The season finale of The Vow on HBO aired Sunday, leaving viewers with questions on what occurred to NXIVM’s key gamers, together with Keith Raniere, Allison Mack, Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman, India Oxenberg, and Clare Bronfman.
The documentary collection, about an alleged intercourse cult and multi-level advertising and marketing scheme masquerading as a self-help program, ended its first season with the arrest of Keith Raniere. Raniere was the chief of NXIVM and its numerous subgroups together with DOS, a secret girls’s group that assigned its members “grasp” and “slave” roles and branded their pelvic areas with Raniere’s initials.
HBO has renewed The Vow for a second season, to air in 2021, and the Season 1 finale hints that each Raniere and Salzman could have participated within the new episodes; within the finale, a lady who seems to be Salzman is proven sporting a home arrest ankle monitor, and the episode’s closing scene includes a voice recording of Raniere, apparently agreeing from jail to speak about NXIVM for a documentary. In response to HBO, Season 2 will function revelations from the group’s supporters and defectors, and can focus on Keith Raniere’s trial and supreme conviction of crimes together with intercourse trafficking, compelled labor conspiracy, racketeering, and manufacturing and possession of kid pornography. Raniere is predicted to be sentenced on Oct. 27.
The Vow Review: HBO’s NXIVM Doc Offers an Eye-Opening Look at the Chilling Cult
Viewers haven’t got to attend for extra episodes of The Vow to be taught what occurred to Keith Raniere and his NXIVM inside circle. This is what occurred after the occasions of The Vow finale.
Keith Raniere
NXIVM chief Keith Raniere, proven in an episode of HBO’s docuseries The Vow
Keith Raniere, 60, is ready to be sentenced for intercourse trafficking and different crimes. He faces a compulsory minimal of 15 years in jail, and he might obtain life in jail.
The Vow finale ends with Raniere, additionally identified to NXIVM members as “Vanguard,” being arrested in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, in March 2018 on charges together with intercourse trafficking.
The primary season of the docuseries does not element the dramatic circumstances surrounding Raniere’s arrest, nonetheless Lauren Salzman testified in court docket that Mexican authorities interrupted Raniere’s plans for a “recommitment ceremony” involving group intercourse with a number of of the first-line “masters” in Dominus Obsequious Sororium (DOS), the secretive girls’s membership inside NXIVM. (The Latin identify is roughly translated as “grasp over slave girls,” and Raniere was the sect’s “grandmaster.”) In response to the Albany-based newspaper The Times-Union, Salzman testified that when officers burst into the resort the place the group was staying, Raniere hid in a walk-in closet. “It by no means occurred to me that I’d select Keith — and Keith would select Keith,” Salzman stated in court docket.
In Might of 2018, Raniere pleaded not responsible to charges together with intercourse trafficking, intercourse trafficking conspiracy, and compelled labor conspiracy; his attorneys told NBC News that “all the pieces was consensual.” Raniere was held with out bail as a result of he was deemed to be a flight threat. In March of 2019, prosecutors accused Raniere, who’s now 60, of getting intercourse with a 15-year-old lady, The New York Times reported. He was charged with “coercing a toddler to interact in sexual conduct to supply visible depictions of it, and of possessing baby pornography between 2005 and 2018,” in keeping with Reuters.
Raniere’s high-profile trial started in Brooklyn’s Federal District Courtroom in Might 2019. In June, after deliberating for less than five hours, a jury discovered Raniere responsible on all counts. He was convicted of intercourse trafficking, compelled labor, manufacturing and possession of kid pornography, racketeering, and wire fraud.
Raniere is being held on the Metropolitan Detention Heart in Brooklyn whereas he awaits sentencing, which is scheduled for Oct. 27, 2020.
Allison Mack
Allison Mack departs the U.S. Japanese District Courtroom in Brooklyn after a bail listening to on Might 4, 2018.
Allison Mack, 38, is ready to be sentenced for racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. She faces as much as 40 years in jail (20 years for every rely) and a most positive of $250,000.
