Uncover - S35 E2: Little Dictator | Allison after NXIVM

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

After Smallville ends, Allison Mack leaves behind her life in Brooklyn to move full-time to Albany, where she immerses herself in Keith Raniere’s teachings. But when a fellow NXIVM member urges her to consult Keith about her deepest insecurities, boundaries in their relationship begin to blur. Soon, Allison is invited to join a secretive women’s group within NXIVM—one that promises empowerment but demands submission.

This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over-delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing.

Donate at lovescarbro.cairbo. This is a CBC podcast Campsite Media In 2011, after 10 seasons on air, Alice and Mac's TV show, Smallville, came to an end. It's funny, it almost sounded like you were saying goodbye. I forgot how well you know me. My heart and my head have been playing Tugel War lately.

but I made my decision. Allison had played Chloe Sullivan for a decade since she was a teenager. By the time the final episode hit screens, Allison was 28. She was at a critical juncture in her career and her life. She'd been living in Vancouver, shooting the show, and then in Brooklyn, at a lovely little brownstone in Cobble Hill. But it was time to make a change. Somehow, Keith, somebody, I can't even remember who put it at a show.

in my head that I needed to move to Albany full time and let go my brownstone. And I remember being so sad because I loved my brownstone. It's so silly to say that, but I made my love for the brownstone bad. I was like, that's materialistic. That's like, you're not values oriented. You're superficial, you're shallow. You need to prove to yourself that you're not these things, that you're not shallow and superficial and materialistic. And the way you're going to do that is by letting go of the brownstone and moving to Albany full time. This was where the nexium true believers lived. Around the world, thousands of people took their courses and workshops about how to be a better husband or a better employee or live a more ethical life. But in Albany, you could learn directly

from Keith, in person, how to live your best life or to become deeply indoctrinated. To make it official, Allison bought a small townhouse just outside of Albany, on a street called General's Way. And the day that I did that, I got shingles. So fucking weird, right? My whole chest broke out in like these huge welts. It looked like somebody had taken acid and just splatter-painted it across my chest. And I think it was my body being like, what are you doing, you know?

but I was so hell-bent on the fact that I was fucked up and I was needed to be fixed and this was the place I was going to get fixed and the problems I've had in my past, they've been able to help me fix, so I need to come, I need to work through my narcissism, I need to not be superficial, I'm going to go there and get fixed.

At this point, Alison had been attending Nexium workshops for about five years. But it was here at this home on General's Way that Allison would ascend to the next tier of self-improvement because Albany was the center of nexium where Keith Reneery, Nancy Salzman, and all the other nexium higher-ups lived.

These people were Allison's new family. She was now at the nexus and this house became her home base. From here she started teaching workshops, taking intensives and spending time with Keith. I was like he's my teacher I thought of him as my guru

Keith lived a five-minute walk away and Allison would often take strolls with Keith on these quiet tree-lined streets it's so suburban out here that there aren't even sidewalks just lawns that curve straight into roads this is where Keith would pound the pavement in sneakers and shorts

pontificating as he strode past mailboxes and manicured hedges a sort of suburban Socrates. But Allison wasn't the only person Keith was taking walks with because actually, many other Nexium women were living in the same neighborhood.

I knew that there were lots of women that were around him, but I thought he was like a feminist who was helping women. That was the perspective that I had at him. But of course, Keith wasn't just helping women. He was sleeping with them too. At various times, Keith actually lived with three women, all of whom were his girlfriends.

Many of them had been with him for decades. One of them, Karen Unteriner, he had met when she was only 18. Nexam's leader was also the neighbourhood's busiest Tomcat, flitting from house to house. And unbeknownst to Alison, he was working on the next generation of his harem. From Campside Media and CBC, this is Alison After Nexium, from CBC's Uncover. I'm Natalie Robamed. This is episode two, The Little Dictator. So how did Allison, this smart, accomplished actor, get so deep in Keith Reneer's clutches?

