Part 1: Your Vanguard: in the eyes of his women

On March 24, 2015, Barbara Bouchey and Kristin Keeffe spoke about The Vanguard, Keith Raniere.

Miss Bouchey was one of Mr. Raniere’s lovers.  Mr. Raniere said she was supposed to give birth to his child who would be an avatar.

Miss Keeffe actually gave birth to his child.

Before she left Mr. Raniere, Miss Keeffe tried to show Nancy Salzman that Mr. Raniere was not actually who he claims to be.

***

Kristin Keeffe: “I went to Nancy [Salzman] and I said, ”Look at his fucking life. He’s so lazy, he can’t get anything done, all he does is spend all day long fucking around with women, walking around the neighborhood, playing fucking volleyball, and giving speeches.’ I tried to deprogram Nancy, but I had to always go light, because I didn’t want to out myself as being onto Keith. You know what I mean? I was always walking that line between trying to point these things out without outing myself completely as a dissident.  I said, ‘He’s asking us to sacrifice our lives doing this work we hate, going after his ex-girlfriends, and what the fuck is he doing? He’s doing nothing!’ And, I mean there was a point when I went to Nancy and said, ‘It’s like being a fitness fanatic does not make a person a renunciate.’ She was drinking coffee and she literally spit out the coffee laughing, she was like, ‘You’re right!’ You know? Obviously, this was in 2012. I was like, ‘Obviously, this man is not enlightened!’ You know? And, he’s got everything exactly the way he wants it. This is exactly how he wants his life to be. He doesn’t care about the shit. He’s not trying to succeed; he’s trying to enslave. …  I didn’t generally offer to help. And, I just did what I was told, and I was trying to pull away from everybody with my son to socially, emotionally you know distance so that when we did leave there would be no blip.

[Kristin spoke about the imprisonment of Danni Fernandez, who was kept in a room for 18 months because she would not join Mr. Raniere’s harem.]

Kristin: “Ben knew about Danni Fernandez’s imprisonment… Danni reached out to him more than once for help. And, he went to Keith very upset and they were, Keith was livid that Danni did this. ’cause, he thought he was going to lose Ben, and that’s why that was in part a large part of the reason why she got sent back to Mexico…..  [Ben Myers was]  willing to go along with these horrendous schemes that involve imprisoning women.”

Barbara: “Did Ben know the entire time [that Danni was imprisoned].”

Kristin: “He knew for a long time, not the entire time, but he knew for at least six months.”

Kristin spoke about Mr. Raniere’s experimental children’s teaching organization Rainbow Cultural Gardens. The head teacher was a teenage Cami Fernandez who was illegally in the USA at the time.

Barbara: “Is that kosher though?”

Kristin: “No, it’s totally fraudulent. She’s in the country on a fraudulently obtained visa, she’s not a manager for NXIVM. She’s the owner of fucking Rainbow but she’s not claiming it. I’m sure Rainbow’s never filed taxes. And all of this goes through Clare [Bronfman]. Clare oversees everything to do with the finances, and the personnel, and the management of Rainbow. And, then when you get into Rainbow, you get into issues that play back into each other. For example, Danni Fernandez and her mother were living imprisoned in the room while illegal alien, Cami Fernandez, is downstairs teaching the children that are being paid this twenty, and twenty-five dollars an hour – in the same fucking house. I mean, it’s crazy; including even Jennie Ose’s kid, Steve and Jennie’s kid. And, Clare and Nancy [Salzman] own the house. So, here’s the thing, initially, when Joe [O’Hara] was trying to get everything to go against NXIVM, he just knew that there were some nannies being paid through the foundation. What he didn’t understand was that the nannies he knew about had found legitimate visas. But, what he didn’t know about were the ones that were also being paid that didn’t have legitimate visas, and in particular the ones that were kicking back the money. And, the whole thing, Cami Fernandez, was the head fucking teacher. Nancy’s maid, [Cami] who came into the country illegally, lived there illegally, and had no education except a GED that she got around eighteen years old here in the U.S. when she wasn’t even supposed to be here. And, she’s the head teacher [of Rainbow Cultural Garden] and they’re running classes in her house with her mother and sister [Danni] locked in rooms upstairs. They use to take the kids upstairs to visit them…., Now you just have a whole criminal enterprise. There was fraud on every fucking level.”

Barbara: “Was Keith having a sexual relationship with [teenage] Camilla?

Kristin: “I believe that he did in recent years, but I don’t have proof of it. She moved into Flintlock number three with Karen [Unterreiner].”