Allison Mack, the 38-year-old actress greatest identified for her Smallville function as younger Clark Kent’s buddy Chloe was, by many accounts, Keith Raniere’s prime lieutenant within the NXIVM secret sorority DOS. The docuseries accuses Mack of recruiting girls to be “slaves”; forcing them at hand over compromising materials together with nude photographs as “collateral” and blackmailing them to maintain them obedient; placing them on excessive weight-loss regimes and assigning them “penance” for errors; and initiating rituals that used a cauterizing pen, with out anesthesia, to model them with an emblem that includes Raniere’s initials and her personal with out their consent.
The Vow Season 1 finale reveals Mack making ready to comply with the authorities who arrested Raniere on the group’s hideout in Mexico in March 2018. In April 2018, Mack herself was arrested in Brooklyn by the FBI on fees of intercourse trafficking, intercourse trafficking conspiracy, and compelled labor conspiracy. Shortly thereafter, she pleaded not responsible to all charges and was launched to her dad and mom’ custody on $5 million bail, NBC News reported on the time.
In Might 2018, The New York Times Magazine printed a function after being given a uncommon tour of NXIVM management and operations earlier within the 12 months, earlier than the arrests. Within the story, Mack defended DOS’s “grasp/slave” dynamic and took full accountability for creating the branding ritual, explaining, “I used to be like: ‘Y’all, a tattoo? Individuals get drunk and tattooed on their ankle ‘BFF,’ or a tramp stamp. I’ve two tattoos they usually imply nothing.’ ”
In April 2019, a 12 months after she first pleaded not responsible, Mack reversed her plea simply hours earlier than jury choice was set to start, taking a deal that allowed her to keep away from going to trial with Raniere and Clare Bronfman, the Associated Press reported. Throughout her listening to, Mack pleaded responsible to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy, tearfully admitted to her crimes — together with acquiring “collateral” from girls and threatening to make it public in the event that they disobeyed her — and apologized to the ladies who had been exploited by NXIVM. “I believed Keith Raniere’s intentions had been to assist folks, and I used to be unsuitable,” Mack told the judge. “I have to take full accountability for my conduct and that’s the reason I’m pleading responsible immediately. I’m and can be a greater individual on account of this.”
Mack was scheduled to be sentenced in September 2019, however her sentencing was delayed, and she or he has but to obtain a brand new date, partly because of COVID-19 court docket closures. Within the meantime, Mack wears a monitoring anklet and spends most of her time at her dad and mom’ California house.
In an interview with CBS News in September 2020, Mack’s spouse, former Battlestar Galactica actress Nicki Clyne, defended Raniere, NXIVM, and its branding ritual. When requested how Mack was doing, Clyne stated, “I have never been in a position to converse to her for a 12 months and half. A part of the circumstances of her bail is that she will’t converse to anybody who’s affiliated in any method with the case or NXIVM. This has been the toughest, most humbling expertise of my life.”
Nancy Salzman
Nancy Salzman in an episode of The Vow on HBO.
Nancy Salzman, 66, is ready to be sentenced for racketeering. She faces 33 to 41 months in jail and a most positive of $250,000.
Earlier than she met Keith Raniere, Nancy Salzman was a former psychiatric nurse, a educated hypnotist (in keeping with several sources), and a self-proclaimed skilled in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) — an unproven technique purported to alter folks’s ideas through communication methods.
Salzman and Raniere co-founded NXIVM’s Government Success Applications (ESP) in 1998. The corporate would later turn out to be NXIVM, however ESP remained its “instructional” arm, a self-help program that served as a recruiting floor for the pyramid scheme and gateway to the cult. Salzman, who developed the curriculum for ESP, was identified to the group’s members as “Prefect” and served as president of NXIVM and second-in-command to Raniere’s “Vanguard.”
