Court Testimony Reveals Frank Report Helped Save Sylvie From Being Branded

On May 8, 2019, the second day of the trial of Keith Alan Raniere, DOS slave Slyvie testified how she did not get branded – thanks, it seems, to the Frank Report.

To prove the extraordinary and historic role the Frank Report had on saving women from being branded, I won’t rely on my own assertions. I will simply refer to testimony under oath of various DOS slaves.

The very first witness in the case against Raniere was Sylvie.

Moira Penza is examining Sylvie.  Sylvie is testifying about how she was about to be branded.

This is directly from the transcripts:

Sylvie: Monica Duran told me that I would be contacted by another slave that was not her slave that would be arranging my branding.

Penza: Okay. Who was that?

A I got contacted by Michele [Hatchette]. She set up a private secret chat with me in Telegram and started to arrange — tried to arrange the branding with me.

Q At that point, what was your understanding of Michelle’s role in DOS?

A I had a suspicion that she might be in DOS. I thought maybe she was a slave of Allison Mack just because I had seen her spend a lot of time around Allison and also she had been acting in ways that I thought was unusual, but seemed similar to things I’d seen say in — or experienced myself and so I had a suspicion that she was in DOS but that wasn’t – we weren’t allowed to talk about it so I didn’t know for sure and so that was how I knew for sure that she was because she contacted me.

Q Did you have any conversations with Allison Mack about Michelle?

A At one point, Allison made a comment like if you ever have any problems with Michelle, just tell me and because I was Michelle’s coach, I think that’s why she said that to me, I was Michelle’s coach in ESP which is a different organization.  So, I think that’s why she said that to me but I remember thinking like, ‘ooh, that’s weird,’ like it didn’t sound right to me. It didn’t feel right.

Q Did you ever observe Michelle and the defendant [Keith Raniere] together?

A Yeah, one night we’d had a Jness meeting. I think it was we were coming out of Flintlock because we had a meeting with Pam and Marianna or maybe even just have been Marianna at that point. Any rate, we were coming out of Flintlock and he approached Michelle and they were kind of whispering and he kissed her on the lips and it just looked to me — that was another indication to me that I thought, ‘oh, I felt like maybe she’s in this too.’

Q And so, what happened after you were contacted by Michelle?

A First of all, she wanted to arrange an in-person meeting to talk to me about it more and so she came — we arranged that and she came over to my house and she talked to me a lot more about her experience as a slave and what it — what she was experiencing which was a bit different to me and so I was actually — some of the things that she was doing with the other slaves in — the people that were the slaves like she was of one specific master, she didn’t mention names, but they sounded like quite good experiences to her, like for her it sounded like she felt bonded with these women and she described how the branding was a very like bond – difficult but bonding experience for her and meaningful for her in a certain way and so I started feeling like, ‘oh, wow, maybe this is going to be a good thing, the branding,’ but I also just think that is how I would frame things to try to make them more tolerable and so she was explaining it to me like that and it was kind of putting me a bit at ease about it.

Q Did you have a conversation with Michelle about what the brand meant?

A I don’t remember that, no.

Q Do you know whether she knew about the defendant’s initials being in the brand?

{Raniere’s attorney Marc Agnifilo: Objection.

Judge Nicholas Garaufis:  Sustained. Next.

Penza: So, did your branding happen?

A No.  So, we didn’t arrange anything and she told me who was going to do the branding.

Q And who was that?

A [Dr.] Danielle [Roberts].

Q Then what happened?

A We didn’t arrange a time. She said that she was going to speak to her master and we were — because at the same time she was also arranging Samantha’s [LeBaron] branding because apparently, it needed to happen that I would be branded first and then Samantha had to be branded separately was what I was told and so she was, it seemed, in charge of arranging both of our brandings but then we were going back and forth in message quite a lot and I felt like she was trying to put a lot of pressure on me to get branded on a Friday night and the next morning was the Freihofer race that I was supposed to be racing in. So, I was saying like, “No, I don’t want to have it done then because I’m racing the next day and I just — I don’t want to do that.”  So, I kept going back to Monica [Duran] being like — saying ‘she’s putting pressure on me, it seems like she keeps mentioning how her master is asking her to arrange this and she needs to do this for her master and blah, blah, blah’ and Monica told me to sort of like ignore them and ignore her and her master and so I did.

Q And so, what happened next, did the branding happen?

A No. That weekend I think was also the Coach Summit and I think that’s the weekend that Sarah Edmondson, think I meant to say Sarah, I was, I’m sorry.

Q It’s okay.

A That Sarah and Mark [Vicente] left the organization and so – and Monica said that people were getting scared and that things were happening behind the scenes and not to — like the branding wasn’t going to happen right now and to just sort of keep quiet about everything.

Q And what happened next?

A I think around that time or even that weekend — well, Mark and Sarah resigned and then also I think it was in the exact same time the blog started called the Frank Report and all this information started coming out where I first learned this organization was referred to as DOS, so that a lot of stories started being written.

[The story Part 1: Branded Slaves and Master Raniere; Sources: Human branding part of Raniere-inspired women’s group came out on June 5, 2017].

Q And what happened after you read the Frank Report?

