[birds tweeting softly]
That window is where it happened.
[foreboding music]
I was the first woman
in my group of slaves to be branded.
♪ ♪
The smell that came
from the cauterizing pen burning my flesh
was so intense
that it filled up the entire townhouse.
It was torture,
but I still went through with it.
♪ ♪
How do you even begin
to explain something like this?
♪ ♪
[anchor] Now, to the new allegations
against a mysterious self-help group called NXIVM.
[reporter 1] According to their website,
more than 16,000 people worldwide
have taken NXIVM courses.
[reporter 2] The purported self-help group,
many now say, is a cult that sexually victimized women.
[reporter 3] The organization included a secret sex society
where the slaves were branded, brainwashed,
and forced to have sex with the group's founder,
Keith Raniere.
[device clicks softly]
- [man] Okay. - [man] Give me one second.
Um, Nancy, could you help me?
Keith's a little bit shiny.
Keith, can you take your glasses off?
[woman] Take off your glasses for a second.
Close your eyes.
♪ ♪
[Raniere] If we want the world to be less violent,
we need to change our values and principles.
You can see that if people are devoted to materialism,
it takes away from compassion.
It increases objectification of people.
It leads to more violence, n-leads to more war.
It doesn't have to be that way.
[applause]
[woman] We're starting a revolution.
Like, understanding these ideas
and then living them is so noble.
We're changing the world.
One people, one nation,
one body, one soul,
and rise above violence,
poverty, and crime.
[crowd cheers]
[woman] The three words I would use to describe NXIVM
are magnificence times infinity.
[woman] We are very thankful to Keith Raniere.
He created a wonderful opportunity
for women to grow to the next level,
and we didn't even realize that we could go this far.
I went into this looking for a more purposeful life,
and I thought that these people wanted that, too.
I thought that I found a real deep sense of community.
I felt like someone cared about me.
[woman] At first, NXIVM seemed to be a safe space
where we were surrounded by, like, really good people,
because for so long, like,
I just-it w-it felt- sorry, it...
[breath hitches] Sorry.
[sobs softly]
There have been a number of dangerous cults
in American history:
the Waco Davidians,
Jonestown,
the Unification Church,
Scientology, and Heaven's Gate.
And we've seen some of those end catastrophically.
[electronic music]
But NXIVM will go down
as one of the most destructive cults in history.
Do you understand how you could rape a baby?
I can make it a baby that's very rapable.
[woman] Keith Raniere is the most horrific,
abusive cult leader
that I've ever heard of
in my 30-some years of doing this work.
The predatory nature, the cruelty...
It's beyond the pale.
[woman] He was the wolf.
We were the sheep's clothing, unknowingly.
Why didn't these women see what was happening to them?
[journalist] Were you involved in a sex cult?
[reporter] Actress Allison Mack,
who played Chloe Sullivan
in the Superman prequel series Smallville,
led the recruitment for the group.
Allison, did you help brand India Oxenberg?
[Kelly] Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg
is Hollywood and actual royalty.
She's also a mother who has been fighting night and day
to get her daughter India out of an alleged sex-slave group.
You say they hijacked your daughter.
My-my daughter is a victim of this man.
[India] I did not see it like that.
No.
These people were my friends.
I said, "You're brainwashed," and she said, "I'm not."
I just thought that maybe she lost her mind.
My daughter is not in her right mind,
and that is what Keith Raniere
and this NXIVM cult has done to her.
At that point, it was just,
"No matter what, I have to save India."
I didn't want to be saved.
[ominous music]
♪ ♪
My name is India.
I was in NXIVM from 2011 to 2018.
For seven years.
I went through something I don't wish upon anybody,
and I'm still trying to figure it out.
How could I have ended up in a cult
where I was sex trafficked
or involved in crimes
that could have put me in prison?
I'm trying to figure out what happened
versus what I wanted to believe happened.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
[keyboard keys clacking]
[sighs softly]
I, uh, Google myself
every once in a while, just to...
check on what's being said about me.
Try not to read everything,
because it can be a little bit overwhelming,
but sometimes it's better to know than to not know.
Typically,
anything associated with my name nowadays
is "branded sex slave,"
"Allison's slave,"
"slave of Keith Raniere."
Like...
it can't get that much worse,
besides "murderer," maybe.
I mean, it just keeps going and going and going,
and it's hard for people who don't know
to distinguish what's true and untrue.
This all started in 2011,
when I heard about this thing
called "executive success programs,"
or ESP.
It was supposed to be this training course
for business and communication skills
that you could then apply
to whatever it was that you wanted to do in your life.
[Catherine] The truth is,
unwittingly, I introduced her to ESP,
which I believed was a self-help group.
I feel horrible.
[tense music]
♪ ♪
I first heard about the program
from a friend who I trusted,
who reached out to me and said, "I have just done this class.
"It is the best thing that I've ever done.
"My business has grown exponentially.
You've got to do it."
And India happened to be at the house that evening.