Well, it all comes back to the fact. that she was a performer. I don't have a memory of myself in my life before getting arrested that didn't involve me being an actor professionally. That was my life, like that was who I was. And this is what's so interesting to me

about how Allison got enmeshed in nexium. It's that Keith both profited from the fact that she was an actor, someone famous who could lure other people in with her charisma and the pure sheen of success. as she emanated, and also used it against her. Because one of the biggest accusations performers often face in their real lives, and I should know, I'm married to one, is that they are inauthentic.

And this was exactly what Keith told Allison, from the very beginning. I had, have insecurities around being performative. And I think a lot of that is just like I was trained from like a very young age to perform. like, that's kind of what I did. And that was pointed out to me in the 16-day. Like, we know that you're inauthentic, and we know that you're, like, very self-absorbed, and you don't connect to people in a very honest way.

And the strike path will help. Allison's talking about one of the first nexium workshops she did, a 16-day-long, intense seminar. The stripe path was the name for the levels of progression with the nexium, which were delineated by different sash colors. You had to earn four stripes on your sash before moving on to the next color sash. Yes, sashes. When the nexium people were in their seminar rooms, he liked them to wear colored sashes,

designating their rank. And Allison's rank was not high. Keith and Nancy told me that I was a narcissist, that I had, like, narcissist personality disorder. And I was, like, appalled, you know. I was like, I don't want to be that, I don't want to have that. So I was like, what do I need to do to, like, get myself around that? And so I was, like, basically, like, whatever Keith said, I was like, I'll do because I need to fix myself.

Keith had correctly identified Allison's deepest fear, that her malleable, flaky sense of self, her identity as an actor, who could also be performative, was preventing her from having genuine connections with human beings. This struck a chord with Allison. particularly in her relationships with men. I was sexualized from such a young age that the comfortable way for me to relate,

especially to men in positions of authority, is through a sexualized lens. Like what does that mean? Meaning I'll flirt, I'll touch, arm, I'll make comments to feel like I have some type of control or exchange, value exchange, in the dynamic, in the conversation. And that started when I was like really little. You know, like just, oh, I can get you to pay attention to me and to listen to me

if I make you feel somehow like you're like the coolest man in the room or if I make you think about sex while you're talking to me. And I think I was doing that before I even knew I was doing that. It was just a part of my training in how to interact with men. Nexium was presented as the panacea to Ellison's problem. In the first year, she was all in, and she could not get enough. That's Mindy Mack, Allison's mom. She's 74, wearing jeans and a floral patterned T-shirt,

and a denim jacket decorated with a handful of pins, like a little gold cowboy boot and a star. Her faces lined, it seems, for many years of smiling, very widely. Beautiful piano. Oh, thanks. My husband was a professional. This is his little wall. It's a hot day in May, and I'm sitting in a music room with Mindy

at her home in Southern California. There's a gorgeous upright piano, a wall filled with memorabilia from her husband's opera career, and outside, a glistening blue swimming pool. Mindy has never spoken publicly about what happened with her daughter, but she watched it all right from the very beginning. She didn't fuss around on the periphery for very long. She was brought in, and she took every, she had endless resources,

because what does a 21-year-old woman need with, you know, a million dollars or however much? But she slipped away while she was doing that. She became immersed, and she had all the answers for all life's challenges. So she had the answer for everything. Keith says this and this. So she became unbearably arrogant. You know, John couldn't stand to be in the same. room with her because she just had this level of arrogance about everything you say is like

she you know she responds with just a look john is alison's dad the pair are on good terms now though around the time of alison's arrest he started exhibiting signs of cognitive decline and has since been diagnosed with dementia which is why we aren't hearing from him for this podcast back then mindy wanted to figure out what was going on with her daughter so she actually started taking the odd nexium course with Allison, workshops that Allison would pay for. I did it only because Allison was so excited about it, and I wanted to know what Allison was jumping in with both feet.

