Uncover - S1 "Escaping NXIVM" E1: The Branding

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

Uncover: Escaping NXIVM - Episode 1. Sarah Edmondson is a high-level member of a self-help group called NXIVM, but an invitation to join a secret women's group called DOS leads her to do something she later regrets. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-1-escaping-nxivm-transcripts-listen-1.4675949

I distinctly remember hearing someone yell, stop that van. From CBC Podcasts, an investigation into how young men are being recruited and radicalized on the internet. And she asked me if I was friends with a guy named Alec Manassian. By a new supercharged form of hate. On Facebook, police say he wrote the incel rebellion has already begun. A dark online subculture that's spilling over into the real world. Boys Like Me, available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. I'm the first one to arrive and, you know, I know that I'm going

to an initiation and I'm going to meet what she's called my sisters for the first time. And she says, come upstairs. And I've been to her home before, so I feel comfortable. And I'm going up the stairs, and she says, go into the guest room and get naked. Take off all your clothes and wait here. I'm like, what? And she's like, Sarah, you have to get over your body issues.

Like, it's just me and women you know. It's going to be fine. I'm like, oh my God. What the fuck is going on? Sarah Edmondson. We met when we were two. We went to the same daycare. Last summer, I ran into her on Hornby Island in British Columbia.

We both grew up on the West Coast, and our families would often spend summers on Hornby. When we were teenagers, we used to sneak off and smoke Indian beatties in the tall grass behind Tribune Bay. I hadn't seen her in about 15 years, and we had one of those disjointed conversations you have as you run after small children. I told her, I work at the CBC.

And she replied, I just left a cult. She let the words sit there for a moment, scanning my face for a response. I laughed nervously and tried to keep my jaw from gaping open. Silence is not Sarah's thing. Her story tumbled out in fragments. She had come to the island to get away and spend some time reconnecting with her parents. Her phone had been buzzing non-stop. She was still

processing what had happened. She's like, it's not something sexual, it's something weird, it's just this is part of the initiation, just trust me. The group she just left, the one that she calls a cult, is known as NXIVM. And last year, Sarah was initiated into what she thought was a secret women's-only group within the organization.

She was recruited by one of her closest friends, Lauren Salzman. So I take off my clothes. Like, I hear people, the door opening downstairs and I hear people coming up the stairs and I start to like piece together that she's doing the same thing with the other women. Eventually Lauren comes back and she hands me like a serviette, like a napkin, tells me to fold it and put it around my eyes like a blindfold.

tells me to fold it and put it around my eyes like a blindfold. I have butterflies on my stomach. I'm kind of self-conscious, kind of holding my boobs like this, and she leads me down the stairs through the kitchen. She sits me down on one of those thick, fluffy, white sheepskin rugs, and I sense that there's somebody to my right. Eventually there's five women, total, sitting, and there's some giggles,

and then she comes in and says, I want to introduce you to your sisters. You can take your blindfold off. And I take my blindfold off, and I look around and see four women. And Lauren takes out her computer and starts reading to us like a scripture almost. For years, I had heard rumors about Sarah's involvement

with what I thought was a strange life coaching group. Occasionally, an article about NXIVM, spelled N-X-I-V-M, headed by a man named Keith Raniere, would bounce among a group of old friends. We would try and guess at what it all meant, but I never knew the extent of it. She believed that Keith Raniere had developed a method to solve everyone's problems, and they were going to use it to save the world. And they were going to use it to save the world. Since seeing Sarah on Hornby Island, I can't stop thinking about her story.

I can't make sense of it. I cover news stories all the time, but it's rare to know someone caught in the center. How did Sarah, Sarah Edmondson, this cheeseball, nerdy kid I grew up with, end up drinking the Kool-Aid, and for so long, for 12 years? What was she up to that whole time? Surely there were warning signs. What does it mean to believe in someone or something for so long, and then suddenly change your mind?

And how exactly do you go about leaving a group like this? When I started looking into this group, I had no idea how quickly NXIVM would unravel. Neither did Sarah. I'm Josh Bloch, and this is Escaping NXIVM, from CBC Podcasts Uncover. Chapter 1. The Branding. So how are you holding up? This has been, it's been six months? Not even. Not even. I left beginning of June.

