Part 7: In-Depth: Dani’s Testimony: Troubles With the Harem and Raniere’s Take on Lesbians

This is Part 7 of Dani’s testimony of May 23, 2019.

Part 1 – In Depth: Dani’s Testimony – ‘Keith Had a Plan to Save the World’

Part 2 – In Depth: Dani’s Testimony – Dani’s Ethical Breach and Her Punishment

Part 3: In Depth: Dani’s Testimony: Raniere Grooms the Virgin for Sex for Her 18th Birthday

Part 4: In-Depth: Dani’s Testimony: She Loses Her Virginity – or Does She? 

Part 5: In-Depth: Dani’s Testimony: The Very Dirty Mr. Raniere 

Part 6: In Depth: Dani’s Testimony: Threesomes With Kathy Russell and Naked Pictures

Moira Penza is doing the examination for the prosecution.

Dani has been on the stand since the morning and it is now about 3 in afternoon. Penza continues to question her about life in the world of Raniere – and Dani has taken us inside it, giving us a rare glimpse of what his world – his day-to day-world – was really like.

It seems Keith spent much of his days and nights at 3 Flintlock Lane – a rather modest town home he shared with several women. He would lay on the couch and in between blow jobs and sex romps he would conduct various business.

A group of women – his inner circle – were permitted to have access to him it seems almost any time.

Now, Penza gets deeper into the subject of his inner circle of women – which I have often characterized as his harem. And a little about the places where he did his work and play – 3 Flintlock and his library at 8 Hale.  These two properties were within a short walking distance to each other.

Penza is doing the questioning of Dani:

Q Were there any other new roles that you took on after you began having sex with the defendant?

A … I was spending more time in Flintlock and with him and with Karen there, at some point, I started also helping them clean the house. … Flintlock was very messy, very disorganized. It was, like, a pig sty. There were jokes… a story that one time Pam hired a maid service… to come clean the house and they actually left a note and refused to clean the house because it was so disorganized.… there was … stacks of books all over. There was a treadmill and a piano and papers and things. I started organizing things…

Q Were you paid for any of that work?

A No.

[Dani described Keith’s “library” in her testimony:]

… a steam room and the hot tub and [a] big piano in this small condo…. It occupied almost the whole downstairs. … The bed was in a loft…. you couldn’t stand up in the loft. It was just to lay down. There were small wooden steps and just the bed and on the ceiling there was a TV so you could lay down watching TV.

Q Who would typically use the library?

A Keith… I knew that Pam, Mariana, and Keith spent entire weekends there, cooking, watching TV and movies, and resting.

***

[Now we get to the harem]

Q … who did you know the defendant to be having sex with?

A Pam Cafritz, Karen Unterreiner, Marianna, Barbara Jeske, Barbara Bouchey, Ivy Nevares, Dawn Morrison… Lauren Salzman…  Kathy Russell

***

Q Were there any nicknames that you were called?

***

A He called me Godzilla. He called me Bobo….

Q Did Marianna have a nickname from Keith?

A Yes. Monkey.

Q Did any of the other women have nicknames from Keith?…

***

A I remember he used to call Barbara Ja, Ya, something like that. That’s how he referred to her…. Everybody had a nickname….

***

Q While you were in Flintlock, did you have an opportunity to observe the way the defendant interacted with the different women with whom he was having sex?

A Yes. … I was around all the time…. I saw the people who were coming in and out, and what was happening there. And I also heard all the phone conversations that he was having with them.

***

Q … are there different categories of women in terms of where they live?

A … yes…  but also in terms of the access they have to Keith and how they’re treated by Keith…. there were people in the inner-inner circle, but it also had a lot to do with who had issues with jealousy…. people who were jealous, even though they might be part of the inner circle in some way, they were not approved to be around at any moment.

… I was part of the inner circle and I had full access. He could be with whomever, talking about whatever, I was there.  Pam was like that. Lauren was like that. Karen was like that, although she felt like a bit of a more of a serious presence…. if talk turned really sexual…. [Karen] would just zone out… She would put her headphones on and keep programming.

People who were not approved to be in Flintlock… at any time or had no full access, even though they were close, would be Ivy Nevares, Barbara Bouchey. That had to be crafted situations or he’d spend time with them by themselves. He would visit them in their homes, not the other way around.

Barbara Jeske … wasn’t around a lot…. Dawn Morrison seemed to be pretty inner circle but wasn’t around very much. Kathy Russell was part of the inner circle. Pam was.

Q What about Kristin Keeffe?

A Kristin Keeffe…  was inner-inner circle, but she didn’t care for any of the shenanigans going on around. She had a very low tolerance for that. But she … lived in Flintlock…. She had full access and she was approved.

Q When you say shenanigans, what is it you’re referring to?

A Shenanigans is like … there was times when… Keith was with someone else, or with a group of people, and there would be a lot of talk about sex and play …in [a] crude way….Some women would tolerate it. Other women would not.

Q Do you have any specific examples of things that you observed…?

A … like one time like what I described with Kathy Russell and that escalated…. There was also a time when Lauren came to Flintlock to visit Keith and she sat by his side on the couch.  And when she went to say goodbye, he grabbed her genitals with his hands, through her pants, and pulled them, and made a joke about her having really large labia. And like a large camel toe.… he used to love making jokes and pointing out women’s genitals and saying things about their camel toes.

And about them using or not using underwear. There was a lot of talk about that. And some women were like bragging, they didn’t mind. They didn’t use underwear. So there was a lot of very sexual… crude things, conversations like that….