One of the courses Mindy took with Allison was a women's program called Janice. I really liked Janice. I've always really wanted to help women. Like I've always felt a really weird, ugly feeling of competition in my own heart towards women. And I have always hated that about myself and wanted to be like, how do I be a good female role model? How do I get other women to feel good in themselves? That was always very important to me. And yet it was always the thing that was hardest for me. You know, I couldn't manipulate women the same way that I couldn't manipulate men. So I was very attracted to Janess because I liked the

female aspect of it. I liked feeling like I was going to help women. So I did a lot of weekend intensives with Janess. Allison started working with other women, putting on Janice weekends all over the country. It's so confusing because, like, my mom came to the intensives, the Janess intensives. She still says, so much of what I learned there

has made my marriage better, has made it so that, like, I can have this relationship with my husband. There was a lot of building empathy. Try on the other person. You'll be much more compassionate. You'll engage. in a much more positive way.

If you can just have an experience of what it feels like to be that person, and it's great for marriage. A lot of what Janice preached was a sort of men are from Mars, women are from Venus, ideology. At its best, it advocated having more empathy for what men were going through. Here's Nancy Salzman, Keith Seconding Command, talking about Janice. 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. But Janice also had really strict ideas about what women were like and what men were like. One of those ideas was that women lacked discipline. Women are so indulgent of their bodies. So that's why women are struggled with weight. So the best way to get through that issue is to restrict your calories. You know, so you're not just impulsively eating all the time

or indulging your emotions all the time. Back then, Allison thought she was part of a kick-ass feminist group, that was helping women introspect and be better. But a lot of Janessa's views were very retrograde, not that she realized it at the time. As I got deeper into the Janesse curriculum, it was more and more and more reinforced that it's the woman's job to make the men feel emotionally safe

and vulnerable and whatever you can do to help them feel comfortable and safe is your job as a woman and all this stuff. One of the interesting aspects of Janess was that it preached non-monogamy. or a specific sort of non-monogamy. There's this backdrop of the genus curriculum, which is saying that, like,

monogamy is equivalent to ownership, and if you believe that you own this person in their relationship and they're only beholden to you, then you aren't actually loving that person. You're just possessing them and you're objectifying them. This is actually similar to some Marxist ideas about monogamy. Engels wrote a whole thing. whole treatise on how traditional monogamy and marriage subjugates women.

The feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir was also famously non-monogamous. But that's not what was really going on in Janice. In fact, the whole thing, it seems to me, was just a philosophical smokescreen. A lot of bullshit laying the groundwork to cover for Keith's sexual misbehavior. Because all the while Allison was living in Albany, going on walks with Keith, he was having relationships with multiple women. One of Keith's long-term girlfriends was a woman named Pam Kaffredz.

Pam was slim, with long brown hair and a slightly upturned nose. She got involved with Keith way back in the 90s. I didn't know Keith was sleeping with all these people. I didn't know Keith had all these relationships. I didn't know anything until Pam let it slip once that she was in a relationship with him and that he, at the same time, he was in a relationship with Karen, and I was like, what?

Now, Allison wasn't involved with Keith at this point sexually, but Pam and Karen's relationships with Keith were presented to Allison as a form of polyamory. It was exactly the kind of relationship Janessa's ideology had set Allison up to accept. And I was like, whoa, okay. Still, Keith's relationship with Pam was a woman. of singular importance. Pam was like old, but beautiful still.

And so amenable. Like anything that Keith wanted, she was like, can I be happy to do? And she had a lot of money. And so anything that Keith needed, she would have. But in 2013, Pam got sick. She was diagnosed with cancer and given three years to live. This sent Keith into a tailspin.