Sarah and I followed similar paths growing up. We belonged to the same after-school theater program. We were members of the same Jewish youth group called Habonim. And we spent a year after high school living with a bunch of friends on a kibbutz in Israel. But we lost touch in our 20s. After we reconnected on Hornby Island last year, I started recording our conversations. June, July, August. Oh, June, July, August.

Yeah, three months. Three and a half months. I have really good days, and then I have really bad days, and the bad days are bad and very dark, very, I don't even have words. It's just a lot of embarrassment, a lot of regret, a lot of shame that I missed the red flags. And then I brought so many people into it, especially people who are still there

and people who think that they're involved in something good. It's one of the things that we strive to do is help people build self-awareness, build what some people might even call a type of consciousness. This is Keith Raniere, in one of the many videos that until a few months ago was available online. He's the man at the top of NXIVM.

Everyone calls him Vanguard. You know, babies are not born self-aware. It develops not only in the first few hours and weeks and months, but years of life. According to his website, Keith has an IQ of 240. He claims he's one of the smartest men in the world. He says he was speaking in full sentences at the age of one, reading by the age of two. And what you find actually is human self-awareness continues to develop, and many, many adults are...

He spent years developing a system known as rational inquiry, which he says is a science based on the belief that the more consistent a person is in their thinking, the more successful the individual will be. His followers say it is life-altering. You have people who are not self-aware at all, who are just really pure innocent gems, and you have people who are highly self-aware that aren't very, very nice. He's maintaining his innocence, he's defending himself, and we think that the justice system will ultimately vindicate him. Sir, can you get your first and last name and spelling, please?

Sure, it's Mark, M-A-R-C. On March 26, 2018, Keith Raniere was arrested at an expensive villa in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and transported to Brooklyn, New York. He was charged with sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor. The FBI would later add more charges, including racketeering conspiracy, claiming Keith had been running a criminal enterprise that coerced and manipulated people to enrich himself. And as you heard his lawyer say,

he has pleaded not guilty. Not included in any charges, there are older allegations against Keith, that he ran a pyramid scheme, that he had sex with underage girls, as well as a growing chorus of former disciples who say Keith is a cult leader, a master manipulator with an insatiable sexual appetite. But to Sarah, Keith was her mentor.

She admired him and sought his approval. What I liked about it is I got to be up close and personal with Keith, and I was invited into the inner circle right away, which of course I liked, made me feel special. Sarah started the Vancouver Center of ESP, which stands for Executive Success Program. ESP is a series of personal growth courses, and falls under the NXIVM umbrella.

It was her life, her profession, her social network. She even met her husband, Anthony Ames at NXIVM. Everyone calls him Nippy. Both were leaders in the organization. They were a NXIVM power couple. Sarah was an excellent recruiter. She quickly built a roster of ESP students, including people I'm close to. We built a very beautiful community here.

And we all show up at the same time, at the same place, and we're there for each other. I taught Wednesday nights, and it was bustling. Like, it was cool, and it was, you know, the people meeting before and after, and, like, doing projects and networking. And, yeah, there was like 200, I think it was like 225 students in its heyday. NXIVM headquarters are near Albany, New York, but they had other ESP centers in LA, Mexico City, and New York City,

to name a few. But the Vancouver offices stood out. Anyone who knows Sarah wouldn't have a hard time understanding how at one point she was able to turn Vancouver into the biggest ESP center outside of Albany. Sarah is entrepreneurial. She's driven. She's a good networker, she is business savvy.

Even when we were kids, she would run a side hustle charging girls to weave embroidery thread into their hair. But she's also a seeker. She was always into yoga and following self-help books. ESP was the perfect fit. Other people interested in opening centers would come to Sarah to see how she did it. ESP operates as a multi-level marketing company, sort of like Amway, where people make

money from their recruits, earning a percentage of the fees they pay for courses. It sells its students on the promise of profound change in their personal and professional lives. More than that, it claims to be a humanitarian organization that will change the world by transforming the powerful and elite into ethical leaders. Many of the former ESP members I talked to, who used to call themselves espions and now call themselves expians, had been involved in multi-level marketing in the past. So has Sarah. She sold vitamins, and she did pretty well. And with ESP, she was one of the few people making real money.

