A reader offered this excellent comment which I am publishing as a separate post:
NXIVM brings to mind the Shakers but with sex.
The Shakers were celibate and therefore were childless, so their experiment was basically a failure. They never numbered more than 5000 at peak size.
Keith Raniere has kept the harem on birth control or he forced abortions on all the women he did impregnate with the exception of two progeny. And one might want to question the actual paternity of those offspring with all the sleeping around that goes on.
Most of remaining, original harem is in their mid 40’s with a few in their 50’s. Not exactly prime child bearing years. And lets face it, the older one gets, the more likely there are to be complications in those pregnancies if one was to get pregnant.
One of NXIVM/ESP’s fatal flaws is that they are not, and cannot grow by bringing up oodles of little ESPIANS. There aren’t lots of little Espians being born here in the United States. And, as we have seen with Esther Chiappone’s children, some even though indoctrinated in Rational Inquiry since a young age, have NXited.
Now you have Keith, the hobbit, who is 57, a graying middle aged man with man boobs, who speaks the language of word salad and lies. He can no longer charm the ladies like he may have once done, especially in and around NXIVM Village in Upstate NY. His old wing-woman, Pamela Cafritz, who was his chief procurer of fresh meat, is deceased. So he has to rely on Allison Mack via JNESS and her secret society of DOS to keep his harem and that does not appear to be working out all that well.
The younger recruits, who may have been brought in by their friends and not the OLD GUARD, and who probably don’t have the money to spend on inane amounts of courses and EMS haven’t been in long enough to become totally loyal like the women in the past.
They have not progressed up the ranks to coaches and their income isn’t tied to NXIVM yet. They are merely low level students or employees of NXIVM with hopefully short attention spans and a foot still in the outside world.
Suddenly, DOS doesn’t look like a great idea now that it has been exposed on this blog and for all to see on the worldwide web. And thanks to the reporting here, it sounds like women and men are leaving. And it seems like even some of the old harem women are actually glad Keith doesn’t come around for nookie on a regular basis.
In actuality, he of the limp dick probably disgusts them all. The old harem girls probably consider it mercy sex, but they do it to keep the money from Clare’s pocketbook flowing to them because they have no way to make a living doing anything else.
Clare will keep funding it all till her money runs out. She of no personality and no business acumen. Eventually there will be some kind of cash flow issue and the properties will need to be sold off.
Nancy Salzman appears to be in a battle for her life. Cancer comes back more brutally the second time around. Who knows if she makes it thru the end of the year. Will Lauren be able to function as a green and EMP if she loses her mother? Who is going to EM Lauren? Dani? Siobhan? Esther?
The wild card in all this are the Mexicans. They are far enough removed by distance and a language barrier in some cases to possibly keep rolling for a few more years.
And then there is the story that in the end Love Trumps all. Long time Espian Anthony Ames implores his Green-sashed wife, Sarah Edmondson to leave, as does Bonnie Piesse with her Green-sashed husband, Mark Vicente. At some point in the future, one would hope their story will be told. There probably is a movie in that.
These people are shameless in wasting people’s time. Even the people who leave and have been thought reformed into believing whatever they teach but are no longer under its mileau control still carry the disease of it that negatively affects others.