Front Burner - NXIVM's Allison Mack pleads guilty to role in alleged sex cult

Episode Date: April 10, 2019

On Monday, NXIVM member and former Smallville actress Allison Mack pleaded guilty in a New York court to racketeering charges for her role in a cult-like group called NXIVM. Mack is one of several high-ranking NXIVM members who have been charged with manipulating women into becoming sex slaves for Keith Raniere, the group's leader, among other charges. Today on Front Burner, Josh Bloch, host of CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM, reports on what we've now learned about the secretive organization.

My name is Graham Isidor. I have a progressive eye disease called keratoconus. Unmaying I'm losing my vision has been hard, but explaining it to other people has been harder. Lately, I've been trying to talk about it. Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds. By sharing my story, we get into all the things you don't see

about hidden disabilities. Short Sighted, from CBC's Personally, available now. This is a CBC Podcast. For years, men were disappearing from Toronto's gay village. I feel terrorized. I'm Justin Ling, this season on Uncover. If we see this is happening, how can you not see this? They suspected a serial killer.

And they were right. Police arrested 66-year-old Bruce MacArthur. But this wasn't the first time the village was targeted. You don't start killing at 66. You start killing when you're in your late teens or early 20s. Uncover. The Village. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. The story of NXIVM, it really feels like it was made for our time.

There's celebrity, self-help, and betterment. As well as an alleged cult with a charismatic leader. And a secretive circle of female members the prosecutors allege were slaves. According to prosecutors, it was part pyramid scheme, part sex cult. Some women were literally branded like cattle. I just went into like the most loving best place that I could while the most searing awful pain was being dragged across my body. It's really no wonder that my guest's podcast caught fire last year. The CBC's Josh Bloch is

with me now to talk about a bunch of stuff that's happened since Uncover Escaping NXIVM dropped, including big news this week when NXIVM member and former actress Alison Mack pleaded guilty in a New York court. Mack has admitted to manipulating women into becoming sex slaves. Ms. Mack, do you have any comments? Do you have any comments on your guilty plea? That's today on FrontBurner. Josh, hello.

Hello. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I'm a huge fan. Oh, you're just saying that because I'm sitting right in front of you. So I want to talk today about Alison Mack. Before she became infamous for her involvement in NXIVM, she was best known as an actor on the teen show Smallville, which is about Superman. How long have you known?

I guess I've always had my suspicions. The quick exits, the miraculous recoveries, the lame excuses. Which I just want to mention. I didn't watch it, but I heard it had a lot of fans. I was one of them. I did watch it. Now, is it fair to say that she's the highest profile member to plead guilty in this case so far? I mean, there are a few fairly high profile members of the group, but she's right up there.

Are you glad this is all over? Any comment at all? Let's start with what is NXIVM? So NXIVM claimed to be a self-improvement and humanitarian organization. And they offered this slate of really expensive self-improvement workshops humanitarian organization. And they offered this slate of like really expensive self-improvement workshop. People would pay, you know, tens of thousands. Some people even paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to take these courses. Our main emphasis, our main belief is to have people experience more joy in their lives. And from that, all sorts of interesting effects appear to happen.

And they're centered in a small community just outside of Albany, New York, but they actually also had centers around North America, in Mexico, and even around the world. Now, the FBI has a different story about NXIVM. They say that, in fact, it's a cult, that they were engaged in criminal activity in order to make money and to gain power. And why does the FBI say that it's a cult? I mean, the FBI points to a number of things, as do the cult experts that we spoke to. I mean, the cult experts talk about how this organization is so tightly wrapped around a single leader, Keith Raniere, the kind of philosophical leader of this group.