And I said, "Hey, I'm going to this intro.
Do you want to come with me?"
And she's like, "Sure."
So innocently, casually, we get into my car.
We do the 30-minute drive to the program.
[India] Looking back at it,
I think a lot about what would have happened
if we just didn't go to the intro.
♪ ♪
At that time in my life, I was 19.
I had spent a year in Boston, going to school,
and decided that college wasn't for me
and that I wanted to work.
So I moved back home with my mom in Malibu
and started to build a catering business.
♪ ♪
I always looked at the culinary arts
as sort of a... just a passion,
but I never really saw it as something
that I would turn into a career.
So when I came across ESP, I thought,
"Well, maybe there are certain skills that I'm missing
"that if I acquired,
"I could take my natural talents
and hone them into something more professional."
♪ ♪
[Catherine] So when we arrived at the introduction to ESP,
the room was full, and there were several people
that I recognized from the entertainment industry.
[calm music and indistinct chatter]
[India] There were entrepreneurs
and strong, powerful women like Rosario Dawson,
who I just got to strike up a conversation with.
I was impressed.
They said they had had people like Gerard Butler,
Jennifer Aniston take the courses.
Mark Vicente,
who was the director of a documentary called
What the Bleep Do We Know,
was hosting the event with Sarah Edmondson,
a Canadian actress from Vancouver.
[Edmondson] I'm happier in my life.
I'm really joyful in my essence.
I'm more successful in my relationships.
I got that because of these talks,
and you can have it too.
[Catherine] Sarah Edmondson said that the program
would give you the tools to conquer
whatever might be standing in the way of your success...
Physical, emotional, whatever it might be.
It was presented as a way
to upgrade people's operating systems
so that they could be more successful
in all areas of life.
When I first came to ESP,
I had, on the surface,
something that seemed to be like the perfect life.
I had the job. I had the dog.
I had the car. I had the boyfriend.
I had the clothes.
And yet,
when I started to do the work in the classes,
I started to transform.
At my introduction for ESP, um,
we all met someone
who conquered his Tourette's through this program,
which definitely got my attention.
[Naomi] They said it was connected
to the Dalai Lama somehow.
They also said that they had taught the curriculum
to a head of state, to a president.
[Lalich] NXIVM used the Dalai Lama
and other celebrities
and wealthy individuals who were there
or who they alleged to be there
as a way to lure people in.
Because of the kinds of people who were taking the courses,
they were able to show
that this was the really cool thing to do.
[woman] When you see people
like Richard Branson
and the first family of Mexico involved in this,
it tells the brain,
"You don't have to really dig into this.
"These brilliant people already did that for you.
It's all endorsed,"
and it makes the buy-in stronger.
Towards the end of the introduction,
uh, they announced that
the actual first five-day class
would be $3,000 per person.
That got my attention, and I was thinking,
"Well, what exactly are we paying for?"
They had a limited-time offer,
a reduced price of, I think, 2,100.
You know, it was a lot.
I was an aspiring actress,
and Mark Vicente kind of said
that being around
these other, uh, actors
or these successful people will help me get there.
I did not have
that kind of money laying around to do it.
So Allison Mack offered to pay for the intensive ahead of time
in exchange for the work that I did for her.
[India] It was a substantial amount of money
to just put down on faith.
I asked my mom... was like,
"Can you put your credit card down
and I'll figure out how to pay you back?"
She goes, "Really?" Like...
"Are you sure you wanna do this?"
And I said, "Yeah, I do, and I wanna do it with you."
I'm thinking, "Okay, this is expensive, number one,
"but how often does your 19-year-old daughter
want to spend five days with her mom?"
Like, that trumped any misgivings
that I might have had about what this was.
And I went, "Okay,"
and I signed us up.
[eerie electronic music]
Unfortunately, as I found out later,
it was probably the worst decision
of my entire life.
♪ ♪
[child babbles]
Did you buy more food?
[adult] Food, darling? What would you like?
I love Jell-O a lot.
[India] When I was a child,
I felt very special and very cared for
and always very loved.
I had a pretty active, like, fantasy world.
I thought that I could talk to animals.
So that took up a lot of my time.
But I grew up here in Los Angeles
with, uh, a single mom.
My dad was really not in the picture,
and I had a mom
who really just let me experience things
without being a helicopter parent.
I would define my mom as a seeker.
My whole life,
I saw her as someone who is looking for answers,
looking for something greater and deeper.
And I was always sort of like
her partner in crime in things,
whether it was joining her on movie sets
or exploring,
I don't know, monks in your house one day
when you come home from school.
Like, I had a pretty unusual lifestyle.
♪ ♪
Eventually, my mom got remarried...
[photographer] Casper!
[India] ...and our little family grew quickly.
♪ ♪
My mom and I had always been close,
but in my teenage years,
I had less one-on-one time with just her.
♪ ♪
So I was really excited
to take the five-day course with her,
and I thought this could be an opportunity for us to bond.
