UPDATED: Toni Natalie’s Book: She Commits Assault and Battery on Wimpy Husband #4 – Scott Foley – and Blames Keith Raniere

[Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with additional comments from Heidi Hutchinson as of 12:23 EST Oct. 22, 2019]

Toni Natalie tells a rather embarrassing and disturbing story in her book, The Program Inside the Mind of Keith Raniere and the Rise and Fall of Nxivm – about husband #4, Scott Foley.

It may be a true story – or perhaps it’s a lie.  If true, it shows her to be a domestic abuser, perhaps a violent sociopath.

If it is a lie – as so many of her stories are – it is still no credit to her that she wants others to believe she is a spousal abuser.

Toni relates that she first met Scott Foley when he went to work for her as head chef of A Place of Creations Cafe in Saratoga – a vegetarian restaurant that Keith and Toni owned together.  Scott, who is 10 years younger than Toni, was married at the time, and Toni says she was still in a relationship with Keith.

Toni describes Scott as “a man’s man, ruggedly handsome” and embarrassingly points out in her book that Scott had a “nice ass.”

Pretty soon she starts an adulterous relationship with Scott and he leaves his wife and child, much like Toni abandoned her child.  They married and were together for about 10 years.

Despite her describing Scott as a man’s man, she tells a story of how she wimped him out on her birthday – the last day they were together.

 

The story sounds a little fantastic – but here it is in Toni’s own words – from her book:

Scott and I took a much-needed and well-deserved vacation, renting a cabin on Canandaigua Lake. I had climbed out of the abyss and was working hard on myself, on my emotional recovery. For the first time in a long time, I felt optimistic. But I didn’t get that vibe from Scott. Even on the drive there, he seemed off—distracted somehow. It was my birthday, August 12, so we went to dinner with some friends. When we got back to the cabin that night, there was an incredible thunderstorm. The bursts of lightning shone purple light on the mountain, and all of that majesty was reflected on the lake. “Come outside,” I told Scott. “You can see God over the mountain.”

“I’m good,” he called from the back bedroom.

But it was too singularly beautiful to be missed. So I went inside to get him. Scott was sitting in bed, blanket over his knees, fiddling with his phone. His thumbs were moving at warp speed. He was so enthralled by whatever he was doing that he didn’t see me come in. When he noticed me, he was startled, and dropped the phone. It wasn’t his phone, I realized. It was a burner, the disposable kind that drug dealers use.

We both went for the phone. We grabbed it at the same time. But he was both stronger and taller, so he pulled it up over his head, and my grip wasn’t tight enough to snatch it. So, I grabbed his scrotum instead.

“Let go of my balls!”

“Let go of the phone!”

“Let go of my balls!”

“Let go of the phone!”

At that moment, my beloved dog, Raymona, cried out and peed on the floor. Worried, I loosened my grip on his balls (if not for Raymona, I could have ripped them clean off). He broke the phone in half, went outside, and hurled it into the darkness. As it flew, a bolt of lightning crashed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just—you’re so distant, I barely know you anymore. Samantha makes me feel young, alive. Wanted.”

“Samantha?” I spat the name at him. “Sa/7?a/7tha?”

I packed up his things that night and sent him away. We were done. A few days later, I got an out-of-the-blue Facebook friend request from “Samantha Orr.” She wanted me to know that she was the one who had been texting my husband. As soon as she relayed that message, she vanished. Her profile picture morphed into a faceless egg. Scott had never actually met her in person. He’d been catfished. “Samantha” was a honeypot, I realized, tasked with seducing my husband and ruining our marriage.

In the months that followed, Raymona—whom I loved more than I loved Scott, truth be told—developed a rare medical condition that caused her nails to painfully fallout.

Now even my guard dog had PTSD

 

***

Now, this is a fine story.  Not quite sure why she chose to tell it – especially since it reveals herself to be a violent abuser. And if you don’t think her statement that “she could have ripped” his balls off is spousal abuse, then reverse the two.  Suppose Scott found Toni in bed texting – and Toni did not want to turn over her phone.

A husband does not have legal authority over his wife’s phone. He can’t require her by force to turn it over.  But then there is the morality question. She might be texting someone in an adulterous fashion.  Would Scott have had the right to grab Toni by her fake boobs and demand she release the phone?

Of course not.

What if he threatened to tear her boobs off if she did not turn the phone over?  Nope, sorry, that’s domestic abuse and he could be arrested.

Toni in her book glorifies domestic abuse – she admits to assault and battery.  Is this acceptable?  [There was clearly no editorial assistance from the publishers, Grand Central Publishing.]

Scott may be a wimp. He might be a loser. But Toni has no more right to be violent with him than he had a right to be violent with her.  If, of course, her story is true.

So I called Scott Foley  – the guy whose older wife claims she grabbed him by the scrotum – to ask him about the story.

A man answered Scott’s cell phone. When I identified myself and explained why I was calling, he quickly said he was not Scott – but that Scott didn’t care what was in Toni’s book.

I tried to ask him if he knew what was in the book and the man got rude and said, “Scott doesn’t want you calling anymore.”

I tried to ask him if Scott didn’t care about being abused by his wife and her telling the world about it?

He said again, “Don’t call here anymore!” ’

I said,  “OK, Scott, I won’t call anymore.”

I later learned from a source that Toni has been telling people [including the source who told me] that I am an employee of Keith Raniere’s and paid by his attorney, Marc Agnifilo.  I was being paid, Toni told my source, to go after her because, after all, Toni is the one who took Raniere down and if she was discredited, Raniere would have a better chance at an appeal.

This lie of Toni’s might have been the reason Scott was so fearful of talking to me. On the other hand, he might just be a wimp, much like Toni described him to be.

Still, getting past that bit of nonsense that I was being paid by Raniere, I still wanted to find out if the Scott Foley scrotum story was true.

Beyond whether Toni wimped out little Scottie and almost sent him to the hospital – had it not been for her dog Raymona peeing – did Raniere really send in a woman to break up their marriage?

Toni claims that Samantha was a set-up – a fake  – a honeypot – sent by Keith.  And that Scott never met her.

It may be true.

But Heidi Hutchinson recalls it differently.

After I read to Heidi, Toni’s story, Heidi said, “Oh my God, that is so far out. Even Raymona has to be worked into the honeypot scheme. Does that not sound insane?  And God is on her side too. After Scott threw the phone into the woods, the thunder came crashing down.

***

[Editor’s Note: Keep in mind that both of Toni Natalie’s stories – the one she told Heidi at the time it happened and the version that made her book could both be false.]