As individuals, we strive to break through a type of existential isolation. We want to touch someone. We want to know that other people have souls. We want to experience this. We want to experience connection. They were using, they claim, manipulation and coercion to keep people in the group to spend more money often than people were able to spend. There were other elements where people were required to disconnect or dissociate

themselves from family members or friends who were not part of the group. It really demanded, you know, people's entire life and energy and time, you know, had to be devoted to this organization. Those are a few of the qualities that sort of, you know, some people claim make it appropriate to call this group a cult within 18 hours of my quitting the legal stalking of me began 18 hours later knock on my door and they served me with legal documents threatening And they served me with legal documents threatening civil and criminal action, accusing me of extortion and coercion and blackmail. Okay, so before we get to what was happening in the inner circle, what's Allison's place in this group? So Allison Mack joined NXIVM in 2006. And she was,

you know, it was a very calculated targeting of someone like her. She was a great get for the organization to bring in someone with this kind of high profile. You know, NXIVM often equates personal growth with wealth and fame and power. Those things go hand in hand. So it was really important to be able to say, you know, look, we have someone like Alison Mack, who's part of our organization. So she joined in 2006. And then she eventually, you know, takes more and more courses and then eventually leaves her acting career and moves to the small little suburb outside of Albany, New York, where the Inner Circle live. And there's a few hundred NXIVM members that live there and essentially commits herself to that life.

You know, her waking hours were devoted to working in NXIVM, to taking courses, to teaching courses, and to being part of this NXIVM community. The Jeunesse tracks helped me open up and see so that I could start to build a relationship with me and start to be honest with me and then practice being honest with all the people in the tracks with me. And then that expanded out and out and out into the rest of my life. And now I have the most beautiful friendships with people that go so far beyond anything I could have imagined. Speaking of those people who were devoted members, I know that the reason that you started investigating NXIVM is because of a

childhood friend of yours, a woman named Sarah Edmondson. And she reached out to you about escaping this group. And so how does Sarah and Allison's stories intersect? So Sarah Edmondson was, yeah, I went to daycare with Sarah Edmondson and I ran into her about a month after she left the group. She was in it for 12 years. And Sarah Emerson was the star recruiter for the organization. She's responsible for 2,000 people coming into it. And she actually opened up the Vancouver Center of NXIVM, which at one point was the biggest center outside of Albany. I taught Wednesday nights and it was bustling. It was cool. And it was people meeting before and after and doing projects and networking. Yeah, there was like 225 students in its heyday.

So many of those recruits would have been Canadian recruits. Exactly. And the way that NXIVM is structured, it is a multi-level marketing company. So Sarah would make commissions. She would recruit people and make commissions off every course that they take and make commissions off the people that those recruits recruited as well. So the connection between Alison Mack and Sarah is that Alison Mack joined NXIVM because Alison Mack was in Vancouver shooting Smallville and Sarah was making inroads into the acting community. And many of the people coming to join the group were part of that world. And then I said, but also like I'm an actor and

I got to be available. I need to be available for acting, part of that world. And then I said, but also, like, I'm an actor and I've got to be available. I need to be available for acting because my agent might call. And she said, do you want to be the master of your own ship or do you want to be waiting around for your agent to call you for the rest of your life? So we have Sarah Edmondson. She's one of the recruiters. She's in Vancouver. And we have Allison Mack living with this very inner circle in New York.

And things take this dark turn. Yes. And we're still trying to sort out the exact details of how this thing came about. But the FBI has focused a lot of its investigation on this group called DOS, which stands, some people say stands for Dominus Obsequius Sororium. I'm probably butchering the Latin, but it means Master Over the Slave Women. And it was a secret women's group within the organization or associated with the organization that women had to hand over collateral to join. And the way it was pitched to women was that this was a way to take your personal growth and your development to the next level,

to really show your commitment to being the best person that you can be. And when we talk about collateral, what do you mean here? So in order to join the group, you had to hand over collateral that would damage you personally and professionally, that if it was released, it would essentially destroy your life. And this came in the form of nude photographs, explicit videos, confessions and sometimes false confessions about, you know, in Sarah's case, she confessed that her husband was abusive to her. I think it took me like at least a day to come up with something. And I wrote it on a piece of paper and she took a picture and she sent it to somebody that she said she couldn't tell me who it was. And she wrote back and said, it's not damaging enough. Do it again. So I elaborated on what I'd said and made it worse. So I lied.

She was asked to hand over the deed to her apartment to the person that recruited her into DOS. So these were things that, the idea was that you were committing to DOS for life, and if you spoke publicly about DOS, didn't obey orders, or left the group, your collateral would be released. Wow. Women aren't good at keeping their word.

We're gossipy, and we tell secrets, and we're indulgent. These are Jeunesse foundational points. And what are the allegations of what was going on in this group that are different than the self-help NXIVM group? Right. So I think there's two specific things that the FBI have focused on in terms of what might be problematic around DOS.

