Guest View: Nicole Wasn’t ‘Groomed’ – You Can’t ‘Groom’ an Adult – That’s Nonsense – a Cheap Buzzword

Even before the branding started to be a DOS ritual, there were so many interferences to personal decisions and freedom. How to make the intolerable tolerable and even to represent it as wonderful, special and magnetically attractive to join, to support?

If Raniere didn’t have a core group of women and even some men who were following along with his demands, he would have had no “movement” for more people to join. The contribution of their peer pressure, their overall and devout representation of Raniere as being their “everything” certainly helped create the entire atmosphere. (Yet many opine that they were essentially victims.) The group itself provided Raniere with his stage setting.

No one seems to have joined via a gun to the head; it was never do or die. Maybe Nancy Salzman presented a kind of “do or die” to her daughters, though. She was/is hardcore, in my observation. I think there were quite a few who became hardcore and no longer needed to be fooled about what the real motives were, as opposed this being about self-help or inner/outer “growth.”

Yet the entire setting was really more or less “do or die.” Raniere’s rules or else. His group is responsible for being a part of it; they were not animatronic objects, controlled by electronics switches or buttons.

These were volunteers who had free will and who allowed their free will to become subverted, squelched, dominated and commanded to cooperate with Raniere’s AND the group’s incentives and requirements. Step by step each shut down common sense. Or perhaps some had little common sense in the first place. Each kept deciding to support the slaughterhouse as uptopian.

So just how much does one feel sorry for them, either individually or as a group? This kind of evaluation is going to be pretty subjective, according to the thoughts and experiences of the observer, the one or ones doing the evaluating. People seem to have a lot of different responses regarding what combo of compassion, pity, scorn, anger, disgust, willingness to excuse or not to excuse a myriad of individual participants, as well as the group as a whole.

Do you see, for example, Mack strutting around like a martinet who loved all of the ego food that being one of Raniere’s chosen ones provided her? Or do you view her as a poor lost lamb? Or as various combinations of both of these manifestations of her own behavior, her own words and her own decisions to partake in criminality and enslavement, etc.?

These deeply entrenched Nxivm members and later, the DOS individuals, had agreed to semi-starve, to limit their sleep, to view outsiders as targets. The outsiders were either to become culties or, at the other end of the spectrum, enemies.

Raniere set up that “us and them” and “us vs. them” structure to isolate and to control his subjects. This is necessary to exert control. The women agreed to an extremely eccentric version of sexual exclusivity with their Creepboy guru, too.

He could be the superhero manwhore, whereas the women accepted that they were only to have sex with him, unless he said otherwise. They were willing to not only tolerate, but to fully support Raniere’s set-up and to be recruiters for more specimens as chattel for Raniere’s conjobs and sexual dictatorship. He was the one who was given power to control their social dimension, their way of thinking, their emotional conduct, their definitions of their concepts, ideas. But still, his acolytes had to say “yes, yes, yes” and to believe in him, to believe that all of his insane shit was very, very good, beneficial, enlightening!

Without their willing cooperation, what would Raniere have even had to offer as a drawing card?

I doubt that he could have pulled much weight with his scamming and conditioning techniques WITHOUT the existence of his little communal troupe of devotees recommending him and themselves as being a positive organization for “human growth potential.” He couldn’t accomplish much alone. He had to have whatever he could get from the inner circle, money, a setting of busywork, tasks and a whole path being embraced by ardent supporters.

Yet it is obvious what Raniere and his group really wanted. They wanted more. They wanted more suckers to dominate, to make into sexual treats for their leader, (and for themselves) and they wanted more fresh meat to blackmail and to traffic. This can be seen as the opposite of spirituality, of kindness, of growth. In fact thinking Raniere was an example of good behavior, that Raniere held any divine intentions, is group insanity.

Peer pressure would have been hugely influential, appearing to make the group look successful, reasonable, desirable, magnetic. But I am not sure to whom it would have appealed. There had to be identifiable ” types” who were people who would not bother to think for themselves much, if at all. They had to want to join. They had to be willing to believe Raniere’s sexual persona was worth supporting.

Some of us would not have ever been receptive, in the first place, to ANY of Raniere’s personal interference and demands. Tell me what I should eat or not eat, tell me that I must obey Raniere, tell me to limit my sleep and to do whatever I was told. Tell me that I must think with, solely identify with, a group agenda. Tell me that I must not think things over for myself.

I don’t know if I could even express a refusal cloaked politely, about any involvement within such a system of living. The entire group dynamic, not to mention its leader and the entire atmosphere of hidden motives is repellant. It angers me even to imagine surrendering to such a prison.

It got worse and worse amongst the group, progressively, too. Yet most stuck to it, devolving into branding others for more enslaved exclusivity, to performing more and more questionable or criminal acts, in the name of their leader and THEIR group, even as they fought amongst themselves, in effect representing no growth, no peace, nothing to gain, everything to lose. This was an individual choice, to support such a movement. That is how it started for each participant, who arrived at Nxivm’s door as individuals.

Can Adults Be Groomed?
Let’s Examine the Literature.

1.) Grooming
Grooming can be defined as the process that an abuser uses to desensitise you – to make you less likely to reject or report abusive behaviour.
Grooming can happen when there is a power differential within a relationship, which the abuser exploits for their own gratification.
This is most commonly recognised as a tactic used by perpetrators of child sexual abuse, both on children and parents. However, adults can also be groomed.
https://www.survivorsuk.org/question/grooming/

2.) Anyone can be a victim.
No one is immune to grooming, though some are more susceptible than others — including minors, “because of their naiveté,” Marlowe Garrison says. “[Grooming] can occur at any age, and it has a great deal to do with gullibility, insecurity, religion, and culture. […] It starts by targeting a vulnerable person, then building trust.”
https://www.allure.com/story/what-is-sexual-grooming-abuse

3.) What is grooming?
For the author of this paper, Sinnamon, to groom or the process of grooming, refers to an act of “preparing or training (someone) for a particular purpose or activity”, synonymous with terms like “priming, making ready, conditioning, tailoring, coaching, training, instructing, tutoring, drilling, teaching, educating, and schooling.”

‘Sexual grooming’ is the process of deliberately establishing a connection in order to prepare a person for sexual exploitation and/or abuse
He recognises adult sexual grooming as analogous to child sexual grooming – “any situation in which an adult is primed to permit themselves to be abused and/or exploited for sexual gratification of another”.
https://caage.org/2019/02/16/the-psychology-of-adult-sexual-grooming-review/

4.) Adult grooming is the adult equivalent to child grooming and applies to any behaviour where an adult is prepared so they unwittingly allow abusive behaviour or exploitation to occur later. The abuser typically befriends or builds a relationship with the victim in order to establish a relationship of trust. Well known examples of such abusive behaviours are sexual abuse, elder abuse, financial extortion, human trafficking and sexual slavery

Although it is a common belief that grooming is most relevant to children, the same or similar psychological processes are used to exploit adults.
https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Adult_grooming

Allison Mack was “Nicole’s” teacher in acting class.
Alison Mack was supposed to be a mentor to “Nicole”.
Allison Mack as a teacher had power over “Nicole”.
And Allison Mack abused that relationship to set “Nicole” up for a sexual relationship with Raniere, the head of the criminal gang NXIVM which Mack was a major leader in.

What would Allison Mack gain from grooming “Nicole” for sex with the gang leader?

Allison Mack gained power and prestige in the criminal gang by grooming a new sex slave for Raniere to use as a “sex toy.”

Allison Mack engaged in grooming a young adult to be sexually abused.
That is a key activity in sex trafficking.

Allison Mack is a sex trafficker.