Keith Raniere was born in Brooklyn, New York on August 26, 1960. His father worked in advertising and his mother was a dance instructor. He was still young when his parents were separated, about 8 years old. Raniere later claimed that he had been inspired to start NXIVM, by reading an Isaac Asimov book about mind control at age 12. Raniere graduated from high school in 1977. He attended college in Troy, New York in December. In 1978 his mother died. In 1982, Raniere graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a 2.26 GPA, barely passing.
He was employed as a computer programmer for the New York State Division of Parole. They parents were considered him highly intelligent. He started working with Amway which is a well-known multi-level marketing company. He became fascinated with neuro-linguistic programming otherwise NLP. He also developed an interest in Scientology which is often described as a cult. Ron Hubbard was the founder. It has been alleged that when Raniere was 24, he had two sexual relationships that involve 15-year-olds.
It was a pyramid scheme, because this was a system where only recruiting others can generate revenue for people who are already in the business, so it has to keep growing indefinitely and that of course is not sustainable.
There he met Toni Natalie and they had an affair. She was married and had a child. She said: “He seemed like a geek. And I sat down and I asked him, I said ‘so you have a 240 IQ why are you doing this? Why don’t you cure cancer? Why aren’t you really making a difference?’ and he said this is the platform that I’m gonna use and I’m gonna change the world even then’.” The man who would become smooth-talking sage, Vanguard, had big plans even then. Raniere claimed to have an IQ of 240, 80 points above the highest possible score that somebody could receive on a WAIS IQ test. The company was investigated by many different States and in 1993 it was shut down. Raniere had to pay a $40.000 fine in 1998.
Toni had left her husband and moved to Albany with her young son, to be with Keith. They were together for nearly six years. Toni Natalie said about Raniere: “Here’s the smartest man in the world willing to help you through your emotional issues and the reason that you’re stuck in this world, and the reason that you can’t move on, and the reason you can’t grow is because you haven’t learned how to heal that thing inside of you.”
In 1998 Reniere was introduced to Nancy Salzman who was the therapist of Toni Natalie. Salzman was a nurse and attended trainings in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), as well as hypnotism. The pair would start a personal development company, called Executive success programs. Later the name was changed to NXIVM.
In this new company Raniere referred to himself as Vanguard while Salzman called herself Proctor. They asked people to call them Vanguard and Proctor. The name Vanguard comes from a video game that Raniere had in his garage. This company offered executive coaching and self-improvement seminars. Many successful people were in their organization. NXIVM was offered some type of therapeutic service: helping people uncover beliefs that were formed early, challenging those beliefs, setting goals, overcoming fears etc. The way they described things in these sessions was vague and people thought that they had to learn more to understand. The organization had ranks. They wore sashes that indicated the rank. Each color was a different level. Raniere wore a white one. People perceived those with higher ranks as better, more successful and it played a significant part in later manipulation.
Raniere and Salzman recruited a lot of high-profile people, including Sara and Clare Bronfman, billionaires. They were heiress to the Seagram’s fortune, a company that originally produced alcohol but would later get into a number of different ventures, including the entertainment industry.
Keith Raniere gave numerous interviews, spoke with Mexican politician about her election campaign, documentaries had been made about NXIVM and beautiful videos from seminars etc. Seminars lasted for many hours per day for several weeks and it was very exhausting. But at the time, people felt that it helped them. According to former members the sessions came to involve practices such as bowing and a special handshake. Former coach, Margot Joy Leviton, says: “Classes begin with the ritual hand clap. We would do something that would call a “huddle”, so everyone would put their arms around each other into this big circle and then straight into the mission statement.” Margot says anyone unwilling to go along with the rituals would be scorned: “…you would just suppress them and be like, oh they just don’t get it…” In the huddle they would repeat together: “I choose not to be a victim. To Vanguard!”
In August of 2002, one of the two 15-year-olds with whom Raniere had a relationship, named Gina Hutchinson was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. In November of that same year Raniere met with 35-year-old Kristin Snyder. She claimed that she was pregnant with Raniere’s child. She was last seen in February of 2003. She allegedly committed suicide, but her body was never found. She left a note.
In October 2003, an article in Forbes magazine titled “The world’s strangest executive coach”, essentially accused Raniere of running a cult. In 2005 Raniere started a relationship with another 15-year-old female. From 2005 to 2007 Raniere lost $66 million in commodities trading, but the Bronfman’s covered his losses. They would spend over $150 million on NXIVM, in addition to covering those trading losses. They bought a jet and land in Los Angeles and Albany. They spent millions funding Raniere lawsuits against his perceived enemies.
In 2006, Allison Mack, an American actress who played Chloe Sullivan on the superhero series Smallville and had a recurring role on the comedy series Wilfred, joined NXIVM. India Oxenberg, Sarah Edmondson and many others were also successful members and rising stars. Sarah Edmondson, according to her words, recruited more than 100 members.
