NXIVM, now under investigation for a host of crimes, tried to recruit journalists for its media arm.
Last week, actress Allison Mack, best known for her role on Smallville, was arrested and charged with a series of crimes, including sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy in connection with her position as an alleged recruiter for the secretive and cult-like “self-help” group NXIVM.
Her arrest followed that of Keith Raniere, co-founder of the group, who was apprehended in Mexico in March, and turned over to U.S. authorities on similar charges. In a statement, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney claimed that Raniere had “displayed a disgusting abuse of power in his efforts to denigrate and manipulate women he considered his sex slaves,” and that he “allegedly participated in horrifying acts of branding and burning them, with the cooperation of other women operating within this unorthodox pyramid scheme.”
Both arrests come after years of suspicion aroused by NXIVM’s activities and a number of investigative articles about Raniere (such as this one that appeared in Vanity Fair in 2010), but little real action from law enforcement. As is often the case when it comes to similar groups whose members are enthralled by a charismatic leader, beaten down into submission or outright threatened, or ones who are especially litigious, reporting on them—never mind seeing them brought to justice—can be especially arduous.
One reporter who found how difficult it can be is Brock Wilbur, who spent the last year working on an investigative podcast called “Under the Knife” for Amazon’s Audible about NXIVM. Nearly finished, the podcast was canceled in early April, in large part, he told me, because of fears over potential litigation. Two of the group’s wealthiest members, Clare and Sara Bronfman, heiresses to the Seagram’s whisky fortune, have been said to be behind the group’s “litigation machine.”
After he spoke with some 70 former members, or people with knowledge of the group, Wilbur’s effort remains in limbo, although the arrest of Raniere has renewed his resolve to help bring the survivors’ stories to the light of day in one form or another.
The freelance journalist and stand-up comedian found himself unwittingly drawn into the world of Raniere and company about a year and a half ago when he was searching for jobs online. He came across a curious listing for something called “The Knife of Aristotle,” a name he says should have tipped him off that something weird was afoot. But the climate for media jobs being as anemic as it is, he was intrigued nonetheless.
The job, Wilbur learned, was to take part in an attempt at destroying “fake news,” a seemingly noble goal in this uncertain Trumpian media era. To do that, The Knife of Aristotle had purportedly developed a proprietary formula by which its staff could evaluate various news outlets based on a series of internal standards. It was shortly after the election, and at the time Wilbur was getting emails forwarded from his credulous parents saying things like “Trump destroys ISIS on his first day in office!” that were clearly bullshit.“I was activated in the 2016 election to get really political, and then when we saw what happened. I thought I needed a job that matters and does something to help fix things,” he said.Wilbur went through a series of interviews with the group, which kept encouraging him to come attend five weeks of unpaid training in the woods outside Albany, at his own expense, which, little did he know, is where NXIVM is headquartered. “The more they interviewed me, I was like, ’This sounds so culty. I’ve been a journalist my entire adult life—what do I need a five-week training program for?’ They said, ‘Stop asking so many questions. Just come.’”
He was dealing with what appeared to be a full-fledged cult, eager to divest him from his money. But he still had no idea how bad it would get.
Raniere’s co-conspirators and/or victims are believed to include a number of figures from the worlds of journalism and entertainment in addition to Mack, who was seen chasing Mexican police after his arrest. Political operative Roger Stone has also been reported to have had business dealings with the group years ago, as have Goldie Hawn and the Dalai Lama. Jens Erik Gould, a recurring guest on Fox News and the editor of NXIVM’s media branch—now known as The Knife—has been one of the group’s most strident critics of the mainstream media, speaking in terms that have become all too familiar in the age of the Trump administration and so-called “fake news.” The effort to recruit reporters like Wilbur was apparently done to lay the groundwork for framing Raniere’s innocence, at least in part by casting doubt on the trustworthiness of a number of mainstream media outlets. Indeed, a letter released by the group from NXIVM co-leader Nancy Salzman shortly after Raniere’s arrest says as much.“The media has great power to create impressions about people,” the letter reads. “Even when these impressions are false or fabricated, they can still influence how someone is treated and tried in our legal system. It is difficult to comprehend why such dishonor and hate would be directed towards a peaceful man, but right now that is not our job. Our job is to set the record straight and see to it that justice is served, and honor and respect are restored in our justice system.”Since Mack’s arrest, other journalists, including the New York Times’ Amanda Hess, have shared efforts the actress made to connect with them, which now do not seem quite as innocent as they may have at the time. Probably a good call not to have responded to that one, many of her followers replied on Twitter. Others had a similar reaction when a tweet from Mack to Emma Watson surfaced this week as well.