Barbara: “Two months before I quit I saw him doing stuff with Camilla that to me was just an indication that he was grooming her. He was either already doing her or he was rooming her.”

Kristin: “The only reason I think he may not have is because of Marianna [Fernandez, Cami and Danni’s sister]. Marianna wouldn’t have tolerated it.”

Barbara: “Well, I’ll tell you, Camilla had like a girl teenage crush on him and it was ridiculous. We would be at a social event and she would have red lipstick on, a red 41 dress, and she would be watching Keith the entire night. Going over and flirting. And, I would be like, oh my god, you gotta to be kidding?”

***

Clare Bronfman, the women felt was not very nice.

Kristin: “Clare [Bronfman] hacked her father’s [the late Edgar Bronfman Sr.] email account. And, what she did was, she sent an email to her father that had a picture, it was from her clarewebb@aol.com account that was her old email address. And, Danni [Fernandez], Keith was trying to groom Danni to be a hacker and part of the reason why he convinced everyone that her ethical breach and she had to be locked in this room was, she wouldn’t go through the things he wanted her to do. And, she had so much information against them about illegal conduct. Danni, put into Clare, and worked with Clare to embed a picture of a bear, because Clare’s father’s nickname for her was “Clare bear”…

Barbara: “… You know, Kristin there aren’t many people that I really, really get a bad feeling about as a person, but I always did from day one for the five years I was around her. [Clare Bronfman] It never changed, I always thought this girl is mean.”

Kristin: “She’s dark hearted.”

Barbara:  “… I’m assuming Keith is having a [sexual] relationship with her?”

Kristin: “Yes.”

Barbara: “Now, when did he start that with her?”

Kristin: “I think in recent years.”

Barbara: “Yeah. Oh my god. Do you know that Svetlana [Kotlin, another ex girlfriend of Mr. Raniere] told me that she thought Sara [Bronfman] had for a brief time a [sexual] relationship with Keith?”

Kristin: “That may or may not be true, but you know who Sara was having an affair with? Lama Tenzin [the top assistant to the Dalai Lama, a monk].”

Barbara: “Well, that was obvious.”

Kristin: “She was sleeping with Lama Tenzin, then she was sleeping with Emiliano [Salinas, a Raniere disciple and son of former Mexican President Carlos Salinas].”

Barbara: “Well, here’s the thing, Sara’s mother’s best friend caught Sara and Tenzin in the hot tub canoodling.”

Kristin: “That was, what’s her name, Sue White?”

Barbara: “Yeah, they weren’t having sex, but they were in the hot tub in a hot-necking embrace. So, I mean, you could tell. I’ve showed up to her house a couple of times and the two of them come out of that bedroom.”

Kristin: “Yeah, I’ve seen him come out of the fucking bedroom. It wasn’t even a secret. Keith use to say to her in front of other people, ‘how’s your husband?'”

Barbara: “Yeah, I know, honestly….  Well, but, Svetlana said there were a number of occasions that she dropped Sara [Bronfman] off at a hotel that Keith [Raniere] was at waiting for her. And, she also said she was in Sara’s apartment in New York City for a five day and that Svetlana said she was nosy. And, that there was a love poem written [by Sara Bronfman] to Keith and she says it wasn’t like this is my father. It was a lovesick love poem. So Svetlana really felt that they, you know.”

Kristin: “That would have been after {Sara had an affair with Raniere disciple] Edgar Boone and before Lama Tenzin.”

Barbara: “Yes, and before she had gotten the townhouse because when she was up here, she didn’t have the townhouse yet.”

Kristin: “Right, because that’s why they would meet at a hotel.”

Their view might be summer up as follows:

Readers must judge for themselves whether the women who knew him well were speaking about Mr. Raniere from a standpoint of truth or were flat out lying. [or something in between].

Is it sour grape because they lost the most wonderful man in the world, or is it true that they discovered he is more or less a scoundrel who merely fools women for a while?

It is peculiar that so many women Mr. Raniere one time professed undying love for now think he is a stinker of the most malodorous order of stench.

Even if he is misunderstood, this suggests that he will be misunderstood again, and that women who are presently in a relationship with him [sharing him with other women] and thinking he is the sweetest smelling savory delectable divinity in the universe will one day think of Mr. Raniere in the same way that many of his ex-lovers think of him — as the biggest liar on earth with the aroma of a skunk.

More than one woman said of him that he often smelled of other women – when he came to them. Perhaps that is appealing to some women but others found it disconcerting.

Ih he’s your Vanguard, just remember that at one time, he was Kristin Keeffe and Barbara Bouchey’s Vanguard too.

Frank Parlato