He didn't want her to die, and he didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to be without a female presence. So he made her the center of our world for those three years. He demanded that Allison and other Nexium members travel with Pam to Boston for her cancer treatment. When Pam got sick, there was a circling of the wagons, and I was required to go to Boston. and stay with her while she was sick. But then, like, I would take the train into the city if I had an audition or a meeting

or I would go teach in intensive or, like, I would kind of come and go. But the pivot point of our lives was Pam's illness. And Keith got more and more and more controlling as Pam got more and more and more ill. It was in tandem. But the lengths Keith would go to to replace Pam and exert control

would shock even some of nexiums. most loyal followers. This ascent isn't for everyone. You need grit to climb this high this often. You've got to be an underdog that always over delivers. You've got to be 6,500 hospital staff, 1,000 doctors, all doing so much with so little. You've got to be Scarborough. Defined by our uphill battle and always striving.

towards new heights. And you can help us keep climbing. Donate at lovescarborough.cairot.ca. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do.

Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. So Pam's sickness had a profound impact on nexium and on Allison. Her illness was a central focus

in the community at that time. And different people had different responsibilities and roles. So in Tibetan Buddhism, there are different types of monks. There's like hermit monks whose their sole purpose in life is to meditate and raise the consciousness of the people in the whole world. So they sit in the mountains and they just meditate. Like, that's it. They never leave.

And then there are monks who are like the emissaries for different countries. And their job is to go out and like spread the word and like interact with people who are not Buddhist and things like that. And so Keith likened the Nexian community to that. Some people in the Nexium community were homebody caretakers whose role was to care for others. And my role, Alison, because I was so out in the world and that it was to spread the message and to be in the world and bring new people in and represent what Nexium is in the public eye because that was my personality and my constitution. And so that was like my role.

So Allison's role, her purpose, was to go out and recruit. Remember, one of the things that Nexium specialized in were small, intimate, self-growth seminars, usually held in their cozy seminar centers around the world, from Guadalajara to Vancouver, to Portland, Oregon, to Albany, New York. And they could be on many different topics, how to be a moral person in the world, or how to be a good partner. But after the group became popular in Vancouver and a lot of actors began signing up for its seminars,

Keith thought Nexium should offer a self-help course on acting, and Alison should lead it. Keith had come up with this curriculum for actors and artists, which was called The Source, which was all about taking, acting exercises and exercises involving the arts and utilizing them to help people build, more compassion in their lives. The source was Nexium's answer to the Stellar Adelow Studio, or the Meisner technique.

At different times, Keith offered leadership of the source, which was a position of influence and respect, to several different female actors in Nexium. But Allison was the one put in charge, much to the chagrin of others. This was how Keith used her ability as an actor to promote Nexium. I think it's part of what made me a good actor or at least made me able to survive in the industry as it is, which is incredibly cutthroat.

I have a very fiery center that can be very like attack. I don't like confrontation, but if there's something I want, I'm very willing to go after it in a very aggressive way. And I call it a little dictator when I was like five playing with my brother

and he wouldn't do what I want. him to do. The dictator came out and I became very like, no, you'll do this, you know, like willful and firm. And that part of my personality came out with my slaves. And that is a part of myself that I have to contend with, you know? And that's where I went to prison for that. Because there was somewhere else Allison would have to recruit women to. Not just the source or Janess, another secret women's organization. That Keith was setting up to cope with Pam's sickness. But first, Allison would have to take the next step in her relationship with Keith.

It's 2015, and Allison is on a trip to Williamstown, Massachusetts, to see a place. Williams Town is a picturesque little mountain town in the Berkshires filled with tree-lined streets and a quaint downtown. It's known for its theatrical play series. Allison's here with a Mexican woman named Danny. Danny was one of my, like, really, really good friends in Nexian. She was really beautiful and really fashionable and stylish and really curious and interesting and sophisticated

and she had been to fashion school and she liked to draw. And there were all these crossovers in my... things that I liked and things that she liked. Danny's got brown hair, full lips, and dark eyes. She's always very well-dressed, and lately she's taken to wearing a peculiar leather necklace, even on casual strolls like this one. We were walking together and she said,

