200 This was right out of Scientology.

00:05:17.180 So Raniere, what he did was he put together something that took a little bit from landmark

00:05:23.920 education and seminar structure.

00:05:26.060 Wow, that was from 40 years ago, 30 years ago.

00:05:28.460 S.

00:05:29.120 Landmark and PSI.

00:05:30.940 And there was a couple programs like that back in the days.

00:05:34.120 And they would call you at the end crying, I'm so sorry what I did to you.

00:05:37.620 And I'm like, why is this person calling me?

00:05:39.200 I'm at this thing called Landmark Forum.

00:05:41.220 And I just really messed up.

00:05:42.740 I should have never said that.

00:05:43.880 Please, you just took me back 30 years, 25 years.

00:05:46.500 So Landmark just recently went bankrupt, but they were ongoing up until very recently.

00:05:52.700 And by the way, they also sued me and lost.

00:05:55.560 But the point is that Raniere was not an original thinker.

00:05:59.760 He cobbled together, and many cult leaders do this.

00:06:03.080 They copy other groups.

00:06:05.080 They may have been in another group before they created their own.

00:06:09.360 And so what you end up with is a composite.

00:06:12.980 Raniere's composite was a little bit landmark, Scientology, Ayn Rand, the philosophy of objectivism,

00:06:21.500 and the multi-level marketing he learned as an Amway distributor.

00:06:25.260 And later he created his own MLM called Consumer Byline, which was sued out of existence by attorney generals of various states.

00:06:35.640 So Raniere was soft-spoken.

00:06:38.640 He seemed like an introvert.

00:06:40.980 He lied about his background.

00:06:43.200 He was a genius.

00:06:44.400 He was a stellar student at university.

00:06:48.460 Let me say he had like a 240 IQ or something like that.

00:06:51.680 You know, he had a 2.26 GPA.

00:06:54.180 The man was an average student.

00:06:56.520 This came out in deposition and sworn testimony.

00:06:59.360 He lied about all that.

00:07:01.320 So what he really was was not a very smart guy because he ended up in prison for 120 years.

00:07:09.080 He could have done a correction along the way and avoided that.

00:07:14.220 Instead, like many cult leaders, he fed on his adulation, and it led to a kind of hubris and arrogance that ultimately meant that he kept escalating his bad behavior, hurting more and more people, thinking he could get away with it forever, and eventually he was held accountable.

00:07:35.920 And I would agree with him.

00:07:37.260 He is odious. 0.94

00:07:38.900 He is a very negative person.

00:07:42.100 But the way he projected himself was as a kind of philosopher king, quiet, soft-spoken, not the brash, charismatic kind of extroverted cult leader that you typically see.

00:07:59.600 But he was able to pull people in, and the people who were pulled in, they went through intensive after intensive after intensive.

00:08:09.700 So by the time the women were branded, and there were quite a few of them that were branded, with a cauterizing iron and no anesthetic, and Keith Ranieri would watch remotely.

00:08:24.660 And these women, they had been through so much by the time that that event occurred that you have to rewind it and understand that this took years of what we would call brainwashing before they reached that point.

00:08:42.520 And in fact, it was a medical doctor, a DO, that eventually lost her license, that did the branding with the cauterizing iron. 0.95

00:08:52.740 And she was that caught up in Ranieri's alternate reality.

00:08:57.020 And, of course, you had the actress, Alison Mack, and she was brought in by another actress, Kristen Kruk, from the series Smallville.

00:09:09.580 And these were successful women who had very good careers and thought that NXIVM would improve their lives.

00:09:17.480 And then I worked with Catherine Oxenberg, who is best known from the series Dynasty in the 80s.

00:09:26.240 And her daughter, India Oxenberg, was also brought into the group.

00:09:31.140 And at that time, Catherine Oxenberg's husband, Caspar Van Diem, also went to some of the training.

00:09:39.040 But eventually, Catherine and Caspar Van Diem would drop out of NXIVM.

00:09:45.460 But the problem was India was still in. 1.00

00:09:50.200 And she would eventually be branded and go through a horrible—

00:09:54.360 She was branded?

00:09:55.220 Yes.

00:09:56.140 And she would go through a horrible process of being separated from her family, turned against her family, you know, incommunicado.

00:10:07.000 And Frank Parlato, by the way, was originally hired by Keith Ranieri as a kind of fixer and PR guy.