Q Did you ever observe the defendant having any problems with any of the women he was having sex with?

A Yes. There was almost always someone that he used to say ‘going off.’ Someone’s ‘going off.’ And it was masqueraded and put as something, like, ‘oh, she’s having issues like attention issues,’ or ‘she’s being prideful,’ but really, something had happened.

Like one time there was an issue because Ivy was driving somewhere in Knox Woods and saw Keith walking with my sister Marianna and they were holding hands and all hell broke loose. She went off.

Q Ivy went off?

A Ivy went off.  … what … happened would be he would first cut off contact and be like, ‘okay, you need to fix your issue. You’re hurting me. You know what you’re doing, going off, is hurting my heart.’

And he would call one of … a few women who handled other women…. he would call Lauren … to tell her, ‘Ivy’s going off. You need to work on her.’ And he would relay all the details of the issue; what had happened. What she needed to address. The realizations she needed to have. ‘She needs to understand this is why I don’t spend time with her. This is why she cannot be allowed in Flintlock. She can’t have access because she has all these issues.’

And many times it was like, ‘you didn’t see that. That didn’t happen. We weren’t holding hands.’ And, you know, it was evident that a woman had seen something that did happen and he would deny, deny, deny. So there was a huge issue.

Q Did you discuss the Ivy incident with the defendant?

A Yes.

Q And what did he say?

A I remember asking ‘why deny something that she saw? If it’s true… maybe addressing jealousy if that’s part of what she wants to do, but why lie about it [and say it] didn’t happen when it did happen?’ … He said … if he validated her fears, because this was all fear-based… then he was doing her a disservice because she would never have the opportunity to grow out of this issue. So what he was doing is he was upholding a higher principle, essentially, as opposing the truth, which [gave] her the opportunity to look at this issue in front of her and … fix her disintegrations related to that, and maybe never again react to it.

Q You mentioned Lauren.  Would any other women have the role that you describe?

***

A Well, it could be the person’s coach…. in my case, Karen would be sent when I had an issue, not necessarily of that jealousy nature, but when I had an issue, she was sent to go work on me.

Nancy worked on Keith’s women. Lauren did. Siobhan did …  even though she wasn’t … super-inner circle…  Pam used to work with all the women…  She used to be like the defuser of bombs. She used to …  go in and neutralize.

So if Barbara Bouchey was having like a huge issue and she was going off, Pam needed to go and talk to her to calm her down first … like, ‘you know that he loves you…. you know, you can fix it.’  … it wasn’t using EM’s [Exploration of Meaning Therapy sessions]…   it wasn’t like full-on ethical breach plan… it wasn’t like that full disciplinary act. It was just like a soft, ‘all right, let’s calm things here and then let’s work on the rest.’

Q What time of day or night would the defendant engage in these sorts of crisis management activities?

A All day. All hours of the night and day. It could be any time that someone was going off. He had a very odd schedule. He was sleeping during the middle of the day….  someone could go off at any moment, and these things happened at all hours. It could be midnight. It could be 5:00 a.m. it could be after volley ball; it could be before. Any time.

Q You mentioned Ivy. Did you ever hear that she committed an ethical breach?

A I heard that she had issues….

***

Q Do you know whether Ivy was ever punished?

A Yes…. there was a time when Keith was spending a lot of time with Ivy… Ivy would not come and sit in Flintlock like other people did…. Ivy would come in her car to pick him up and would take him to her house, and they would spend hours and hours together…. I … knew that they had a sexual relationship. So he was spending time with Ivy, like hours and hours every day, which is not something he did with many women…. that went on for a while…. She was writing a lot. She was producing a lot of writing…. they were working on a lot of articles.

And there came a time where …  there was a lot of fighting on the phone and there was a lot of arguments and like ‘This is why I can’t see you. You need to fix this for me to see you. You’re hurting me’ and on and on and on, and he started spending less and less time with her. I saw it as a punishment, because not only he stopped spending time with her but also she became really isolated from the community.

Q Do you know whether she was doing anything else in terms of trying to fix this issue?

A I don’t. She was very isolated.

Q Did Ivy have long hair?

A Yes.

Q Do you know whether Ivy was allowed to cut her hair?

A I know that when Ivy came into ESP, she and I were friends for a little while…. She had very long hair… I know that he likes long hair. And I know that I wasn’t allowed to cut my hair. And I believe at one point I discussed with Ivy that she couldn’t cut her hair.

Q You mentioned Siobhan. Do you know what Siobhan’s sexual orientation is?

A Yes, she is a lesbian.

Q Did you ever hear the defendant discuss her sexual orientation?

A Yes.

Q What would he say?

A He would make fun. He poked fun at her often about her …  very much in line with… his style… make some crude jokes, but also in a more serious note like inquire about why…  she didn’t like men, or that she really did like men, or that women should like men….

Q Did he claim to have any actual theories regarding women and their sexuality?

A … he sort of believed that all women were bisexual. Like we all had like tendencies. Like we’re all capable of being bisexual. But that also — only being lesbian was kind of unnatural, as if there was some kind of disintegration with it, like only liking women, that was unnatural…. it could be something that could be fixed…

Q Did you ever observe the defendant touching Siobhan?

A Yes. It was very odd because I knew Siobhan was a lesbian, and he touched her the way he touched his other women.… it was very …intimate…. very touchy.

Frank Parlato