are you happy with your life? And I said, yeah, like, actually, I'm feeling really good in my life. I was teaching the source, I was like doing all these things. And she said, well, you know, are there any things that you, you feel like you would want to change or want different. And I said, well, I struggle with my intimate relationships. Like, I think that there was some stuff that went on when I was a kid that was inappropriate,

but I can't really figure it out. And so it's hard for me to feel comfortable in sexual spaces. And she was like, have you talked to Keith about that? And I was like, that feels so inappropriate. I'm not going to talk to Keith about my sex life. Like, he's my teacher, you know. We own a business together, you know? And she was like, well, hasn't he helped you with everything else?

And I was like, yeah. And she's like, well, why wouldn't he be able to help you with this? And I was like, oh, okay, maybe you're right. I want to pause for a minute. Allison told Danny that there was some stuff that happened when she was a kid that was inappropriate. And before we go any further, I need to tell you a little bit about this. It's very difficult to talk about, and Allison's still trying to understand it herself. I'll let her explain it in her own words.

I experienced different types of exploitation around myself and my sexuality in different occasions, yeah, as I was growing up from a very young age. I had some stuff happening in a more personal space, not on set, with people that I trusted. that was not cool. And also, I was on set in an environment in a world where women are always exploited. Allison remembers one instance, in particular. When I was 14, I was working on a TV show,

and a director was flirting with me, and the producers pulled me into the office with my mom and said that I was being inappropriate on set and that I needed to go. And if I wasn't in the classroom or working, I needed to be in my trailer. And now, at the time, I totally internalized it. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm so bad and wrong.

I had just gotten my period, y'all. Like, I was a kid. Allison's mom remembers this, too. Allison didn't understand what was happening because she wasn't savvy that way. And I think he had her sit on his lap or something like that. I mean, it was in front of the whole crew and everything. And, you know, it made her cry

because she didn't ever want to do anything wrong. and so she felt like she had done something wrong in buying into what this director was doing. This is before me too. Somebody should have pulled him aside and said, what you're doing is inappropriate. Leave her alone. She was the innocent.

When a child experiences sexually inappropriate behavior, these wires between sex and authority and power and autonomy all get crossed. It can be very difficult to untangle. As an adult, it can lead victims to have difficulties in their intimate relationships, to sometimes be inappropriately sexual and also sexually naive, often in quick succession. Allison felt this. So I was not able to maintain a good relationship romantically.

And I felt super detached from my sexuality to the point where it was like, people would tell me like, oh, you're so sexy, or I'd get hired to play these, like, sexy roles. And I'd just be like, what the, there was like this chasm of experience, you know, between my, I don't know, cardboard cutout that was people were interacting with. Yeah, you're like half of time. Yeah, exactly.

And I was like, this feels, there's something wrong. Like, this is not normal. that I have so much shame around my sexuality, so much disconnect around my sexuality, so much fear around my sexuality. Like, what is that? I had kind of decided at that point there's something wrong with me

and I need to figure out what that is. The conversation with Danny planted a seed for Allison. So when Allison returned to Albany, she went to Keith. And so that's when I approached Keith. and I said, you know, I feel like I really struggle with my sexuality. I think that there were things that happened when I was a kid that weren't okay. I can't feel myself connecting to my sexuality.

I feel ashamed of my body and my sexuality. Like, I don't understand how I can get around this. And he was like, well, I can help you with that. And I said, yeah, well, Danny told me that you might be able to. And he said, but in order for me to help you with that, we're going to have to be physically intimate because it's an experiential problem. that you're having. This might sound strange.

But for Allison, it's somehow tracked with nexium logic. Logic she'd been knee-deep-in for nine years at this point. One of the things in nexium, like one of the things they always said was like, you can have a theoretical understanding or you can have a visceral understanding. And a visceral understanding is true learning and a theoretical understanding is just like knowledge. The example that they always said was like, you can read a book about skiing, but that doesn't mean that when you get to the top of a mountain, you're going to know how to ski.