And one is that they say women in the group were being instructed by their masters to have sexual encounters with Keith Bernieri and that they feared if they didn't follow through with that order that their collateral would be released. So essentially it's a form of blackmail. Wow. The second thing was that the slaves were required every week to do a certain amount of free work for their master. But I remember Lauren saying to me at one point when I was reluctant about enrolling in recruiting for DOSH,

she's like, imagine having six people doing an hour of work a week for you and how much money you'll save. And that appears to, it looks like when they claim that there was forced labor, they're talking at least in part about this free work that the slaves had to do.

I just want to ask you a little bit more about these allegations that these women were forced to have sex with Keith Raniere. Like, how was that happening? I mean, the FBI alleges that it was essentially, it was an instruction that one of the masters would give to one of their slaves. They said, listen, you have to go, you know, seduce Keith Raniere. And it was as simple as that. And the slave had to make the choice about, you know, seduce Keith Raniere. And it was as simple as that. And the slave had to make the choice about, you know, either I do this and obey my master and everything is fine, or I don't do it and risk getting my collateral released. Wow. For some people who have been following this story a bit,

they might also remember this idea of branding. Tell me a bit about that. Right. So one of the final stages of your initiation into DOS, into the Secret Women's group, was to be branded on your body with a symbol. And then Sarah says that she was told it was going to be a symbol that represented the four elements.

This is the horizon for air, and this is the mountains for earth, and it's a symbol for the elements. What happened, you know, so they go to Albany, they have this ceremony, and the branding is actually done by a cauterizing pen.

The first touch of it, the first line that she's tracing is about two inches. She takes the cauterizing pen the first touch of it the first line that she's tracing is about two inches she takes the cauterizing and just touches it like just touches her skin and she jumps like her whole body like so it takes 45 minutes it's excruciatingly painful it's burned into it's burned into your flesh and so i i lay there i i thought about childbirth i thought about how i've already been through pain before. And later, you know, she said she discovered that, in fact, it wasn't this other symbol. It actually included the initials of Keith Raniere and also of Allison Mack.

I showed her the A and the M. I was like, there's an A and an M in here. She's like, oh, my God. And then she turned her head to the side and she saw the K and then the R. Wow. Of both of them. Yeah. I mean, it was, it was incredibly difficult to listen to it when she told me face to face and to think, and part of what was difficult was to, you know, I've known this person for so long and to think that she had gone so far down this path that this was something she felt she needed to make herself whole or okay or better is it fair for me to say that it was the secret group dos and and the branding um that led to the downfall of nexium it all started to unravel

from there i think so i, basically what happened was, you know, shortly after I ran into Sarah, after she left the group, she went to the New York Times. A few months later, on the front page of the New York Times, there is a picture of her with her jeans flapped down and a picture of this brand that's still red and looks quite grotesque. And not long after that, the FBI launches an investigation. And in their indictment, they say, we launched this investigation because of that New York Times article. So there were, she was not the only person to come forward. There had been years of people sounding the alarm, trying to blow the whistle, trying to get authorities to do something.

But it's certainly, you know, I think you can point to that moment as the beginning of their undoing. Okay. And then in March of last year, a few months before your investigative podcast came out, there's this massive indictment that dropped, which we have right here. It's like 30 pages. And they charge Keith Raniere. They pick him up in Mexico, right? They charge Allison Mack.

Yeah, we're talking about Allison Mack. She played Ken's friend Chloe. In real life, though, she's accused of helping an alleged sex cult called NXIVM. And they're charged with a bunch of things. Forced labor, fraud, sex trafficking, money laundering. And did the allegations line up with what we've been talking about today? Yeah, I mean, first of all, the indictment shed a lot of light on things we've been hearing about. But suddenly there was corroboration and evidence that many of the stories we've been hearing about were in fact true. And it speaks to not just what was happening in the secret women's group where we, you know, the sex trafficking and the forced labor was was going on.