♪ ♪
We ended up taking the first class
in May of that year.
So we drove to this beautiful house in Venice
that apparently was owned by Eric Clapton,
and it was a modern home with a big, open living room.
How do we, as human beings, better ourselves?
[Catherine] The way that it was set up
was that we would watch
this woman called Nancy Salzman
teach us these concepts via video.
When we see a sign of human excellence,
we seek to better ourselves.
[Catherine] Then we would break into these groups
where we would discuss a question set,
and that's when, all of a sudden,
they separated India... from me.
[India] At the time, I didn't think about it as a big deal.
They told us they always separate family members.
[disquieting white noise]
[man] The very first thing that a predatory group will do
is to separate someone from her friends and family,
because once she's deprived
of that frame of reference of that perspective,
then the manipulation becomes easier.
[India] Each class
was called a module,
and some of them were really intriguing,
especially "Communication and Being At Cause."
[Nancy] When we're really at cause,
we understand that we're the one
choosing to have the emotion.
[India] I remember when I heard that,
I was like, "Wow, that's really incredible.
Like, I get to choose how I wanna feel."
And... that was kind of liberating.
So one of the core concepts in NXIVM,
which comes from the New Age movement,
is that you create your own reality.
And so the follow-up from that
is that you're to blame for whatever happens to you.
They actually had to recite,
"I will not choose to be a victim."
And eventually, this was a way to make the women believe
it was their own doing if they were victimized.
Somebody with low self-esteem is a total victim.
[India] After a few of these modules...
[Nancy] Everybody following me?
[India] ...it feels like you're getting your brain scrambled,
and part of that is kind of exciting.
This was one of the first learning experiences for me
where I actually enjoyed it.
It was very different
from what I had just experienced in college.
I have quite a bit of insecurity
around traditional education in general
because I have dyslexia.
But I really do like to learn.
And with ESP,
I felt enthusiastic about the curriculum.
There were things that I noticed that were weird.
Everyone wore sashes.
We were supposed to bow when we enter the room.
We were supposed to clap and say,
"Thank you, Prefect,"
who was Nancy Salzman,
and "Thank you, Vanguard."
Vanguard was this guy, Keith Raniere, he was...
we didn't get to meet.
[India] The way that he was promoted
was that he was the smartest man in the world,
a judo champion, a scientist, a concert pianist.
All of these sort of grandiose things
were Vanguard.
I asked them, "Why do we have to call him Vanguard?"
It's to give him tribute...
To give him tribute and to pay respects to him
for giving us the curriculum.
I mean, that's what they said.
[Lalich] Most cult leaders
ascribe special titles to themselves
to give themselves superior status
compared to the others in the group
and to the rest of the world.
Every time I had an issue with any one of their rituals
and brought it up in class,
they accused me of being defiant.
So they would throw it back in my face.
We all have certain suppressive strategies.
[Glazer] They had modules to address
all of the thoughts that someone might have, like,
"Oh, this makes me feel a little uncomfortable."
And it was one step at a time,
down and down and down the rabbit hole.
They were trying to normalize things
that seemed a little strange
so that, later on down the road,
they could have horrifying curriculum
concerning, you know,
"Why is it wrong to have sex with children?"
[electronic music]
They even had a module "Why We Are Not a Cult."
[Catherine] There was a morning that India and I got up,
and we were dressed almost identically,
same color scheme, everything.
And I remember being teased
for how similar I was to my mom
and, like, how "enmeshed" we were
and all of these sort of specific terms,
and I actually remember feeling embarrassed.
They were already actively engaged in separating us
and making her feel ashamed of any closeness with me.
They were already planting the seeds of shame.
[India] Throughout the whole five-day,
you're being told that you're gonna have
this amazing one-on-one experience
on day five,
called an exploration of meaning, EM.
[Catherine] You have to do this process,
this exploration of meaning, in front of the whole class
for, like, the grand finale of the program.
[serene music]
[India] One by one,
the students went to have EMs with the coaches.
Someone worked on their fear of heights.
Another person worked on their stuttering.
♪ ♪
Almost everyone had a profound emotional experience
and breakthroughs.
[distant cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
All of a sudden, right before my mom's EM...
[woman] Nancy Salzman!
[India] ...Nancy Salzman shows up in person,
and apparently, this was really unusual.
All the coaches went berserk.
Like, they're like, "Wow, it's Nancy.
"You have no idea how special this is.
She never teaches level one."
I remember just thinking,
"Whoa, it's the lady from the TV."
[laughing] Like...
[Nancy] An EM is
a stimulus-response disconnection.
Are you committed to breaking your stimulus-response chain
with me?
[Lalich] The fact that Nancy Salzman
turned up for Catherine Oxenberg's EM...
That certainly wasn't a coincidence.
Catherine Oxenberg and her daughter India
would be considered high-value recruits.
And when cults like NXIVM find those people,
they'll turn hell to high water
to try to get that person to join
or go further into the group.