00:10:13.820 I think, as I recall, part of what his job was was to deal with me.

00:10:20.960 And let me backtrack and say that there were these two doctors, a clinical psychologist, a forensic psychiatrist who wrote three reports about NXIVM that were withering in their analysis.

00:10:34.160 I put that online and published it.

00:10:38.480 That is why Ranieri sued me.

00:10:40.820 He wanted to shut down any kind of discussion of his training online.

00:10:47.280 He wanted me to remove those reports.

00:10:50.220 And I refused to do that.

00:10:52.440 And he sued me for 14 years.

00:10:55.800 And eventually, that suit was dismissed.

00:10:59.180 And then subsequently, he was arrested.

00:11:01.380 In fact, I testified at his trial.

00:11:04.520 You testified at his trial?

00:11:05.840 Yes, I did.

00:11:06.200 Have you had a one-on-one conversation with him?

00:11:07.960 Oh, yes.

00:11:08.660 You know, we went through what's called court-ordered mediation.

00:11:12.280 The lawsuit was in federal court.

00:11:14.040 And the federal judge ordered that we get together and try to negotiate a settlement.

00:11:20.780 And I'm telling you, that was an interesting experience, sitting with a cult leader, trying to negotiate a settlement from this harassment lawsuit.

00:11:31.940 And I can remember that very well.

00:11:33.760 What vibes did he give you?

00:11:35.120 Like, you know, think movie characters.

00:11:37.760 Like, when you think about movie characters, you know the character Kaiser Soce from The Usual Suspects, right?

00:11:43.080 I don't know if you know Kaiser Soce in a movie Usual Suspects.

00:11:46.140 Think about, you know, Edward Norton from Primal Fear.

00:11:52.560 What character can you tell us what he was like when you were negotiating with him?

00:11:57.300 I don't know.

00:11:57.840 He was like a little—he's a very short guy.

00:12:00.380 I mean, I'm not very tall.

00:12:01.780 I'm 5'7".

00:12:02.820 And he was quite a bit shorter than me.

00:12:05.700 Not impressive at all. 0.98

00:12:07.800 And by the way, he literally stank.

00:12:10.980 I mean, the guy didn't— 0.86

00:12:12.000 Stank?

00:12:12.460 Yeah.

00:12:12.960 Like, smelled.

00:12:13.540 He smelled bad.

00:12:15.440 He wasn't too big on showers.

00:12:18.040 He was ill-kept.

00:12:20.220 He was an odd guy.

00:12:22.300 And he tried to come across as a deep thinker, very quiet.

00:12:28.920 But when he didn't—when he was confronted, he would blow up.

00:12:34.040 So what happened in the negotiations that we had was he kept running his philosophy, which 0.52

00:12:39.840 is called rational inquiry, which is a bunch of junk that he used to subdue people, their

00:12:47.420 critical thinking.

00:12:48.400 And he kept throwing that out at me and saying, you don't understand.

00:12:55.040 Listen to this.

00:12:56.080 Listen to that.

00:12:56.960 And I looked at him at one point and I said, look, Keith, I don't care what you believe.

00:13:02.660 I'm not interested.

00:13:04.180 What I'm here to do is court-ordered mediation and settlement.

00:13:09.580 And that's what we're here for.

00:13:11.000 And he would keep starting up.

00:13:12.260 And finally, I looked at him and I said, Keith, you know, what I think is you're a cult leader

00:13:17.560 and you brainwash people and you're destructive and you hurt people. 0.89

00:13:21.720 And that's who you are.

00:13:23.120 And nothing you say is going to change.

00:13:24.920 What do you say to that?

00:13:25.720 He kind of blew up.

00:13:27.380 You know, he got very red-faced.

00:13:29.080 His voice shook and he was very upset.

00:13:33.540 And I could tell that in the bubble that he inhabited, where no one ever criticized him,

00:13:39.320 that was just—that was the cardinal sin.

00:13:43.120 And so he went directly from that into a deposition in which he was asked many questions about his life, his past.

00:13:51.760 By the way, those depositions are now online.

00:13:55.600 And I also met Nancy Salzman, who was the second in command of NXIVM.

00:14:01.220 Can you hold that thought?

00:14:01.920 This is a clip I found of Keith from 1980s.

00:14:06.460 I just want to know how this guy speaks.

00:14:07.920 Can you play this clip, Ron?