Days after Raniere’s arrest in March 2018, federal brokers raided Salzman’s house in Halfmoon, a suburb of Albany, and seized greater than $520,000 in money, a few of it hidden in shoeboxes, in keeping with The New York Times Magazine. 4 months later, in July 2018, Salzman was arrested alongside along with her daughter Lauren Salzman, NXIVM bankroller Clare Bronfman, and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell. Salzman was charged with racketeering, particularly identification theft and altering information.
In March of 2019, Salzman pleaded responsible, admitting to creating plans to acquire the e-mail consumer names and passwords of perceived enemies of NXIVM, in addition to enhancing recordings and destroying videotapes that the corporate did not wish to hand over in a lawsuit. In response to the New York Post, she sobbed in court docket as she apologized for bringing her daughter, Lauren Salzman, into NXIVM. “I would like you to know I’m pleading responsible as a result of I’m, in truth, responsible,” Salzman informed the choose. “I settle for that among the issues I did weren’t simply unsuitable, however generally legal. I justified them by saying that what we had been doing was for the larger good. I’m deeply sorry for the difficulty I triggered my daughter, the ache I triggered my dad and mom. … I nonetheless consider that a few of what we did was good.”
Salzman was launched on $5 million bail till her sentencing, which has but to be scheduled. She is fitted with an ankle bracelet monitor and reportedly lives along with her different daughter, Michelle, in Waterford, New York whereas she awaits sentencing.
Lauren Salzman
Lauren Salzman in The Vow on HBO
Lauren Salzman, 44, is ready to be sentenced for racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. She faces as much as 40 years in jail (20 years for every rely), however is more likely to obtain a lesser sentence for testifying at Raniere’s trial.
The daughter of NXIVM co-founder and president Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman served on the corporate’s government board and was one of many “first-line masters” in DOS, the group’s clandestine “grasp/slave” girls’s group.
Lauren Salzman was with Keith Raniere in his Mexico hideout in March 2018, serving to him plan a bunch intercourse recommitment ceremony with a number of of the “first-line” girls, when authorities got here to arrest him, she later testified in court docket. He hid in a closet, leaving Salzman alone to face the officers, who had been wielding machine weapons. “Every little thing he taught us was this … what males do, what girls do,” Salzman stated in court docket. “After which he did not do it — and I did do it.” She known as his identify — a mistake she stated she agonized over for months — and officers burst in to arrest him.
4 months later, in July 2018, Salzman was arrested alongside along with her mom, Nancy Salzman, in addition to NXIVM bankroller Clare Bronfman and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell. Salzman was charged with wire fraud conspiracy and racketeering, particularly trafficking, compelled labor, and extortion.
In March 2019, Salzman pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy and admitted she had recruited girls to DOS. Two months later, she testified for the prosecution in Raniere’s trial — the one former defendant to take action — and described her personal crimes, the lurid inside workings of the “grasp/slave” intercourse group of which Raniere was “grandmaster,” and the circumstances of his arrest in Mexico. Salzman testified that girls in DOS made vows to turn out to be lifelong “slaves” to Raniere, The New York Times reported, and had been subjected to brutal punishments similar to being whipped with a leather-based strap and standing barefoot within the snow. Salzman admitted to collaborating within the group’s branding rituals, throughout which girls had been compelled to disrobe and have Raniere’s initials branded on their pelvic areas with a cauterizing pen, with out anesthesia. She additionally described the “grasp/slave” pyramid construction and the method for gathering compromising “collateral” from initiates in an effort to blackmail them — all a part of a plan to implement “complete obedience and secrecy,” she informed the court docket. Salzman was enlisted to put in writing a handbook for DOS based mostly on Raniere’s teachings. One of many manifesto’s passages proven in court docket learn, “The most effective slave derives the best pleasure from being her grasp’s final instrument. You give up your life, thoughts, physique for unconditional use.”
Salzman additionally admitted to coercing a lady to signal over financial institution accounts and a automobile, and extra disturbingly, to preserving a “slave” captive for 2 years after she expressed romantic curiosity in a person who was not Raniere, in keeping with The Times-Union. “Of all of the issues that I did on this case and all of the crimes that I admitted to, this was the worst factor I did,” Salzman stated. “What can I say? I stored her in a room for 2 years.” NXIVM officers deserted the lady on the Mexican border with little cash and no paperwork, Salzman testified.
