Keith Raniere, a self-improvement guru whose organisation NXIVM attracted millionaires and actresses amongst its adherents, faces sentencing Tuesday on convictions that he turned some feminine followers into intercourse slaves branded together with his initials. U.S. District Decide Nicholas Garaufis will announce an almost-certain prolonged jail time period Tuesday for Raniere after listening to victims communicate.
The courtroom continuing in Brooklyn culminates a number of years of revelations about NXIVM, which charged hundreds of {dollars} for invitation-only self enchancment programs at its headquarters close to Albany, New York, and had branches in Mexico and Canada. Company included Hollywood actors and different prosperous or outstanding people, a few of whom had been keen to endure humiliation and pledge obedience for Raniere’s imaginative and prescient of find out how to pursue perfection.
Prosecutors search life in jail whereas protection legal professionals say he ought to face 15 years behind bars for his conviction on fees together with racketeering, alien smuggling, intercourse trafficking, extortion and obstruction of justice. NXIVM has been the topic of two TV documentary collection this yr, HBO’s “The Vow,” and the Starz collection “Seduced: Contained in the NXIVM Cult.” Prosecutors mentioned Raniere, 60, led what amounted to a prison enterprise, inducing disgrace and guilt to affect and management co-conspirators who helped recruit and groom sexual companions for Raniere.
They mentioned that amongst different crimes, Raniere started a sexual relationship in 2005 with a 15-year-old woman and confined one other teenager to a room for practically two years. The chance of leniency appeared to dissipate with the latest sentencing of Clare Bronfman, 41, an inheritor to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, for her function in what has been described by some ex-members as a cult. Bronfman was sentenced to just about seven years in jail. Prosecutors had solely sought 5 years.
Ex-followers informed the decide that Bronfman for years had used her wealth to attempt to silence NXIVM defectors. Reniere’s followers known as him “Vanguard.” To honor him, the group shaped a secret sorority comprised of feminine “slaves” who had been branded together with his initials and ordered to have intercourse with him, the prosecutors mentioned. Ladies had been additionally pressured into giving up embarrassing details about themselves that could possibly be used towards them in the event that they left the group.
Together with Bronfman, Raniere’s teachings received him the devotion of Hollywood actors together with Allison Mack of TV’s “Smallville.” Mack additionally has pleaded responsible and is awaiting sentencing. In a sentencing submission, legal professionals for Reniere mentioned he “continues to say his full innocence to those fees.” They wrote that his jury conviction at an unfair trial resulted from a media marketing campaign involving witnesses who had been motivated to testify falsely as a part of a “heavy-handed prosecution that threatened potential protection witnesses.” And so they famous that prosecutors have criticized him for not displaying regret as he tried to create a podcast to amplify his claims of innocence.
“He has acted exactly how an harmless man would act, shouting from each rooftop each waking hour that the system has wrongfully convicted him,” the legal professionals wrote. His legal professionals mentioned the life jail time period prosecutors sought appeared out of line with a case involving no weapons, knives or pressure.
“Nobody was shot, stabbed, punched, kicked, slapped and even yelled at,” they mentioned. “Regardless of the intercourse offenses, there is no such thing as a proof that any girl ever informed Keith Raniere that she didn’t wish to kiss him, contact him, maintain his hand, or have intercourse with him.”.