[Nancy] Okay, so tell me what upsets you.
[Catherine] For my EM, I chose to work
on my anxiety around auditioning.
So Nancy had me close my eyes, and she said,
"Go back to the first time
you remember feeling that anxiety."
[Nancy] Can you bring that feeling up now?
[Catherine] And what I flashed on immediately was
I was four years old
and I was sitting on a man's lap
and he was sexually inappropriate with me.
[Nancy] And what does it feel like?
Is it a pressure, or is there movement?
[Catherine] And then, almost immediately,
I flashed on another situation,
which was I was with a director
and he sexually harassed me.
[Nancy] And what do you say to yourself when they do this?
[Catherine] It occurred to me that there was a link
of being hurt by men in power.
[Nancy] Does it change your understanding
of the situation?
[Catherine] And once I made that connection,
it seemed as if the fear lifted.
[Nancy] Does it feel better?
Okay, we're done. Thank you.
[applause]
[Catherine] It was very cathartic,
and I felt like I had made a breakthrough
and the feedback from the coaches
was that this was the equivalent
of ten years of therapy in ten minutes.
I said to myself...
[Lalich] The practice of the EMs,
where they would have people think back
to some traumatic experience in their life and relive it...
It's very scary,
because the people in leadership
are not professional therapists.
[Ross] They were using the EM to basically tear people down,
to find out their secrets,
to find out what their Achilles' heel,
their pain was,
and then drilling down into it
and leveraging it to gain control over that individual.
[Catherine] Having Nancy Salzman in person
did feel good.
You're left with these incredible breakthroughs
at the end
and you're so enthusiastic,
and that's when they push you to take the next level,
because you're on a high, basically.
[soft electronic music]
[India] My first EM was not a huge breakthrough.
So, at the end of the intensive,
I just thought, like, "That was pretty cool.
I learned something."
And then I actually thought that after the five-day,
I would be done.
I had no idea that she might have been willing
to walk away after the first five days,
because she seemed so enthusiastic.
I wish I had known.
[India] My whole family got really into it at the time,
and so I kept going down the path
where I would eventually meet Keith,
but we didn't know anything about his past.
[woman] Without further ado,
I'd like to introduce Keith Raniere.
Let's give him a big hand.
[applause]
How many people here are new?
Some? Okay, a few.
For those of you who are not new,
you are all new,
because some of the things...
[man] Prior to ESP and NXIVM,
Keith Raniere had been known in the '90s
for being a leader
of this Consumer Buyline operation,
which was a pyramid scheme.
You want me to spin numbers on the board?
I'll dazzle you. I'm good at it.
[man] I've sort of always marveled
about why anyone gave Keith credit
for being kind of a business genius,
because, in fact,
every business he created was a failure.
[reporter] So far, Consumers' Buyline's
facing four state investigations
and several state lawsuits.
[woman] After Consumers' Buyline closed,
Keith Raniere met Nancy Salzman.
Keith was looking for his next business,
his next venture,
and this was also a time period
where self-improvement was really popular.
Hi, I'm Tony Robbins.
For over 10 years now, I've helped over a million people
to take control of their life.
[Cangro] Keith kind of seized on that opportunity
with Nancy, and they created
what was Executive Success Programs, ESP,
and that became NXIVM.
[Ross] Raniere saw himself
as the vanguard of a new era of world history.
But actually, what you see in NXIVM
is what I have seen in many cults.
The leader cobbles together ideas,
copying from other sources.
A lot of NXIVM is multilevel marketing
borrowed from Amway.
[man] A company that offered all people
a chance to be in business for themselves.
[Ross] The structure of the seminars
was copied from Erhard Seminars Training.
[narrator] The center's network proceeds from the assumption
that people are up to the right things in the world.
[Ross] A lot of it is the philosophy of objectivism,
which is Ayn Rand.
It's the things that we admire or want that enslave us,
and I'm not easy to bring into submission.
[Ross] Some of it is Scientology.
For example,
Scientology has what they call auditing.
[narrator] Reexperience the incident
from beginning to end.
Okay.
[Ross] And that's the same thing
as the EM exercises in NXIVM.
So Keith Raniere
was not at all an original thinker.
That's what Nancy Salzman helped him with.
Way back in a previous life,
before I met Keith Raniere,
I used to teach neurolinguistic programming
and... [whispering] ...hypnosis.
[laughter]
[whispering amplified] Hyp-hypnosis.
[laughter]
Shh; you know what they'll say
if they know that I used to teach that.
Neurolinguistic programing,
or commonly called NLP, was created in the '70s,
and they talked...
[intoning sympathetically] ...in a very special way
that would elicit certain feelings,
and make people feel really special.
You feel really good.
You want to spend time with someone
with high self-esteem because...
[Ross] NLP is a very deliberate way
of conducting conversation and interacting with someone.
You're matching their body language.
You might even be matching their breathing.
Your goal is to make your words penetrate more
without the other person's knowledge or consent.
In many cases, NLP is amoral.