00:14:08.980 What is Pac-Man fever and who's likely to get it?

00:14:15.100 Now, just about anyone.

00:14:16.960 Pac-Man has come out of the video arcade closet and his movie.

00:14:20.180 Did you know?

00:14:22.440 Is he about to come up?

00:14:24.100 Fast forward a little bit.

00:14:27.800 See if he's anywhere there.

00:14:30.120 Right there.

00:14:30.680 Okay, let's see it.

00:14:31.220 Thank you from RPI, Keith Wannier, who has scored over 2 million points with a single Pac-Man.

00:14:36.820 This is like the Rubik's Cube to a certain extent.

00:14:39.760 A lot of people play just competitively, but it's actually like a puzzle.

00:14:42.780 And because the game appeals to women, there's a new version on the scene. 0.61

00:14:46.140 What a weird.

00:14:47.060 So, okay.

00:14:47.960 Yeah.

00:14:48.360 Seems like a regular guy.

00:14:50.220 I don't know about that.

00:14:51.460 In that?

00:14:52.120 I mean, there were stories that were reported about Keith Wannierry harassing little girls and terrorizing them at the age of 10.

00:15:00.540 So I think that, in my opinion, and I think, you know, this can be borne out, he was really bad from a very early age.

00:15:11.500 He was harassing people, terrorizing people, manipulating people.

00:15:15.860 What do we know about his parents?

00:15:16.840 From what I gather, they were pretty good people.

00:15:20.820 And he would, at times, imply that he was somehow an abused kid, that he had suffered and whatever.

00:15:28.440 But in reality, from what I gathered, from talking to people that knew the family, he had nice parents, his father in particular. 0.95

00:15:37.940 And so you could argue that this man is a psychopath.

00:15:42.680 I think mental health professionals would see him as that, and that he was born that way, perhaps. 0.91

00:15:49.860 It's in his DNA, you know, as they say, bad to the bone.

00:15:53.720 And many of the cult leaders that I've dealt with over the years, they seem to be that way.

00:15:59.760 They seem to form a pattern where they're insensitive to the suffering of others.

00:16:06.500 They're incapable of empathy.

00:16:09.240 And when they hurt people, they just don't feel anything.

00:16:12.680 Interesting.

00:16:13.140 And that their idea of right and wrong is what's good for me is right, and what's wrong is what's bad for me.

00:16:20.620 So do what I tell you and cooperate with me to give me what I want, and you're good, and we're good.

00:16:28.260 But otherwise, it's bad.

00:16:30.040 And so that's how Keith Ranieri was.

00:16:33.380 Was he obsessed with video games, whatever?

00:16:37.020 I mean, what came out in his deposition was he never really had a real job.

00:16:40.960 He was either a student or he was running an MLM.

00:16:45.180 He was always taking advantage of people.

00:16:48.080 What MLMs was he in?

00:16:49.080 Was it Amway?

00:16:50.240 What else was he with?

00:16:50.840 He was an Amway distributor is my understanding, and then he created his own MLM called Consumer Byline.

00:16:58.740 And it was a scam, and that's why it went under.

00:17:01.920 And then he created NXIVM with Nancy Salzman, his second-in-command.

00:17:08.820 And Salzman was a nurse.

00:17:10.720 She had a background in what's called neurolinguistic programming, NLP.

00:17:15.640 Yep.

00:17:15.820 And she shared that with Ranieri, and together they designed his training, which I think anyone who reads through the manual and looks at the study notes will recognize a pattern of coercive persuasion and manipulation that is evident in the way the course curriculum was designed from the very beginning.

00:17:36.700 So Salzman knew that, though she might argue today that she's a victim.

00:17:41.540 I don't see Nancy Salzman as a victim.

00:17:44.200 In fact, when they raided her house, they found $500,000 in cash in the house.

00:17:48.940 To me, if you have that much money stashed, you're not really a victim.

00:17:52.940 You're a co-conspirator.

00:17:55.000 And Nancy Salzman would eventually go to prison for withholding information in the lawsuit against me, which is a crime in a federal lawsuit. 0.97

00:18:06.660 And also they would find files in her basement of the perceived enemies of NXIVM, including me.

00:18:14.200 And I saw this file when I testified in the criminal trial of Keith Ranieri.

00:18:19.060 They showed it to me.

00:18:20.080 Did you know they had a file on you?

00:18:22.960 On you.