At one point, she was pulling in as much as $20,000 a month. But to get to that point, Sarah spent over $100,000 on courses. She told me she spent $15,000 on one workshop. Even the entry-level course cost $3,000. Is it worth $3,000 to have that tool set? To change those things so you can get what you want? Of course! Why wouldn't you spend $3,000 to make a couple tweaks and then have your dream life? It's so easy, but if I say it like that, it sounds obviously cheesy. I wouldn't say it like that. I would say it like, these are the things that I was doing in my life that would stop me from being who I want to be and having the life that I want. I paid this money.

I really believed. And I said this and I, and I feels grossing. And I would say to people like, I was, I would have spent a hundred thousand dollars for that five day for what I learned. grossing. I would say to people, I would have spent $100,000 for that five-day, for what I learned. You know, $3,000 is a huge chunk of money. It's nothing compared to what you learn. I really believed that. That wasn't a lie. That was 100% a true thought for me. ESP asks a lot of its students. For Sarah to really work through her issues, she took thousands of hours of courses. She often flew to Albany for training. And like a lot of people in ESP,

she had a personal coach, someone to hold her accountable to her goals and to measure her progress. She also paid for one-on-one sessions with higher-ranked members. The ultimate goal of NXIVM is to achieve an enlightened state, what they call fully integrated. Not surprisingly, so far Keith is the only one

to achieve that level. Sarah was told that there was something fundamentally wrong with her. She had an inner deficiency. She was too dependent on other people and she was too emotional. But if she followed Keith's program, she might be able to fix it,

or at least learn to manage it. Hello. Hi. Welcome to my house. How are you? How's it going? Okay, how are you? I realized just how successful Sarah was with ESP

when my producer, Kathleen, and I visited her at her home in Vancouver. Welcome, thank you. Her condo is bright and open, impeccably designed, all whites and soft browns. You can see the Pacific Ocean from her big living room window. There's no sign of the hippie kid I once knew, with purple pants, purple glasses, and purple elastics on her braces. Some things haven't changed, though.

I notice everything's in a jar and everything's labeled. She still likes her braces. Some things haven't changed, though. I notice everything's in a jar and everything's labeled. She still likes her labels. Here, come over here. The rest of the tour, sorry, the rest of the place is a bit messy. Framed photographs line the walls. Pictures of her parents, her wedding. She's doing her best to wipe NXIVM from her life. But it's difficult. These are my good girlfriends.

And this is, underneath this yellow post-it note, is Lauren Salzman. Here she was, not only my maid of honor, but she also married us. There's a large framed photograph on the wall beside her bedroom. It's a photo of her and her bridesmaids. The women are all dressed alike and smiling. But right in the middle, there's a yellow sticky note over one woman's face. It's Lauren Salzman. A temporary solution to a bigger question.

What to do with the remnants of her former life? Could you imagine it coming down at some point? A lot of things would have to change for me to take that yellow sticky note down. In January 2017, Lauren was standing right here in this condo. She had flown from Albany to Vancouver to pitch Sarah on joining a secretive women's group within NXIVM. The group is called DOS, which stands for Dominus Obsequius Sororium, which is Latin for something like Master Over the Slave Women. First thing she said was, how committed are you to your growth?

I was like, 100% committed. She's like, and what are you willing to do to grow? Like, are you all in? I'm like, of course I'm all in. And then she said, I want to invite you to something that's so cool. It's a little bit strange, but it's something that completely has changed my life more than anything I've ever done in ESP. Totally transformed everything in a very short period of time. And I want to invite you to it.

It's very special, like invite only. Lauren described it as the Freemasons for women, though I doubt the Freemasons would appreciate the comparison. But then she said, and we use the words master-slave. Lauren would be Sarah's master, and Sarah her slave. That was like, obviously that was weird. Sarah would have to obey Lauren's commands. She's like, it's just, it's not a real slave.

There's no shackles. You know, you're not in a cage. Lauren explained that Sarah would recruit her own slaves and get to be their master. Sarah remembers Lauren laughing as she first described it. Don't think about it like a master-slave relationship, she told Sarah. The master represents a devotion to something outside yourself.