It completely depends on the ethics of the practitioner.
Most folk, even-even people that you call sociopaths,
are well-intended folk.
You know, we-we...
we all pretty much come out the same way.
[disquieting ambient music]
[Cangro] NXIVM began growing in the early 2000s,
and it no longer was just ESP.
Keith and Nancy started creating
more and more programs
underneath the NXIVM umbrella.
All of them were based out of Albany,
but eventually, NXIVM created satellite centers
that were all over the globe
where they offered introductory
and also advanced self-development courses.
[Meier] If you looked at NXIVM from a business perspective,
it just didn't generate much money.
It was basically a horseshit organization.
It was only able to sustain and thrive
because it had millions and millions of dollars
coming into its coffers.
[reporter] Millions which came
from the Seagram's liquor empire.
[Meier] Much of the money for NXIVM
came from Clare and Sara Bronfman,
who were the daughters of multibillionaire
Edgar Bronfman of Seagram's Corporation.
Everything that you've experienced this week
has been Clare.
[Yusko] When the Bronfman sisters came on board,
NXIVM became infinitely more powerful.
When you have money,
you're able to do things like, you know,
bring the Dalai Lama to the Palace in Albany.
No one's ever done that before.
[man] A significant cultural event
for the capital region.
The Dalai Lama's appearance
was the result of an invitation
from the World Ethical Foundation,
which is founded by two sisters,
heiresses of the Seagram's Liquor cor...
[Lalich] The Dalai Lama was really
an important coup for them,
and they actually paid the Dalai Lama
something like a million dollars
to agree to meet
and have his picture taken with Keith
and then use that for publicity
and to lend legitimacy.
[Ross] Clare and Sara Bronfman probably spent
at least $200,000 million
bankrolling Keith Raniere and his crazy ideas.
It was not a coincidence
that many children of prominent families
were in NXIVM.
Raniere targeted them
to feed his desire for access to more power and control
by really appealing to their idea of individuating
and not living in their parent's shadow.
And they were convinced that this was a good thing,
that Keith was helping them to be strong individuals
with their own identity.
And he did that with India Oxenberg.
Not only was India's mother, Catherine Oxenberg,
a famous actress,
she was also descendant of European royalty,
related to the English crown
and descendant of a king.
[bells pealing]
[applause]
Princess Elizabeth's life began here.
As the only daughter of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.
And Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark.
[Karadjordjevic] My name is Elizabeth Karadjordjevic.
When I was born, I was known
as Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia
because in those days,
Serbia was part of Yugoslavia,
which no longer exists.
[man] This is a celebration of Elizabeth's biography.
Today...
[Karadjordjevic] It was very difficult
to see my granddaughter in the cult.
Of course, India was a baby when she joined the cult.
I mean, she was barely 20, terribly vulnerable,
and it was so painful to see.
That's the grandmother, and that's her sister Maria.
Katherine had first introduced India
to these people.
She was the one who took her there.
I think she feels awful about it, of course.
Who wouldn't?
[Catherine] One of the hardest things for me to reconcile
is that I was the one who introduced India to NXIVM
and that I did not recognize the warning signs,
the red flags.
I can't tell you how much guilt I feel about that.
[India] After that first five-day intensive and ESP,
I didn't think that I needed to take
more and more curriculum.
I think the thing that was more intriguing to me
wasn't about what I was learning for my business,
but about having friendships
and relationships with people who I thought got me
on a personal level.
I ended the first five-day on a high.
I ended up taking the rest of level one.
During that period,
Nancy Salzman reached out to me, and she said,
would I be interested in hosting a Jness weekend?
So Jness was a curriculum I was not familiar with.
And she described it as a female empowerment program,
women's only program.
And I thought, "Great. I'm totally... I'm a feminist."
I often opened up my home for gatherings and events.
And so I said, "Why not?"
[woman] Jness offers an answer or a solution
to a problem that I think
every woman and every man struggles with.
[Nancy] The whole concept of Jness is understanding
what it means to be a woman,
and it's so hard to do that
because so much of our culture
is dominated by male think, male speak, male talk.
[India] Jness was described as a women's educational program
that would help women understand women,
women understand men,
and a lot of the emphasis
was on relationships and sexuality.
My first exposure to Jness
was a Jness weekend that my mom hosted in Malibu.
My grandma actually attended that Jness weekend.
Catherine said, "I'm going to have a meeting
"for women this afternoon.
"It's called Jness.
A lot of girls are coming in from Mexico and from LA,"
and I happened to be in Los Angeles, staying with her.
There were around 50 women who showed up at my house,
many of them from Mexico.
It seems like they had a large following in Mexico.
They all arrived that afternoon.
We draped ourselves all over the furniture
in the living room.
And there was somebody there called Nancy Salzman
who was going to give the spiel about Jness.
[interviewer] What makes Jness different
than any other women's movement or organization out there?
I always say
when I introduce people to the education...
Because I still teach the weekends
from time to time, you know...