But they were going back years and talking about all kinds of other illegal activity that was happening, like wired fraud, like identity theft, that they had really started to connect the dots about how this entire organization was a criminal enterprise. It wasn't just this little subgroup within the organization. And it's not just Keith and Allison who are charged, right? There are other women who played very important roles in this organization. That's right. So Keith was arrested first, then Allison a couple weeks later, are charged, right? There are other women who played very important roles in this organization. That's right. So Keith was arrested first, then Allison a couple weeks later. And then by July,

there's four women, Claire Bronfman, who is a multimillionaire from the Seagram family who invested millions of dollars in this organization. And Canadian. And Canadian as well. Nancy Salzman, who's the president of the company, her daughter, Lauren Salzman, who is Sarah's best friend, and then a bookkeeper named Kathy Russell. We'll be back in a second. At Franklin Templeton, we help you invest in companies that believe good enough is never far enough. Reach for better. Franklin Templeton Investments. I want to fast forward a little bit and talk with you about what's happened since.

What's happened since this indictment? What's happened since your podcast dropped? Because there's been a whole bunch of information that has come out in the courts. Right. So the biggest development that's happened since then is that three of those people that have been arrested, three of those leaders have now pleaded guilty. Do they come out here guilty, please? Nancy Salzman pleading guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy in Brooklyn Federal Court on Wednesday. Lauren Salzman admitted to conspiracy at a hearing this week.

Nancy Salzman, her daughter Lauren, and then this week, Allison Mack. Surrounded by cameras, Allison Mack made her way into a Brooklyn courthouse where she tearfully pleaded guilty to racketeering charges. It's pretty stunning what some of the women have admitted to doing. So, for example, Nancy Salzman admitted in court that she tracked and monitored the username and passwords of suspected moles in the group to ensure they weren't leaking details about the group's inner workings. Salzman saying in court she thought they were doing good at the time. What? Yeah, I mean, look, this is, again, you know, especially when you're investigating a group like this early on before the FBI investigation happened, we would

hear rumors about this. We would hear from many ex-members saying, my computer's been hacked, I'm being followed. And it was difficult to know if it was true. And here you have corroboration and evidence that, in fact, this was part of what they were doing. They were tracking people. And then we've got Nancy's daughter, Lauren Saltzman,

who you mentioned earlier is the one that recruited your friend, Sarah Edmondson, into DOS. So Lauren Saltzman admits that she knowingly and intentionally harbored an unnamed woman in a locked room from March 2010 to April 2012. And when the woman did not complete requested labor, Lauren Solzman confessed that she threatened to deport her back to Mexico. Yeah, I mean, and this is, again, a story that we've been hearing and then shocked again to see it, you know, in her guilty plea. But there, you know, the account is that they had this woman that was from Mexico and withheld her documentation and had her essentially locked in a room for two years because of an ethical breach, is what they call it, that she had a crush on someone that she shouldn't have had. And she

wasn't allowed to leave until she atoned for this ethical breach. Oh, that is so bizarre. And what has Alison Mack admitted to in court? I know she was crying in the courtroom on Monday. So she said she has admitted that in two cases that she essentially blackmailed women by instructing them to have sexual encounters with Keith Raniere while holding their collateral. So here you have an admission that, you know, the allegations that former members,

people like Sarah, had been making. Here's an admission that, in fact, that was going on and that was true. And importantly, and I think this is what is significant for Sarah Emerson, is that there's an admission that they concealed the fact that Keith Raniere was at the top of this thing. That when they pitched women on joining this all-women's group, they were not being totally honest. That in fact, Keith Raniere was the grandmaster of it, and they chose to conceal that fact. Keith Raniere was the grandmaster of it, and they chose to conceal that fact.

I want to get to Keith Raniere in one second, but before we do, can we talk about Claire Bronfman, who's also been charged in this? Claire Bronfman returns to court the heiress to the Seagram's liquor fortune. Bronfman pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy. She has pled not guilty. She seems to be a holdout from the other women that have pled guilty. And what is very committed to NXIVM. She lives in Clifton Park. She has set up a trust to pay the legal fees for her co-accused would be less likely to plead guilty or cooperate with the prosecution if they knew that the money would be withdrawn that was paying for their lawyers. So that has become an issue as well in this case. And then there was also this news, which is really like tangentially related to the case, but that she passed down in court earlier this month after the judge referenced that she was represented by Michael Avenatti,

like Stormy Daniels, U.S. lawyer, Michael Avenatti. It is amazing. And part of it that's so interesting to me is it's another example of how for this relatively dinky, small organization that existed in Albany, they were able to access and connect with these high profile people like Michael Avenatti. And, you know, and just, of course, fainting in court obviously adds to the drama, and I'm sure is just a precursor to what we're about to see when the trial begins or slated

to begin on April 29th. So Claire Bronfman is charged with things like identity theft and money laundering, although she's not charged with sex trafficking, I believe, because there's no evidence that she was ever involved in DOS. That's right. And so I just want to read a statement that she's put on her website in December of 2017. Quote, there have been many defamatory accusations made and I have taken them seriously. Determining the truth is extremely important to me. And I can firmly say that neither