This is about being selfless. This is about challenging women not to be indulgent. Keep in mind also with Lauren, she's my best friend and all these things, it's hard to get her time. She's the head of education, she's the head of ethics in the company. If you can spend time with her it's like very rare you know she's so busy so to have her say I want to take you on Sarah as a lifetime commitment was you know that was a real honor for me that was the good part of it and then also

the no-brainer of a lifetime commitment I'd already already joked about it that she was my best friend for life that we were going to be wearing matching track suits, teaching trainings in Florida 20, 40 years from now. This was my life. So it wasn't hard for Lauren to convince Sarah to join DOS. Lauren knew everything about Sarah. More just the idea of women banding together as a force for good in a way that was covert, as in under the radar, like people didn't know who this group of women were that could do powerful things in the world, like sway an election or support a company

or boycott a company and actually have real impact. And that was something, you know, those are kind of my values, like having an impact in the world and as a force for good. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons,

but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. So I was like, wow, that sounds amazing. You know, great, I'm in.

And she's like, great. Sarah wanted to know who else was in DOS. Who was Lauren's master? She wouldn't tell me. Lauren told her it was a secret. But she did tell me that the whole group was women and that I didn't need to know. And part of my journey in this program would be not asking certain questions and not knowing because I like to control things. And I like to know. Yeah. But it turns out that no one actually knew within, no one knew much about anyone else within the system. There would be several steps to gain full membership into DOS.

The last being a ceremony in a home in Albany in March of 2017. Sarah flew to Albany with her husband Nippy and their toddler. Lauren's four other slaves flew in from Mexico and California for the ritual. And then she comes in and says, welcome everybody to the sisterhood. She says, I want to introduce you to your sisters. You can take your blindfold off. After they take off their blindfolds and they see each other for the first time, Lauren tells them to put their clothes and their blindfolds and they see each other for the first time, Lauren tells them to put their clothes and their blindfolds back on. She leads them to a car and she drives them to a new location,

taking extra turns to disorient them. She leads them into a house and Sarah peeks under the blindfold and recognizes the home. It belongs to Allison Mack, a well-known actress from the TV show Smallville, who was part of Keith Raniere's inner circle and would later be indicted, along with Keith Raniere, on charges including sex trafficking, conspiracy to commit forced labor, and racketeering conspiracy. She is pleaded not guilty.

Her lawyer says they intend to pursue a vigorous defense. And I recognize the carpet. I actually recognize the smell. I recognized Allison Mack's perfume. I recognized her plants. She's got a very ornate, well-decorated, very pretty home. But we've been told it's for everyone's security. We're not supposed to know who else is involved.

So please don't, like Lauren's asked us, please don't peek. And of course I peek. And Lauren leads us into a small, like the extra bedroom, I guess. The room itself is very plain. Like there's a chest and a medical, like a massage table in the middle of the room.

And that's it. This part is a blur. and a medical, like a massage table in the middle of the room. And that's it. This part is a blur. Dr. Danielle Roberts comes in and we're introduced to her as the person who's going to give us our mark or tattoo. Dr. Danielle Roberts is a medical doctor. She's a member of Nexium, who lives near Albany. What happens first? I believe we were asked to get naked again,

and Dr. Roberts has a stencil. We're supposed to place it on our body so that we can figure out where it needs to go so it's underneath our underwear line so we can still wear a bathing suit and people won't see it. And Lauren tells us something about that they're a symbol for the four elements and there's this is the horizon for air and this is the mountains for earth and this it's a symbol for the elements and for our strength and our connection to the you you know, earth as women or some bullshit. The hardest part for me is just when I go through it,

like, recognizing so many opportunities I had just to run. You know, it's so hard to explain to people why I felt like I couldn't. And so there's, while I'm talking about it, it's just mixed with all this, like, regret and shame of, like, just such as, like, when you think about making a stupid decision, this feels like the worst, stupidest, most awful decision. I don't like the symbol. I say to Lauren, this is a lot bigger.

You said this is not a dime size. And she was, like, just brushed it off, like, like she didn't know how to measure it. like the symbol I say to Lauren this is a lot bigger you said this is not a dime size and she was like just brushed it off like like she didn't know how to measure it like oh you know I guess it's big you know like and we asked to see hers and that's when she didn't take her pants down all the way but pulled it down far enough so we could see hers and it was like this awful red scar it wasn't like the delicate lines of the of the traced pencil the stencil and the first person lies down on the table and um lauren suggests that someone goes to her head and kind of give her her you know go above her like this and hold on to her arms with something to hold on to and, and suggested that two women go down and

help keep her legs down so she wouldn't, you know, move and twitch too much so that the, Danielle could do a straight line. At this point, I'm recognizing there's no anesthetic. And then, um, Dr. Roberts takes out this, like a pen that has a laser tip to it, and I find out that it's a cauterizing iron. She's holding it over her skin, and the first touch of it, the first line that she's tracing is about two inches. She takes the cauterizing iron and just touches it, like just touches her skin, and she jumps.