"Welcome to the first women's movement
that was created by a man."
And it is.
It's the first women's movement that was created by a man.
A very unique man,
a very amazing man in many, many, many ways,
but a man who has thought very deeply
about what it would take to change the world.
And I just hope people will come and take it,
because it's the most amazing thing I think I've ever done.
[Karadjordjevic] I thought it was complete rubbish.
They said she was very important, Nancy Salzman,
but I thought she was an idiot.
Men have to grow up,
and they have to be responsible in the world.
And men are responsible for women,
and women don't really get that that's the case.
[Karadjordjevic] However,
I was trying to be polite
and not be the rude mother,
sitting there complaining.
[India] They spoke a lot
about how men were linear and logical,
and that women were more organic thinkers
who lack structure and character.
It was nothing like the original ESP class.
My mom, I think, hated it,
and she couldn't even...
my-my mom has zero poker face.
I knew there was something fishy going on,
and I thought it was stupid
and I didn't want to irritate Catherine because, after all,
you know, she'd put this whole thing together.
But looking back on it,
I should have been, maybe, more-more rude.
[Lalich] Keith Raniere taking feminist terms
and giving them new meanings
is using something that's familiar to people
but twisting it in a way that's actually tearing them down.
Jness was pure misogyny,
and yet women were led to believe
that this was really gonna help them become better women.
[uneasy music]
[India] After the Jness weekend,
I signed up for an ongoing Jness curriculum,
and I met with this group of women once a week,
and we really started to become friends.
♪ ♪
[Ashley] This was just a community
of women of all ages,
all walks of life, that supported each other.
I felt like I was in the right place.
I was networking with women of status.
I thought Jness was really cool.
It was positive.
I felt like I was building strong bonds with women
based off of like-mindedness.
Who do women feel are their opponents,
and who do men think are their opponents?
- 'Cause men think, women feel. - [woman] Ah, yeah.
[India] It wasn't so much about the discussion topics
as it was about the people
that I was starting to relate with.
We were sharing so many personal things
about our own lives
that we were building a bond and a community.
♪ ♪
[Catherine] And at this point, India seems to be flourishing.
She seems happier. She seems more motivated.
She seems enthusiastic and passionate.
She loves the people she's spending time with.
She feels that they have mutual goals
and shared a vision.
Cut to "Mom, I'm going to become a coach."
At a gut level, I knew this was a bad thing.
[uneasy music]
[India] When I began going down the coaching path,
I started to feel
a little separation from my mom,
like, "Oh, this is my thing."
And that felt good...
To have something
that I felt like I was good at.
They told me the main issue that I had to work on
was that I was too dependent on my mom.
[Catherine] As far as I was concerned, ESP was a tool.
But once you became a coach,
it was your life,
keeping you very busy and very distracted
and not having time for any other commitments.
People were working 24/7.
Your commitment had to be absolute to the program.
And that's what happened with India.
Cults are very good
at ritualizing so much behavior,
and that's part of the hamster wheel...
Doing a lot of activities,
doing a lot of things that everyone has to do
on a regular basis.
And it keeps people so involved,
so busy, and also usually quite exhausted.
[Catherine] India was devoting a lot more time to ESP,
and her behavior with me changed.
Um, there was a lot more pushback.
Naively, I reached out to Nancy Salzman
and asked her for her advice,
and she said, "Oh, don't worry.
It's completely natural. India's individuating."
Well, in hindsight,
I can see that this was all part of the cult strategy
to suck her in.
[Hassan] It's straight out of the playbook
for how to manipulate people's emotions,
their minds, get them to turn against themselves
and their true self as well as their family and friends.
♪ ♪
[Catherine] Slowly but surely,
I became more and more disgruntled with ESP,
but I had paid so much money in advance
for these level-two classes,
and there was a part of me that-I just hate wasting money.
So I wanted to finish the program.
In January of 2012,
my husband, Casper, and I were taking an advanced class
that was only offered in Albany.
We were staying with coaches in the program,
and I happened to notice one day
that the wife was sleeping on the floor
and the husband was sleeping in the bed.
I-and I asked her, I said, "What's up?"
And she said, "Oh, I'm doing a penance,"
and she seemed quite happy about it.
That, to me, was, like, a-a giant red flag.
Then there was a very disturbing exposé
in the Albany Times Union
alleging that Keith was a child molester, a pedophile.
[sinister music]
That was...
the moment that I decided I could never take
another class with NXIVM ever.
♪ ♪
When I tried to tell India about this article,
she dismissed it.
She said that this was a smear campaign,
Keith would never do anything like this.
And I backed off, because the truth is...
...I thought to myself,
"If he really was a child molester,
"why were there no charges brought against him?
Why was he not facing... why was he not in jail?"
[India] They would always say,
"Just trust your own experience.
"You know us. You know this curriculum.
"All those people that are putting out stories
"about Keith and NXIVM
"just have a vendetta against him
because of all the great things that he's doing."