NXIVM nor Keith have abused or coerced anyone. So she's going to trial at the end of April. And so is Keith Raniere, right? Right. And they've both pleaded not guilty to all of the charges that they're facing. What does all of this mean for the case against Keith Raniere? I understand recently there were new charges against him too. Well, there were. So there were some charges laid against him around child exploitation and child pornography related to a relationship he had with a 15-year-old girl. Those charges were dropped by the judge, but because of jurisdiction issues. It didn't fall into the Eastern District of New York. It could be picked up by the Northern District of New York if they so choose. And what is Keith saying about these charges and all the other charges that he's facing? Or what are his lawyers saying?

His lawyers are saying that he pleads not guilty to all these charges. Let's live in what actually happened. No collateral has been released, period. There's no threat. There was no threat. He never threatened it. Keith never threatened anybody about anything. And I defy any witness to get on a witness stand to say otherwise. I actually spoke with Mark Agniflo, who's one of Keith Raniere's lawyers for our podcast. And they have a very different story about what happened with DOS and with NXIVM. There's NXIVM and then there's DOS, and they're two separate things. And I think, so what you're referring to is the government's view of DOS.

They say, look, these are consenting adults. These are women who agreed to's view of DOS. They say, look, this is these are consenting adults. These are women who agreed to be part of this group. There's there was no non-consensual interactions with Keith Raniere. And in fact, he goes so far to say that this is government overreach. This is a case of government sexism where, you know, men have these fraternities and these rituals and do all kinds of stuff. And no one bats an eye. and do all kinds of stuff, and no one bats an eye. But when women decide to have these kind of edgy,

you know, an edgy kind of group where they're branding each other, suddenly the government has to step in and stop it. DOS is a sorority, a group of women, and it's only women. The women of DOS has decided, is we're going to have this group of women, and we're going to have some extreme protocols. Admittedly, we are going to, some of us are going to brand ourselves absolutely 100% voluntarily. And what implication do you think all these plea deals are going to have on his case and Claire Romfin's case? Yeah, I mean, it potentially does not bode well for the remaining defendants.

In Lauren Salzman's case, part of her plea was redacted. And there is a suggestion that that might be the cooperation agreement she has with the prosecution and she very well could testify at the trial. We also don't know yet if Allison Mack has some kind of deal with prosecution that she will also testify. So Josh, I'm really curious to know, this is a story you've been steeped in for so long. Are there any big unanswered questions for you? Well, I mean, part of it was that when I started investigating this story, we knew so little about the group. Like it was only this small window into it from Sarah Edmondson. And slowly over the course of the investigation, we've gotten these drips of more information as the FBI indictment comes down, as other

people come forward with their story. But NXIVM recorded everything that went on. I mean, the prosecution says they have many terabytes of information, that every time there was a board meeting or that Keith Spurnier met with the president of the company, Nancy Salzman, they would record it. A terabyte is no joke. I mean, they said it's 11 floors of a library or something. Wow.

So, you know, what I'm looking for is that we're going to learn a ton about this organization, exactly what was going on behind these closed doors, and how this kind of group operates. I mean, I do think that there'll be a whole other podcast series to make once you have all the, you know, this rich understanding of the inner workings of a group like this. And I will say, I really hope you make it because Escaping NXIVM, which is a CBC Uncover podcast that you can download wherever you get your podcasts, is a podcast which I binge listen to in about three days. So Josh, thank you so much for coming by today. Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to talk to you.

So if you're interested in hearing more about this, Josh's podcast, Uncover Escaping Nuxium, is available wherever you download FrontBurner. That's it for today. Thanks for listening. I'm Jamie Poisson. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe.

As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.