00:18:23.360 Yeah, and they showed me.

00:18:24.680 This is very similar to Scientology, so far what you're saying.

00:18:27.400 Every time I've interviewed somebody that said something bad about Scientology, I've gotten an email and a website about why that person's wrong and history of that person's wrongdoing over their lifetime, whatever it is.

00:18:43.020 That's their dead agent file.

00:18:45.180 That's what it's called.

00:18:46.240 For Scientology?

00:18:47.380 In Scientology, if they put together a file on a perceived enemy, it's called your dead agent file.

00:18:56.340 I think mine is hundreds of pages long.

00:19:00.520 It's been thrown around.

00:19:02.220 So you're famous in Scientology.

00:19:03.280 Well, I'm certainly considered an SP.

00:19:05.540 I've been labeled an SP for decades.

00:19:08.280 You're a troublemaker to them.

00:19:11.600 And their lead counsel, Kendrick Moxon, and I have crossed swords in court.

00:19:17.620 So I think, yeah, Scientology is an example of a group that goes after its enemies.

00:19:24.920 Keith Ranieri, I think, learned from that example.

00:19:28.240 Did they ever meet that?

00:19:29.200 Does he have any?

00:19:29.800 I just tapped right in.

00:19:30.720 If there's any affiliation, there's nothing connected between the two.

00:19:33.340 I have been told that one of the inner circle in NXIVM was a former Scientologist.

00:19:40.480 And I was also told that at one time when Keith Ranieri was suing me, he exchanged ideas or thoughts or had some kind of input from Scientology in regards to going after me.

00:19:55.980 Certainly, my dead agent file was used by NXIVM.

00:20:00.720 And by the way, NXIVM had me under surveillance.

00:20:04.620 At one point, they were actually buying my garbage in a building that I lived in.

00:20:10.340 That's Scientology.

00:20:11.340 Well, very similar.

00:20:12.820 And they went into my banking records and phone records.

00:20:16.820 And I would eventually sue and settle with the PI company that was hired by NXIVM.

00:20:22.940 So, you know, NXIVM was, they were brutal.

00:20:26.440 They were very insidious in the way that they went after people.

00:20:30.000 But let's, let me just share this.

00:20:31.940 The key to understanding NXIVM is that, is that Keith Ranieri was able to recruit two heirs to the Seagram's liquor fortune.

00:20:41.220 And that is Claire and Sarah Bronfman.

00:20:44.960 These sisters reportedly gave Keith Ranieri over a hundred million dollars.

00:20:51.000 Stop it.

00:20:51.560 Yeah.

00:20:52.420 Yeah.

00:20:53.080 He was, when he was arrested, there were.

00:20:55.460 Is that her?

00:20:56.600 Yes.

00:20:57.080 She looks like somebody that would waste that money. 1.00

00:20:58.900 Well, she went to prison for almost seven years over NXIVM.

00:21:03.220 That's a terrible mugshot.

00:21:04.200 Is that a mugshot or is that just a picture?

00:21:06.200 I.

00:21:07.460 Can you see if that's a mugshot, Rob?

00:21:10.400 It doesn't say down here.

00:21:11.800 To be honest with you, I think that's kind of a flattering picture because I've.

00:21:17.020 Stop it.

00:21:17.600 Yeah.

00:21:17.820 Because I've seen Claire Bronfman.

00:21:19.940 You've met her?

00:21:20.480 Yeah.

00:21:21.160 I didn't meet her face to face, but at another court ordered mediation, she was there representing NXIVM.

00:21:29.200 She was an officer of NXIVM, the corporation, and she was scurrying around, talking to different mediators, former federal judges, trying to follow through on whatever Ranieri's plan was at that mediation.

00:21:45.260 But she really was a pawn of Ranieri for years and years and went to prison for seven years.

00:21:53.800 And to this day, I think she would still say positive things about Keith Ranieri.

00:21:59.520 Hi, I'm Rick Allen Ross, cult expert, intervention specialist, author of the book, Cults Inside Out.

00:22:08.780 You can find me on Manect.

00:22:11.100 If you enjoyed this video, you want to watch more videos like this, click here.

00:22:14.020 And if you want to watch the entire podcast, click here.

Valuetainment - January 01, 1970

＂Treated Women As Sex Slaves” - NXIVM’s Shocking Abuse & Trafficking UNCOVERED by Cult Deprogrammer

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