You don't know how to ski until you get on skis and you go down a mountain. And so that was consistent. That logic fit with what he was saying, right? And now Keith is telling her that he can help her with a physical solution. So that night, he came over to her apartment. It was winter.

cold out. Keith walked into Allison's little living room. Again, he repeated the same thing. He said, we're going to have to be physically intimate because it's an experiential problem that you're having, and so I can't just theoretically help you through it. Like, you have to have the experience of going through it. And I was like, okay, you know, I'll try that.

And that was how the physical relationship started with us. As it was happening, Allison thought, This is fucking weird. Like, this is very weird. But I was also like, he's going to help me. He's my teacher and he's going to help me. And that was sort of what was happening in my brain was I was like, he's going to help. On some level, Allison felt that this was wrong.

But she convinced herself to push through it. Because even during the very act, Keith was justifying it as therapeutic. He called it energy work. So when he was sleeping with you, he would say, I'm moving energy through your body. Like Tantric kind of the thing, you know. Afterwards, he went over what had just happened with Allison. It's like going over the experience and capitulating what that was and what that meant and how that was working in my emotional and energy body.

What was that like? Where did you feel that? How did you, what did you think? It was like dissecting it, you know, like a dissection. of the experience, right? Which is linking certain ideas and concepts that he has that he wants to the experience for me, right? So then the next time I have that experience

and I feel that in my body, I think, oh, that's him pushing that energy through my body. This is so sick, so insidious, justifying coercive sex as therapy. But what's even worse is that the curriculum of Nexium had Alison beating herself up for even questioning this. In my head, I'm going, this is weird, and then in my head I'm also saying, but that's just how

dysfunctional you are, because this is the safest man that you could be with, and this is a person that just wants to take care and love you, and he doesn't even want anything from you. He just wants to make sure that you're okay, he wants to help you. So the fact that this feels weird, Allison, is just an indication of how dysfunctional you are. Like, you're just really messed up and really broken. After that night, Allison reached out to Danny, the woman she'd spoken to in Williamstown, who had suggested she'd go to Keith for help in the first place. And I was like, I don't know, it just feels really weird.

And Danny was like, well, why? What does it mean? And she would EM me about the discomfort that I was having in my sexual relationship with him. About a week after Keith and Allison had sex for the first time, Allison met up with Keith for a walk. And he said, I have a new curriculum that I'm developing that I think you might be interested in. And I was like, okay, cool, I'm always up for a new curriculum, you know? And he was like, it's really intense. It's only for women, and it's only for, like, a very select group of women.

And I was like, oh, okay. And he was like, have you noticed anything different about anybody in our community recently, any of the women in our community recently? And I noticed that Danny was wearing this weird fucking necklace, and Nikki had lost a fuck ton of weight. Nikki is Nikki Klein, a Canadian actress. She's got blonde hair, big blue doe eyes, and a sort of round, moon-shaped face.

She's best known for playing Callie Henderson on the TV show Battlestar Galactica. She's another nexium follower, another actress. And as Allison had noticed, had recently lost a lot of weight. And he was like, yeah, they're a part of this curriculum. And I was like, huh, okay? And he was like, it's very serious, and it takes a lifetime, lifelong commitment. And it's really basically designed to make you push through all of your greatest fears

so that you can become the strongest and most empowered version of yourself. So because usually people will only work on whatever it is that they're most comfortable working on, they never actually get to the root of their biggest fear. Whereas with this, you are bound to somebody whose job it is to push you into your greatest fear so that you will actually grow through that and not just dance around it. And I was like, that sounds great.

I want to work through my greatest fears. I want to be the strongest version of myself. I want to be pushed as hard as I can be pushed. And so he was like, okay, well, it's a lifetime commitment and it's a master-slave dynamic because you're going to learn how to be completely humble and completely subverting because that was the other thing.

