Keith Raniere, the chief of the high-profile NXIVM cult, was sentenced to 120 years in jail by Choose Nicholas G. Garaufis on Tuesday, in accordance with The Hollywood Reporter.
Raniere, 60, was convicted final June of intercourse trafficking, compelled labor, manufacturing and possession of kid pornography, racketeering, and wire fraud. NXIVM (first often called Govt Success Applications) was based in 1990 by Raniere, the previous head of the disgraced 1990s multi-level advertising and marketing firm Customers’ Buyline, and Nancy Salzman, 66, a former psychiatric nurse and educated hypnotist. The alleged intercourse cult and multi-level advertising and marketing scheme masqueraded as a self-help program that attracted rich, well-known, and influential folks, together with Hollywood stars like Smallville‘s Allison Mack and Battlestar Galactica‘s Nicki Clyne; the heiresses of Seagram’s liquor fortune; and the son of a former Mexican president. Raniere served as chief of NXIVM and its varied subgroups together with DOS, a secret ladies’s group that assigned its members “grasp” and “slave” roles and branded their pelvic areas with a logo that featured Raniere and Mack’s initials.
Raniere and NXIVM have been topics of two current TV documentary sequence: The Vow on HBO, and Seduced: Inside The NXIVM Cult on Starz.
The Vow Season 2: What Happened to Allison Mack, India Oxenberg, and More NXIVM Key Players
The Vow centered on a number of of the group’s defectors, chronicling how they got here to embrace Govt Success Applications, which grew to become NXIVM; how they misplaced religion within the group’s leaders and abusive practices; the threats they confronted after defecting; and their efforts to heal and search justice. The sequence has been renewed for a second season, which is expected to reveal extra particulars about NXIVM’s inside workings and focus on Raniere’s trial.
Seduced focuses in India Oxenberg — the daughter of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg — who joined NXIVM in 2011 and left the group after Keith Raniere’s arrest. The four-part sequence is at present airing on Starz. Oxenberg, 29, co-executive-produced the sequence and in addition wrote a memoir titled Still Learning, which was launched in audio kind on Oct. 27.
Raniere was arrested at a hideout Mexico in March 2018 on charges together with intercourse trafficking. Lauren Salzman, the daughter of Nancy Salzman and NXIVM’s head of training, testified in Raniere’s trial that Mexican authorities had interrupted his plans for a bunch intercourse “recommitment ceremony” with a number of of his “first-line slaves” in Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS). The Latin title is roughly translated as “grasp over slave ladies,” and Raniere was the sect’s “grandmaster.”
In keeping with the Albany-based newspaper The Times-Union, Salzman testified that when the armed officers burst in, Raniere hid in a walk-in closet. “Every part he taught us was this … what males do, what ladies do,” Salzman mentioned in court docket. “After which he did not do it — and I did do it.”
Raniere pleaded not responsible to charges together with intercourse trafficking, intercourse trafficking conspiracy, and compelled labor conspiracy; his attorneys held that “everything was consensual.”
Prosecutors later accused Ranier of getting intercourse with a 15-year-old lady, and he was charged with “coercing a baby to have interaction in sexual conduct to provide visible depictions of it, and of possessing baby pornography between 2005 and 2018.” Following Raniere’s high-profile trial in 2019, jurors delivered a verdict of responsible on all counts, after deliberating for less than five hours.
Allison Mack departs the U.S. Japanese District Court docket in Brooklyn after a bail listening to on Might 4, 2018.
Within the months instantly following Raniere’s arrest, Allison Mack, Nancy Salzman, and Lauren Salzman additionally had been arrested, together with NXIVM bankroller Clare Bronfman, and bookkeeper Kathy Russell. The entire ladies took plea offers, and all besides Bronfman are awaiting sentencing dates.
Bronfman, 42, admitted to serving to Raniere use the bank card of late NXIVM member Pamela Cafritz after she died of most cancers. She additionally confessed to harboring a Mexican lady who was delivered to the nation on a pretend work visa in order that she and NXIVM might exploit her labor. She was sentenced to just about seven years in jail.
Allison Mack, 38, is ready to be sentenced for racketeering and racketeering conspiracy and faces as much as 40 years in jail. Nancy Salzman was convicted of racketeering and faces 33 to 41 months in jail. Lauren Salzman, 44, faces as much as 40 years in jail for racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, however is more likely to obtain a lesser sentence for testifying at Raniere’s trial. Kathy Russell, 63, might obtain as much as 10 years in jail for visa fraud.