Salzman, who was launched on bail and required to put on a monitoring anklet, stays underneath home arrest whereas she awaits a sentencing date.
Clare Bronfman
Clare Bronfman arrives at federal court docket in Brooklyn on Sept. 30, 2020.
Clare Bronfman, 42, was convicted final month of identification theft and harboring a lady who was delivered to the US on a faux work visa so Bronfman might exploit her labor. Bronfman was sentenced to almost seven years in jail, and is being held on the Metropolitan Detention Heart in Brooklyn till the prisons bureau decides the place she’s going to serve her sentence. Her attorneys are asking that she stay free whereas she appeals the sentence.
Bronfman is a daughter and heiress of late billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr., the previous chairman of Seagram’s liquor. Previously a aggressive equestrian, Bronfman was introduced into NXIVM in 2002 by her sister, Sara Bronfman. Quickly thereafter, in keeping with Vanity Fair, the sisters started bankrolling a number of NXIVM initiatives whereas making an attempt to cover their monetary involvement with the group from their father, who disapproved of NXIVM and known as it “a cult” in a 2003 interview for a Forbes Magazine function on Keith Raniere.
Clare Bronfman was appointed to NXIVM’s board, and over the following 20 years sunk $100 million into the group, paying for actual property, a personal jet, and legal professional charges, in addition to allegedly protecting Raniere’s failed bets within the commodities market, Vanity Fair reported.
Following Raniere’s arrest in March 2018, Bronfman took over NXIVM, shifting its headquarters from Albany to Brooklyn, close to the detention heart the place Raniere is being held, the New York Post reported. Three months later, the corporate introduced on its web site that it was suspending its operations.
Bronfman was arrested in July 2018, together with NXIVM co-founder Nancy Salzman, DOS chief Lauren Salzman, and NXIVM bookkeeper Kathy Russell. Bronfman was charged with racketeering conspiracy, together with identification theft, encouraging and inducing unlawful immigration, and cash laundering. She was launched on $100 million bond and positioned on home arrest. In April of 2019, she pleaded responsible to fraudulent use of identification and conspiracy to harbor and conceal immigrants who weren’t in the US legally, Reuters reported. She admitted that she helped Raniere use the bank card of late NXIVM member Pamela Cafritz after she died of most cancers, and that she harbored a Mexican lady who was delivered to the nation on a faux work visa, in an effort to exploit her labor.
Regardless of her plea deal, Bronfman has remained loyal to Raniere and NXIVM. In a letter to Senior U.S. District Decide Nicholas Garaufis, she wrote, “Many individuals, together with most of my circle of relatives, consider I ought to disavow Keith and Nxivm, and that I’ve not is tough for them to grasp and settle for. Nevertheless, for me, Nxivm and Keith vastly modified my life for the higher,” The New York Times reported. She additionally wrote, “I by no means believed I used to be supporting something unhealthy or unsuitable, I by no means wished to protect anybody from legal conduct, I by no means meant to intimidate folks,” CNN reported.
On Sept. 30, 2020, Bronfman was sentenced to 81 months (6 years and 9 months) in jail, a harsher sentence than prosecutors had requested for. Decide Garaufis informed Bronfman that she was Raniere’s “confederate” in NXIVM’s efforts to threaten, silence, and precise revenge on defectors, and that she used “her wealth and privilege as a sword.” Garaufis was unswayed by her attorneys’ arguments that she was ignorant about DOS till media reviews uncovered the “grasp/slave” intercourse group. “Ms. Bronfman got here to be taught particulars about DOS and confronted a selection as to whose pursuits she would defend: Raniere’s or his victims’,” the choose stated, per the New York Post. “She selected Raniere unequivocally, and to at the present time she has not clearly apologized.” Along with her jail sentence, Bronfman was ordered to pay a positive of $500,000 and pay greater than $96,000 in restitution to a lady for compelled labor, in addition to to forfeit $6 million in accordance along with her plea deal.