After receiving more pressure from the group to attend, and a series of tests meant to gauge his experience with “ethics in journalism,” Wilbur began poking around on The Knife’s website. Hidden behind a paywall, it offered users a chance to submit articles from various news outlets, which would then, in theory, be subjected to the organization’s advanced scrutiny and returned with scores for metrics like “spin” and “slant”, all for a subscription fee. He soon figured out that some of the staff members listed on the site—often a dozen or more on an article’s byline, with titles like “logic expert”—appeared to be fabricated and that there was little actual news analysis going on. “Ostensibly what they had was a system where you were supposed to send them articles and then they would evaluate them individually,” Wilbur says. “But there was nothing and no proof that there was any work being done by anyone.”
It wasn’t long after that realization that Wilbur understood he was dealing with what appeared to be a full-fledged cult, eager to divest him from his money. But he still had no idea how bad it would get.
He documented his ordeal in an article last year for Paste magazine. Following the publication of the piece, numerous ex-members of NXIVM reached out to him, eager to share their stories.
According to interviews Wilbur conducted with them, and allegations made by federal prosecutors, NXIVM was founded about 20 years ago and operates centers around the world where recruits are encouraged to take self-improvement courses based in part on Ayn Rand-style self-determination teachings. They cost thousands of dollars, and members are then expected to recruit others to join themselves. In an offshoot of the group known as DOS, an acronym for a Latin phrase that roughly translates to “Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions,” women are reportedly expected to serve as slaves to their masters, including having sex with Raniere. As a means of collateral for their secrecy, the women are allegedly required to provide damaging or embarrassing information about themselves that could be used in retaliation—something that is listed among the allegations against Mack—and branded with Raniere’s initials using a caustic heating pen in their pelvic area, forced to wear fake cow udders over their breasts while being verbally abused, or threatened with imprisonment in cages.
” It’s like a Get Out sort of thing. One guy told me about running to the train station and getting texts from his family like, ‘The whole town is in on it!’”
“It turns out a bunch of people in NXIVM around the world were starting to think something was wrong, like they were being taken advantage of,” Wilbur said. “Then my piece came out and it got widely shared, and a bunch of them said that’s the last straw, and reached out to me on Facebook. Pretty soon I had 20 to 30 contacts of people who were there for years, had just gotten out, or were on the verge, saying, ‘Oh my god, this is so much.’”
Much of the reporting he’s done since then has focused on survivors’ struggles to return to the real world and repair ruined relationships with their families, often after the ex-members have spent most or all of their money in service of the group. Some of the people he’s interviewed actually did end up taking the job he narrowly avoided taking himself.“Most of them realized after about a week they were in some Wicker Man or Hot Fuzz situation here. They were actually in a town, and they didn’t know this, but Keith owns most of the town, so all the people in the houses are parts of the cult but they don’t tell anyone that. It’s like a Get Out sort of thing. One guy told me about running to the train station and getting texts from his family like, ‘The whole town is in on it!’”
Wilbur decided the best way to highlight the group’s machinations was by relating the survivors’ experiences in a personalized, narrative form. It’s one thing to read the details of an alleged abusive cult in a newspaper story, but it’s another to hear it the voices of the people themselves.