A I got really freaked out because there was stuff in there that I had never heard about before.  And specifically, the thing that scared me even more is there was a story about women being beaten with paddles or something like that.  There was a mentioning of like being hit with a paddle from what I remember and that really freaked me out. So I asked to speak to Monica and I was really scared and upset, and I went over to her house and I was, like, crying and being like ‘I want to know is this true?’ I was hoping that she was going to say it wasn’t and she said — I think she was trying to comfort me, but she was, like, ‘Well, it is true but they wanted to have it fit in with their indoctrination.’ I remember her using that phrase, and I was just like distraught basically.  And she said things that ‘I’m scared too, just don’t worry.’  Like she was trying to comfort me but I was freaked out.

Q I think you said — can you say again approximately when that was?

A I think that was, it was 2017 and it was around the Freihofer and that is always around the end of May beginning of June, so it would have been around that time.

Q At that point did DOS change?

A Yes, things sort of started to, like, I think something that had charged is that Monica had said that I should now just say ‘M’ in the chat rather than ‘master.’  Like little things started changing.  And I felt like — I didn’t get any more assignments.  Like, I wasn’t asked to recruit anybody else so things sort of slowed down.

Q After DOS came out or after —

A Can I just say one other thing, sorry.

Q: Of course.

A The other thing that stopped, I don’t remember getting any readiness drills anymore, those stopped happening as well.

Q After people in the — so at that point were people in the community talking about DOS?

A Yeah, well, not openly but there was conversations about it and people reading the Frank Report and I had quite a few conversations with John [her husband] about it, but obviously him not knowing that I’m in DOS, and so we would talk about it.  When I would try and allude to, well, ‘I think it might be true’ and like these kinds of things, he didn’t believe it.  And a lot of people didn’t believe it or they kind of thought the women that were coming out were lying and like were — because that was the kind of thing we had been taught, that women they lie and they are out for themselves, and all this kind of stuff. So a lot of people were kind of questioning it, the people that were still loyal to ESP.

Q At that time was John still loyal to ESP?

A Yeah.

Q At that time when there is this discussion within the community did you have any further conversations with the defendant about DOS?

A Not that I remember, no.

Q At some other point did you have a conversation with him about kind of what was happening and the outcry?

AGNIFILO: Objection.

THE COURT:  Could you rephrase that, please?

Penza: So I think I had specified my prior question as a specific point in time.  But did you ever have a conversation with the defendant about kind of the aftermath where people were talking about it? [because of the Frank Report].

A Yeah, I’d say later on from that point, I’m not sure how much further into the summer it was but I was walking around Knox Woods and so was he [Raniere] and we, like, I guess you’d say bumped into each other or something walking around Knox Woods.

And he said to me, ‘You know, you can sort of play a movie with like comedic music and people would see it as a comedy, or you can play it with horror music and they’ll see it as a horror film.’  I was sort of like, okay, like I felt like he was alluding to what was going on with DOS.  And I don’t remember what prompted me to say this to him but I remember he was looking me in the eyes, I said something like, ‘No, don’t worry, I know you’re a good person,’ or something.  I just wanted to get him away from me and like appease him in some way, so I said something like that to him.

***

Later, Raniere’s attorney, Marc Aginiflo, cross-examined Sylvie and questioned her further about Frank Report.

Q: At this point, there was a lot of press in November 2017, there was press writing about DOS, correct?

A Yeah, I think so. I don’t know. I kind of get myself quite blind towards that but when you say a lot of press, I’m not sure what you mean specifically, but the Frank Report I think was well out by then.

Q Okay.  Tell the jury, what’s the Frank Report.

A It was a blog, yeah, it was a blog.  It is a blog.

Q And the person who writes it — who’s the person who writes it?

A I believe his name is Frank Parlato or something similar to that.

Q And have you ever met Frank Parlato?

A I may have done once, I’m not a hundred percent sure.  I think if it’s the same person I might have done once like many years ago.

Q Did he work for Nxivm back in the day?

A I can’t answer specifically because I’m not a hundred percent sure.  Like, he was around I think at some time but I’m not sure if it’s the same person.  I don’t really know.

Q Then at some point he stopped working for Nxivm and he became a critic of Nxivm, correct?

A I honestly don’t know what his arrangement was.  I’m not really sure.  I’m not the best person to answer those questions.

Q But the reason I asked you about him is because you said that the Frank Report was writing things around this time, correct?

A Yeah, I think so.  I mean I think they started earlier than this.  I would have said it would have been out for a while.

***

Frank Report served as a warning and informational tool for deceived DOS slaves. Some of them did not even know that the sorority was called DOS and they did not know that Keith Raniere’s initials were on the brand.

More than a dozen women escaped branding within days of my first publishing the news of DOS. Many more also escaped within the next few weeks.

That, in itself, is an achievement I am proud of.

Many people write and inform the public, but how often does a writer get to see the actual results of his work – as evidenced in sworn testimony?

I had that privilege and in the subsequent testimony of other witnesses, I will further elucidate the role Frank Report had in ending this monstrosity called DOS and help incarcerate its evil leader, Keith Alan Raniere.

Frank Parlato