Bronfman was instantly taken to the Metropolitan Detention Heart in Brooklyn, the place Raniere is also being held. However on Oct. 6, 2020, the choose agreed to Bronfman’s legal professional’s request to suggest that she serve her sentence at a minimum-security facility in Danbury, Connecticut, in keeping with The Times-Union. The prisons bureau will make the ultimate resolution. Within the meantime, Bronfman’s attorneys are requesting that she stay free whereas she appeals the sentence, arguing that she has a liver situation that places her at larger threat of contracting COVID-19 in jail.
India Oxenberg
India Oxenberg in The Vow on HBO.
India Oxenberg, 29, left NXIVM after Keith Raniere’s arrest. She particulars her expertise in four-part documentary collection titled Seduced: Inside The Nxivm Cult, which debuted Sunday on Starz.
Oxenberg, the daughter of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg and Starship Troopers actor Casper Van Dien, turned concerned in NXIVM after she and her mom attended an introductory Government Success Applications (ESP) course in 2011. Catherine misplaced curiosity, however India was hooked.
India Oxenberg turned shut with Raniere and his inside circle, together with Allison Mack, and was recruited to hitch the key “grasp/slave” sorority DOS in 2015. She handed over nude photographs and household secrets and techniques as “collateral”; she was branded with what she was informed was a Latin image for the weather however really was a mix of Raniere and Mack’s initials; and she or he was tasked with seducing Raniere, she informed People Magazine. Oxenberg stated she was groomed and indoctrinated, telling Vanity Fair that she believed her punishments from Mack, her hunger weight loss plan, and her oral intercourse periods with Raniere had been methods for her to show her energy and work by means of intimacy points. “I used to be coerced and manipulated and believed what I used to be doing was serving to me once I was actually simply serving Keith,” she informed Individuals.
Oxenberg’s mom, Catherine, staged interventions, labored with defectors and journalists to reveal NXIVM’s legal exercise, delivered proof to the FBI, and even wrote a book interesting to her daughter. However the youthful Oxenberg remained loyal to the group even after Raniere’s arrest in March 2018. When Mack was arrested the next month, Oxenberg packed up Mack’s issues for her, however held onto a number of objects she thought had been too private to place in storage, together with a field of flash drives, she informed Self-importance Truthful. Months later, after shifting to her mother’s house in Malibu, Oxenberg determined to see what was on the flash drives and found audio recordings of Raniere “masterminding DOS’s darkest particulars,” in keeping with Self-importance Truthful. “That was an enormous, enormous second for me,” Oxenberg informed the journal. “After I heard these flash drives, I couldn’t return to considering the way in which that I had.”
After Oxenberg left NXIVM and went to the FBI, she intently guarded her privateness, utilizing the following two years to heal and put a ways between herself and headlines that known as her a “intercourse slave.” She designed a mandala-style tattoo to cowl her model. She obtained a job as a supervisor of a New York eatery and met chef Patrick D’Ignazio, to whom she is now engaged.
Not too long ago, Oxenberg has begun to open up about her NXIVM expertise. Throughout coronavirus quarantine she wrote a memoir, titled Still Learning, which releases in audio kind on Oct. 27, the day of Raniere’s scheduled sentencing. And together with filmmakers Cecilia Peck and Inbal B. Lessner, she executive-produced the Starz docuseries Seduced: Inside The Nxivm Cult, which premiered Sunday, Oct. 18.
“I would like to proceed writing and doing work like this,” she informed Self-importance Truthful. “I’ve discovered a lot from being an EP, and from working with the opposite girls: It’s very reinvigorated me. … I really feel like if there’s something that you are able to do to heal, it is to take your ache and switch it into one thing constructive.”
The Vow, from the Emmy-winning filmmaking workforce Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, will return for Season 2 in 2021. Season 1 is on the market to stream on HBO Max.