Women are self-absorbed and arrogant and they don't consider other people. And so this is going to put you in a position where you're 100% considering your master all the time. Alison's narcissism, her performative self-centeredness, Keith says this will finally be the thing to rid her of all that. like, so if you're interested, if you want to do that, like, the first thing that you need to do

is offer me collateral so that I know that you won't break your commitment to us and to this. And I was like, okay, so like, I am going to keep my word to you. And if I don't, the collateral is you can have my car for a weekend or, like, you collateralize at the bank. You know what I mean? You give something in exchange for your word. So that was, that concept was already in my head. I had already collateralized my word for different things and intensive.

and stuff. So Allison prepares collateral. And then it became like, well, the collateral is another way to elicit your greatest attachments. Like, what are you most afraid of destroying? What are you most afraid of losing? Oh, that points to your most, your greatest attachments, you know? And ultimately, like, you want to have no attachments. This is a very common idea across religion and philosophy.

In Buddhism, it's known as non-attachment. The practice of letting go of our attachment to material possessions, relationships, even emotions. Aesthetics have long practiced renouncing material possessions. Think of monks and yogis. It's a similar kind of thing. So I came up with collateral. That was like really intense.

It's to do with her family. Allison doesn't want to disclose what exactly. But she hands over her collateral to Keith. And at his command, she begins calling him master. A short while later, Allison is sitting in Danny's living room in Clifton Park. Danny had this cute little townhouse where everybody lived. Allison's with Danny and three other women. Loretta, the woman who drove her to the volleyball game the first time she met Keith,

Nikki, and a woman named Cammy. They're here under Keith's instruction. He was like, you guys all need to meet and decide what this is going to be. like you need to decide how this is going to work and what this is going to look like because Keith has an idea for an all-female group one where these women are going to be accountable to each other move beyond their petty feminine traits

like being inconsistent or dramatic or performative or any of the other things nexium's gendered programs taught women were these women would get deep and ultimately we come down to this idea that like we all wanted to grow we all wanted to be get through our biggest fears, and we all wanted to help other women do that. Like, that was, like, the focus of it. This meeting is the creation of DOS.

It's short for Dominus obsequious sororium, a Latin phrase that loosely translates to, Lord over the obedient female companions. They're creating it in part because Pam is dying. And this is Keith's plan to make up for losing her, his way of exerting control. It's an all-female sorority. run by Keith

that will give him dozens more pams obedient, beautiful, loving women who will be completely subservient to Keith but now Keith says these women

have to go out and recruit other slaves. I felt so angry with myself because Catherine she worked and she saved her kid she saved her kid and I didn't It was this, like, insidious little pool of grooming and manipulation and brainwashing away from your own sense of what's right and what's not right.

They burst in, they put me on the floor face down, and they start asking me, who's in there with me? And I called Keith's name. Tune in next week for an all-new episode of Allison After Nexium, or you can listen ahead. to the full series now by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on YouTube, links in the show description. You've been listening to Uncover, Alison After Nexion, from CBC and Campside Media. It's hosted by me, Natalie Robamed. Our executive producers are myself and Vanessa Gregoriatis at Campside and Stephen Belper.

Our senior producer is Lily Houston Smith, and our associate producer is Emma Simeonoff. Sound design, mix, and engineering by Mark McCadham and E. Wynne Lai Tremuyn. Thank you to Colin Campbell. At CBC, our story editor is Derek John, and our senior producer is Kate Evans. Our coordinating producer is Emily Connell. Our executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tonya Springer is the senior manager. Arif Narani is the director.

If you enjoyed Alison after Nexium, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. If you liked this show, Uncover, Escaping Nexium, is a powerful story of the beginning of the unraveling of Keith Reneery's cult. Listen to Escaping Nexium at the link in the show notes, or by scrolling to Season 1 of Uncover, wherever you're listening right now. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.