“I was like, ‘If we humanize people, that will get people interested, and that’s where we build the groundswell to push the government to go do something about this,’” Wilbur said. “In my conversations with people who have gotten out, I’ve heard so many stories where I was like, ‘Every fucking word you’ve said for the last half hour should send someone to jail!’”
But the way the cult is structured, Wilbur said, is to keep as many layers of separation between members as possible. Many he talked to had no idea about the alleged sexual slavery or mutilation or anything of the sort.
“Everything is done in circles and no one knows what’s going on anywhere else. There are people who got out and found out about sex trafficking and abuse, and those were the first people that came to me and said, ‘I’m ready to flip.’ Or others who said they saw crazy shit but not that level—and if it’s like that level, then, ‘Fuck him forever, we’ve got to do something.’ I feel like everyone involved at every level of this has been hurt by this, and the moment they get out and get a breath of fresh air they’re like, ‘Oh, I’m a victim here.’”
Telling those stories, especially in the face of a well-financed and aggressively litigious group, is easier said than done. When Audible reached out to Wilbur last year to see if he’d be interested in turning the stories into a podcast—he envisioned it at as the next “Serial,” he said—he was reticent at first.
“I was like, ’These guys make most of their money from suing journalists.’ There was a Vanity Fair journalist in 2014 that just go out of trial. And that’s sort of what’s kept this story under wraps for so long, the way they can threaten people.”
“If they’d just shut their mouths about Bari Weiss, I don’t think Keith would be in jail right now. It go so much attention, I think it brought them down.”
Audible assured him that with “Amazon money” backing them, they could offer protection to his sources. But some reshuffling behind the scenes, Wilbur said, lead to the producers getting cold feet as the release approached. A spokesperson for Audible declined to comment on the status of the podcast.“When I got started I had a blank check to offer people a deal: ‘If you come forward and talk on the record, we’ll be able to protect you.’ But a few months ago they kind of went back on that. I was like ‘Whoa,, this is weird. I have these interviews with people and you’re saying if it goes to court they’d have to defend themselves? That’s not the arrangement we had.’ About a week ago I said I just don’t see a path forward here.”Ironically, given so-called fake news’ role at the center of the story, it was a truly bizarre piece posted on The Knife last month that Wilbur believes may have contributed to Raniere’s downfall. In the piece, itself about a meta-media controversy, The Knife applied its analytical formula to a series of other outlets’ writing about a flood of criticism leveled against New York Times opinion columnist Bari Weiss. Its emergence left many members of the media flabbergasted as to what this weird new media site could even be. Few made the connection at the time between The Knife and NXIVM, however.
“With the Weiss thing, I do feel like that might’ve been what brought them down,” Wilbur said. “They’d never published anything [of note] until the Weiss thing, and that took off and it was the most I’d ever seen anyone pay attention. If they’d just shut their mouths about Bari Weiss, I don’t think Keith would be in jail right now. It go so much attention, I think it brought them down.”
Meanwhile, Wilbur said, the group has continued its assault on the media, with contributors like Gould on Fox News muddying the waters. That sort of effort goes a long way toward explaining how a group like NXIVM, or any other well-heeled villain, political or otherwise, can continue to get away with things for so many years.
“That’s why it’s hard getting a lot of the people out of the cult now, because it sounds to them like the rest of the world just made up the most ridiculous claim they could about Keith to get him arrested. Very few people have had insight into [the abuse]. It isn’t until people have started leaving that we’re hearing these stories.”
“They’re still expanding, and they have a journalism arm functioning to tell the world whatever they hear about Keith is fake news,” Wilbur went on.
Who knows what the rest of the world (people like Wilbur’s parents, for example) will believe—never mind those still stuck inside NXIVM, apparently trained to distrust the media.
“I think it’s going to be a really hard road to get these last people out of the group. You’ve got to reconcile an entire reality they’ve been separated from for sometimes 20 years from what’s happening now,” Wilbur said. “I don’t know how you unlearn everything you know to be true and cast aside the person you think loves you most in the world.”