Like, her whole body jumps off the table like a dying fish. Like, she just flops and flips and, like, screams. And now she has this, like, little hole of burnt flesh where the tip of the cauterizing iron has cut her. Lauren has given us these medical masks to cover our noses because of the smell. And I'm looking at the girl who's, the woman who's at her feet.

I can only see her eyes and we're both crying. And I'm with a friend who's hurt, who's in pain. You know, she's in deep pain and I'm with a friend who's hurt, who's in pain. She's in deep pain, and I'm supposed to help her go through this. And at the same time, I'm thinking, how am I going to get out of here? Like, literally, where is the back door? How do I escape? How do I let enough time go by so I can figure out how to get out?

so I can figure out how to get out. And it takes her 40 minutes, at least, maybe 45 minutes to go through every line. And in between each line, we stop, and Lauren reads something about commitment and honor. And before we started, we started we started by saying master would you brand me it would be an honor that's how like disembodied we all became we had to become to go through that amount of pain two things happened i pulled lauren aside and I said, I don't want this mark on my body. And she

said, you know, why, what do you, what do you make it mean? And I said, well, it's, it's a mark. It's a scar. I don't have any scars. I've got, I've got a pristine temple here. There's no piercings. There's no tattoos. I don't want this mark on my body it's ugly it's atrocious it's painful and she goes this pain is a symbol of your commitment to yourself to the highest version of yourself you're going to go through this and this will be a mark on your body that and she's like it's not a tattoo because tattoos you can take off this scar you will have forever because you're always going to be committed to your growth and to your to your highest self in this journey and blah blah blah and she also said to me you're

the highest rank here show them how show them how to do it show them how you don't have to be so indulgent and and that fucking worked on me I mean I had that going on and that and then like in my head also like Sarah you said you're gonna like, Sarah, you said you were going to do this. You committed. You always, you know, you back out. You don't follow through. You know, you're looking for the back door, just like Keith says women do. Like, just fucking do it.

Just fucking do it. And I did. I lay on the table and I just went to the most relaxed, like a shavasana. I tried to lay as still as possible because I saw what happened to the other women when they moved and how much longer it took. And how it was so much easier if you just didn't move. And so I lay there. I thought about childbirth. I thought about how I've already been through pain before

and I could reach down and touch the top of his head and how loving I was as a mom. I could go through this. I just went into the most loving, best place that I could while the most searing, awful pain was being dragged across my body like a fucking fire flame across my skin and every time I opened my eyes there was Lauren staring at me lovingly and reading me this fucking religious scripture about whatever the fuck commitment and honor and I just was weeping

I was like and I looked at her and I loved her and I was feeling pain and I had all these women around me like holding me and it was like awful and at the same time in those moments like crazy intense to go through this with a bunch of women that I was like starting to feel close to because we're going through fucking trauma together. I don't understand that at the time. I just look like, oh my God, this is crazy. And I'm also like pushing myself just to get through it. It's like, I can do this. I can do it. And that's like almost competitive side of me. Like I'm going to get through it. I'm going to be the fastest, be the best at it. I'm going to show them all how to do it. And I'm going to just do it and this like almost competitive side of me like I'm gonna get through it I'm gonna be the fastest be the best at it I'm gonna show them all how to do it and I'm gonna just do it and I did

it was like I think I don't know like 20 or 30 minutes like it was the quickest and Lauren was so proud of me and she was like you're amazing like you're so strong and you know bolstering me up like that I don't know you know holding oh I was holding women's like two women's hands like this at my at my shoulders there was two women here and Lauren was right here and I just was like I did it I was proud of myself I when I was done, I remember being like, I was proud. I was happy it was over. And I had a moment of like, yeah, I can do this. I can do anything. Before we put our clothes on, she asked us to take a photo,