And at the time,
I believed that...
because I was experiencing what I thought was really good.
[Lalich] Cult leaders like Keith Raniere are very used to
that kind of bad publicity,
and so they will have a whole PR program
to fight against it.
They'll say it's fake news.
They'll um, have people come out
and make statements about what a great man he is
and that he's actually like a monk
and he doesn't even have sex.
And then eventually the story fades,
and they've won.
[upbeat pop music]
[Sheppard] ♪ Can you feel it? ♪
♪ Now it's coming back ♪
♪ We can steal it ♪
♪ If we bridge this gap ♪
[India] After I started training to be a coach,
I was told that I had to attend Vanguard Week,
which was a corporate retreat
that they held every summer in upstate New York.
It was kind of like summer camp,
but for adults,
that also gave tribute
to Vanguard for his birthday.
[Vicente] It's an extraordinary experience.
The philosophical founder of this company
who created all of this...
You get to hang out with that guy.
I mean, it's like the curriculum come to life.
♪ ♪
[dark ambient music]
[India] The first time that I ever went to V-Week
was August of 2012.
♪ ♪
I could consider this a place
where I might never visit again,
but I don't want to have things
that are totally off-limits to me
because I had a bad experience there.
[somber music]
♪ ♪
For me, going to V-Week in Silver Bay
always felt like an obligation,
but coming back
and choosing to confront a place
that I could spend the rest of my life
feeling afraid of
is part of what I have to do to feel whole
and make sense of what happened.
♪ ♪
She loves cameras.
♪ ♪
Hmm.
[scattered cheers and laughter]
♪ ♪
It's super weird.
I feel like I'm looking for familiar faces,
but they're not here.
[laughter]
'Cause that's what you would do.
- Like, you would show up... - [woman] Yeah.
And then... [starts, stops]
...people would start to trickle in,
and you'd be like, "Oh, hi,"
like, "I haven't seen you for so long."
Each center would have their own admin table,
so you would have, like, Albany, Guadalajara,
León, Vancouver.
And everyone would register and get their little badges.
♪ ♪
[Raniere] How do I do something that makes the world better
beyond what I need today?
That's what coming together for V-Week is.
It is a vision.
It is an understanding that
here is something that I want to see in the world
and extend-extend this joy to your lives,
to your families, to your communities,
anywhere you can.
It moves the world up a bit.
[singer] ♪ I could only imagine ♪
♪ Only imagine ♪
♪ What it'd be like ♪
[Naomi] I signed up for V-Week after watching the video
because, you know,
everyone was smiling and happy.
[upbeat dance music]
♪ ♪
[Tabby] After seeing the promo video,
I was like, "Man, I am gonna figure out
how to get the money to go to Vanguard Week,"
'cause it's all kinds of wonderful,
like, summer camp-type activities.
♪ ♪
[Kelly] These activities were called "objectives,"
and you could join an objective
like drumming or chess playing.
There was writing and singing, and they would put on a play.
[Tabby] They had, you know, water sports,
kayaking, um, hiking.
[in Spanish] In all of the activities the intention was to push your limits,
push your boundaries.
[Naomi, in English] There was a triathlon, which I did.
I'm not a very good runner.
[in Spanish] It was exhausting, to be honest.
[India, in English] V-Week was pretty overwhelming
and incredibly exhausting,
but it felt like
we were building something bigger than ourselves.
[Lalich] V-Week was what we call
"high-arousal techniques."
Basically, create a lot of high energy
and also keep them busy all the time,
all the time, so they have no time to themselves.
So when they're in this high-arousal state,
it feels really good.
There's almost an addiction mechanism that clicks in.
It adds to the vulnerability
and the susceptibility
to then sign on for the next thing
because, "Wow, this was so great.
I-I wanna come back and have more of this."
V-Week is something where people come here,
sometimes when they don't wanna come here,
because it means something.
And I just... can you just give me an establishing shot
where we just hang here for a moment?
- [Keith] Yeah, yeah. - [man] There's a reason.
- [Keith] Okay. - [man] There's always a reason.
[India] When you came to V-Week as a participant,
you were not allowed to take any pictures,
but they had their own video team.
[dance music playing]
[Debora] They have a professional,
like, camera team
who documents everything.
Like, I don't know why
we recorded everyth-that's weird.
We're starting...
[Lalich] Keith Raniere truly believed
he was actually some special master
who was going to make some amazing mark on history,
and so these were the archives
of this most brilliant genius man in the world.
Every word that came out of his mouth was precious,
so, there, you know,
were hours and hours and hours of these tapes.
[unsettling music]
♪ ♪
This is the auditorium.
And a majority of the performances
and the forums were held right here.
♪ ♪
[applause]
[Nancy] It is, of course, V-Day of V-Week.
Happy birthday, Vanguard.
[cheers and applause]
♪ ♪
[India] The birthday part of it for... Keith
was at the very end,
and for some people, it was the first time
that they had ever met him in person.