In 2009 NXIVM spent two million dollars on a project designed to get the endorsement of the Dalai Lama, which essentially they did get. Sara Bronfman had a sexual relationship with the Dalai Lama’s scheduling person, who was a monk. He had lived in celibacy.
The same year there was a rift in the organization. Nine members defected complaining about Raniere’s manipulation of women. If you questioned Raniere, you were gaslighted – you were the problem, you didn’t get it, you had a problem. I suppose that not many people challenged him at the time. Maybe they left or after some time, they felt something was wrong.
Keith Raniere: “I had people killed because of my beliefs and because of things that I’ve said.” That was his reaction when a group of women confronted him.
Let’s hear what he was saying.
Keith Raniere: “But when you have the opportunity to put a bright light on me and just questions…”
Allison Mack: “I was just wondering if you could explain sort of your take on the nature of creativity and if there’s a process of…”
Keith Raniere: “I could say a bunch of things that are just not creating creativity. I normally speak of science and creativity as sort of being somewhat opposite, but they’re not really. I mean, inherent in science is this notion that we can have free will, and there’s even in science things like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that it talks about our limits and how we can observe things and stuff like that. But, you know, a point is if we have something that we can predict. It becomes not creative at all. It has no free will and it’s science. And if it seems to have free will, we see it as things, and things parts of it that are not predictable and thereby creative. It creates. It is the thing that comes from it is not a function of that which comes before, in any way that we can predict. It’s as if this thing birthed something totally new and unpredictable.”
Allison Mack: “Mm-hm.”
Keith Raniere: “…likewise authenticity has no additional layers of artifice, no trying to be something that you think you should be. It’s just a pure state of being, so one would say authenticity is being as you are and expressing as you are, at least to some degree. And as you are as, of course, the sum of your whole past. So when someone’s being authentic, you get the feeling that not only that there’s a person there in the moment, but somehow you reach into their very essence, and you meet a unique individual.”
Allison Mack: “I don’t know why I want to cry. It’s beautiful. I think… Sorry.”
Keith Raniere: “I think these are all things that we strive for, you know. We strive 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. Things, the things like what we call love and compassion and even something like, as I say, connection or rapport. Some people call it an energy or whatever. But now we’re not talking to a machine, we’re talking to another human.”
In 2010 two articles came out about the cult. Vanity Fair published an article titled “The heiresses and the cult” and the Albany Times Union newspaper published an article talking about how Raniere exploited students. The most devastating article was published in 2017 by the New York Times. It described a secret group of women within NXIVM, called DOS. This was set up like a multi-level marketing system where each woman recruited six other women. The recruiter was referred to as the master and the person they recruited the slave. Sarah Edmondson was a slave and her best friend, Nancy Salzman’s daughter was her master. When Sarah said to her best friend that it had sounded weird, she answered that it was like a teacher and disciple, just semantics. In order for a woman to join the group they had to give embarrassing information. This was called collateral part of the initiation. Allison Mack insisted that they gave them nude pictures. They thought that she led the group, because it was a female group and they believed it would make them stronger women. Keith Raniere was behind it. Process was branding a symbol that looked like Keith Raniere’s initials were burned into the skin of women, around groin area, referred to as slaves, as well as Allison Mack initials. But they did not know that. It was very painful process. There was an audio and we could hear Raniere and Allison was walking around the neighborhood, as they were doing often, and talking about DOS and Allison is suggesting how to brand women. They lived in the same neighborhood.
Raniere had a child with a member, but she fled the Albany area in 2014.
Keith Raniere preferred skinny women so they were allowed to take in a few calories (Kcal). They went to his place whenever he called them. They were punished if they didn’t respect a rule to be skinny.
Raniere fled to Mexico and the FBI filed a number of charges against him, including sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor, the sexual exploitation of a child. In 2018 he would be arrested by Mexican authorities and returned to the United States. He was in the middle of a group sex session when those authorities arrived. Raniere hid in the closet. In panic, women went outside but they couldn’t help him. Other people associated with NXIVM were also arrested, including Allison Mack, Nancy Salzman and Clare Bronfman. During his trial in 2019, a number of people testified against Raniere. His attorneys did not call any witnesses.
On October 27 of 2020, Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison.
NXIVM did not involve religious beliefs as other cults. It was a business sex cult for empowering members and to learn them to set goals. By exploring the meaning, Raniere knew their fears and not only that fear is the best method of controlling people, but by knowing fears, they felt closer to him.
Keith Raniere claimed that he was a genius and that he spoke in full sentences by the age of one, was reading by the age of two. At age 12, he taught himself high school mathematics in a short period of time. He claimed that he taught himself to play piano at very young age, that he was a judo champion. The one thing that we know is true is that he played volleyball every day. He played with his members.
People need to belong somewhere and to have some mission in this world. Above all, many people are disoriented and tend to find someone to lead them. Someone who knows what he/she is doing. Someone to liberate them and alleviate their pain and stress. They were children again who were listening to that one person who knew everything and taught them how to deal with life. They shared fears and they were together in that unity, called a cult. That was something that was missing in their lives.