a group photo, all naked with our brands. And we keep doing it until everyone's happy, everyone looks happy, and not hiding any part of their body like girls on a beach but we're not wearing our clothes like just we're just happy and that was a forced fake photo I don't even remember how I got home I don't know how I got home but I remember walking in and seeing Nippy at his desk and just being like wanting to tell him so badly and all he knew is that I was at Lauren's and I was doing something with the women and he was like just totally indifferent and I wanted to be like I just had the craziest experience and

like but I couldn't tell him and I had a really hard time sleeping because I kept kind of like reliving the, you know, the worst parts of the pain. Oh God. Sarah is lying on her couch, exhausted from retelling all this. What's it like to hear that? Sarah asks me what it's like to hear that.

It's hard. Yeah. It's hard. It's so weird, eh? Yeah. Despite how difficult this all sounds, that night is not the moment when Sarah decides to leave NXIVM. The next day, she starts a new 10-day intensive program with about 60 other women.

She plays detective in her head, guessing which other women may be in DOS, and trying to process what just happened. We've put in multiple calls and emails directly to Lauren Salzman, but we've heard nothing back. The New York State Health Department said there was no medical misconduct because Dr. Roberts was not Sarah's doctor. A lawyer for Dr. Roberts tells us she has no comment. Nexium did post an official statement on their website that said in part that the media had incorrectly linked Nexium to DOS,

and that this version of events might be a criminal product of criminal minds. When I return to Toronto, Sarah and I keep in touch by phone. What's it like to, and yeah, you're right, we didn't speak the whole time during this. You didn't really know me then, but you did know me when I was 18 and you knew me when I was 16 and when I was three. What's it like to hear this? And are people talking about it? I don't know. I definitely have thought about, like, are there certain qualities I know about you that would make you more susceptible to joining a group like that? And maybe one of them is I do think that you have a desire to be a part of a community and have that sense of belonging in a really strong way and support. Absolutely. And a sense of, I don't know, I mean, you have lots of friends.

I don't know if part of it also was looking for deeper friendships. Yeah, yeah. What I'm trying to say there, what I wanted to say, is that I know growing up, Sarah struggled to feel like she belonged. I know she felt rejected. She felt left out and insecure. I think NXIVM recognized that in Sarah, and it made her vulnerable to them.

I wondered for you whether it was, maybe we're all like this, that we as adults, we kind of replay a lot of the struggles and interactions and things that we experienced in our adolescence or youth and whether this was like, I don't want to reduce it just to summer camp, but maybe this was another way of playing out a summer camp that you wanted in another way. I don't know if that's true. No, I think it's really astute. In many ways, I feel that was exploited in me because that desire to create community and to be accepted and be liked and be a part of something was what my biggest tool set was in growing the most successful center in the company at certain points. So I agree. I think you just fucking nailed it.

And it's emotional to hear you say that because I sense that. But it did fulfill something for you, which was on the community level, the social, the interaction. It sounds like even the power that you felt. Yeah, absolutely. You know, being in charge. I like being in charge. Did you have a clipboard? I had a clipboard. I had a clipboard. They used to call me the cruise director. I had a clipboard. They used to call me the cruise director.

Sarah was in fact recruited into NXIVM on a cruise ship. That's on the next episode of Escaping NXIVM. I'm going to get on this cruise, and I'm going to figure out my true purpose, and I'm going to meet all these incredible spiritual people, and I'm going to get my life on track. But how did getting her life on track turn into agreeing to hand over material that would destroy her if she ever chose to leave? So the first thing that was to destroy my career was a naked photo. Like other people gave pins to their bank accounts and keys to safety deposit boxes and all sorts of stuff. And did she even know what she was really getting into?

I'm not going to give you all the details, but Josh started by a bunch of women. They decided to do the branding, and that was a decision of the women. Escaping NXIVM is produced and written by Kathleen Goldhar, Anita Elash, me, Josh Bloch, and Mika Anderson, who is also our audio producer. Heather Evans is our senior producer, and Arif Noorani is the executive producer. Get the series for free wherever you get your podcasts.

We're at cbc.ca slash uncover. If you want to discuss this story with others and get the latest updates, become part of our online community by joining the Uncover Escaping NXIVM Facebook group or following us on Twitter at Uncover CBC. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.