There was a lot of hype and a lot of buildup.
[tearfully] Thanks, Vanguard,
and happy birthday from all of us.
[cheers and applause]
[India] The first time I met Keith,
I wasn't awestruck, but I mean,
you kind of just go with the flow of the environment
that you're entering...
or at least, I did.
[karaoke music playing]
[group] ♪ The West Coast has the sunshine ♪
♪ And the people are so tanned ♪
[India] On V-Day,
we had what was called Tribute Night.
- [thumping dance music] - [singer] ♪ Bombastic ♪
♪ I like your bombastic, ay-oh ♪
[singer] ♪ It's a revolution, I suppose... ♪
[India] All the centers would practice for months,
and they would perform for Keith
as a gift for his birthday.
[upbeat Spanish music playing]
♪ Cumpleaños, cumpleaños ♪
♪ Cumpleaños feliz ♪
Because he was...
this great genius
who was here to make people's lives better.
[distant cheering]
I mean...
[woman] Happy birthday, Vanguard!
[woman] Happy birthday, Vanguard.
[India] I don't remember feeling freaked out
by all the tribute.
I think I just remember thinking,
"Wow, they must really like this guy."
[chuckles]
[Clare] Vanguard, there's a question
that you ask me frequently,
which is,
has your being a part of my life
enhanced my life for the better?
[ballad music starts playing]
And I don't have words
to tell you how much it has.
And I don't stand alone in that.
A heartfelt tribute to Vanguard.
You make it possible for us to grow ourselves, every day,
into the people that we want to be.
[Nancy] None of this would be possible at all without...
Without you, Keith.
[ambient music]
[India] So many people had put a lot of emphasis
on meeting Keith for the first time.
People used to say, "We're surprised
by how normal and human he is."
- Thank you so much. - Thank you.
So...
let-let's eat cake.
♪ ♪
[Debora] I actually met Keith at the end of V-Week.
He was very soft-spoken, and,
in a weird way, it's very intimate very quickly...
Like, emotionally.
He was, like, about this close. His face.
It was really-it's close, um...
It wasn't so much about what we talked about
than the feeling of the encounter.
And it felt very...
in-you know, connected and intimate.
It's weird.
How are you?
I love you. Happy birthday.
- ...birthday! [smooches] - Yes.
But I wanted to say happy birthday.
- [both smooch] - Thank you.
- [smooches] How are you? - Good.
[Kelly] He kissed everyone on the lips.
Yeah, he was definitely a kisser.
- How are you? - I'm very good.
I love you very, very, very, very much.
For me, I would be more inclined
to kind of move to the-the cheek,
and it became a little awkward
because you're like, "Okay, where am I going?
I'm going here. Okay."
And I owe you a walk.
- [both smooch] - [woman] Yes, you do.
[Naomi] I was trying to figure out, like, what is that?
And so then I would ask, you know, around.
I'm like, "Well, is Keith- who's Keith with?"
You know, they would be like, "Oh, well, he's a renunciate.
You know, he's like a monk. He doesn't have sex."
Hi. How are you?
- You're back. - Happy birthday. Yes, I'm here.
[Kelly] It was as if...
here's this man
who is so elevated,
emotionally and spiritually,
that it doesn't mean what you think it means.
[uneasy music]
[Clare murmuring indistinctly]
To me, I found that quite odd,
but when everyone is doing it,
you're more inclined to be like,
"Oh, well, I-what's wrong with me?
Why do I found-find an issue with this?"
Especially when the whole thing is, like,
figuring out your issues, figuring out who you are.
And this is my issue, the lip kissing.
- [Keith] How'd it go? - [Sara] Very well.
[India] If you question those things,
they start telling you that you're not self-aware enough,
and that once you get to a certain level
of proficiency in the curriculum,
that you'll be able to evolve.
[Keith] You know, i-in many civilizations...
Rome, Greece, whatever...
It was often where they had older adults with children...
You know, six years old,
seven years old, eight years old...
Having a type of sexual apprenticeship.
♪ ♪
This was common.
You know, uh, often you'll have a person who, um, was,
we'll call it "abused" by a-a-a father.
There's one instance I-I know in particular,
and the girl really loved it...
enjoyed it.
There wasn't a single part of it she didn't like
until she recognized by society that it was abuse.
So who abused who?
[synth music]
[Ross] Keith Raniere is a psychopathic,
narcissistic man
who wanted his own personal harem
of sex slaves.
He really knew how to desensitize people
so that they will be willing to do
increasingly horrific things without feeling anything.
[India] Thank you.
I can't believe that I get to participate in this kind of community.
My daughter had been in the presence of so much evil.
Like, he's so evil, this man.
♪ ♪
[India] It's taken me over 50 hours
of working with a therapist
to even be able to say the words
that something sexual did happen
between Keith and I.
[karaoke track playing, people clapping rhythmically]
[cheers and applause]
[uneasy ambient music]
♪ ♪
[breathy vocalizations]
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