I was involved with NXIVM for about 12 years. I was never super inner circle but I was close to one person involved in operations, and another that was part of Keith’s harem. I left a few years ago.
Let me tell you, you have only touched the tip of the iceberg in regards to the diabolical depravity of Keith Raniere. Here are a few points worth publicizing.
The whole training is a giant hypnotic induction. This is not disclosed to NXIVM participants before, during, or after they take the training. It is a hideous non-disclosure. If I had known that I was going to participate in a mass group hypnosis experiment (created and overseen by a psychopathic genius, nonetheless), I would have NEVER signed up for NXIVM courses. I literally went through 100’s of hours a year of hypnotic induction training with weekly $100 an hour follow up EM’s for the better part of a decade.
I have had to spend the last few years working through all the negative hypnotic triggers put into my subconscious during this training and their completely debilitating effect on my mental and physical persona. Everything I participated in NXIVM was designed to hurt me. Very personally, deliberately, and methodically.
You as a reporter, please, please, please, need to warn past and present participants – this is what is going on with NXIVM. Keith is an evil, evil genius. Every aspect of those trainings are designed to psychological destroy people all the while the participants are convinced to believe that they are helping themselves. By the time things go irretrievably awry people are so far gone psychologically that it’s hard to come back from in any rational way.
I have known more than one woman in Keith’s harem. They have not all been idiots or careless women. They were completely defrauded and induced psychologically to go along with things that would under normal circumstances have been totally abhorrent to them. Keith is a sick monster. He is able through very sophisticated hypnosis techniques to get women to completely degrade themselves and go against everything they believe in and upheld from themselves prior to their relationships with Keith.
And Keith gets totally off on this, as he is a classic psychopath. It is so creepy and horrible it is literally incomprehensible for an outsider to understand. But since your blog has drilled into these details in an illuminating way, I thought it worth it to add to the dialogue. Can you shed light on this for people?
One example of Keith’s malevolent, merciless nature is harem member Ivy Nevares. In recent years I took a training with Ivy Nevares. She had let her hair grow so long it was below her feet. It was very nutty. She told me that she couldn’t cut her hair until Keith determined that she had healed her ethical breech and gave her permission to cut her hair. She said that she had to demonstrate to Keith that “she really cared”.
Yet all of Keith’s women knew this was a complete and total fallacy. My friend said Ivy was despised by Keith’s harem as she had been his #1 wife in the mid- 2000’s and hated the idea of the harem and they were all insanely jealous of her. They were happy to participate or perhaps better put, rationalize, Ivy being iced out. Yet these women all knowingly participated in defrauding Ivy and using mal-intended, unlicensed weekly therapy sessions to convince her that her fantasy was real when they all knew it was all a lie.
I learned that Lauren, Nancy, and Pam were the chief architects of the fraud on Ivy and diligently EMed her, and “coached her on her issues” for the better part of 5 years convincing her of her “some day she will marry Keith and have his first born child” fantasy – fraud.
All the while, Keith was SHUNNING Ivy. He refused to speak to her and have any contact with her, because of her “ethical breach” during all this time. Which basically means she was looked down on and basically shunned by the whole NXIVM community. This is what Keith did to Daniela Fernandez too. There was even talk amongst Keith and his harem that Ivy would eventually kill herself if she ever found out the truth. And Keith and the harem didn’t care. They were kind of happy about the idea.
It is sick and horrible. When I first met Ivy in the early to mid 2000’s she was a gorgeous, brilliant, talented artist and intellectual who had been a successful writer for Amnesty International in NYC before she got involved with Keith. To watch Keith destroy her life, and see her live in isolation and fear ever carrotted forward by a complete and total lie – by therapist wingwomen bent on supporting her destruction – is such a travesty it is hard for me to comprehend.
Worse yet, she is just one of many. I could give you several more examples of this kind of depravity. So sad, so despicable. Please call her and try to talk some sense into her. Her website is ivynevares.com. Keith is a true and absolute hater and destroyer of women. Women beware.
Keith is a complete narcissistic sociopath. There’s a large group of us (probably more than are still in ESP) who want to help get people out and help de-program them. But people are very badly brainwashed in this horrible cult and they think Keith can do no wrong or that the wrong he is doing is for the right reasons.
There are so many people in ESP (now and before) who know some of the horrible things Keith has done. I’d encourage more to come forward to speak of their experiences with him and who he really is. Maybe we can reach a few people and get them out of this cult before something horrible happens.
VanDouche is one to talk about another person’s “ethical breaches”. His entire life from the moment ESP was conceived to be his private control and sex ring operation (and likely before that) has been an “ethical rupture”.
He’s a two-faced charlatan. Donning a facade of superficial niceties to cover dark intentions, he’s little more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Those types are the most insidious. Upfront evil is easy to spot and only the like are drawn to it immediately. But it takes a special kind of asshole to slow burn a manipulation scheme into the minds of good-natured people to twist them into making them do things they wouldn’t have done outside of the controlled suggestive environment you set up in the name of a false “ethics”, all because you want to live your shitty lifestyle.