How Lauren Salzman Described Her Branding Session

December 12, 2019
This the photo the government is using of Lauren Salzman in exhibits for the jury.
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In the trial of Keith Alan Raniere, Lauren Salzman, a witness for the prosecution, described her branding, which occurred it is believed around January 2017. Lauren was the last of the First Line DOS slave masters. Rosa Laura Junco, the woman who offered her own 15 year old virgin daughter to the then 56-year-old Raniere, was the woman who recruited Lauren into DOS.

Curiously, Rosa Laura avoided all prosecution, but Lauren was charged and convicted – via a plea deal – of two felonies: racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. She faces – according to my understanding of sentencing guidelines, with a lack of prior convictions and with her cooperation with the feds – a likely sentence of 2-4 years.

The judge, however, could sentence her to a max of 20 years per count.

As Frank Report readers know, the judge halted her cross-examination when she started crying uncontrollably.

Since we have discussed branding many times on Frank Report  – and with Lauren’s sentencing still pending [a date has not been set] – I think it might be interesting for readers to hear Lauren’s “under oath” recollection of her experience of being under the hot pen wielded by Dr. Danielle Roberts.

Here is Lauren’s account, excerpted from her testimony at trial:

We went into a room where there was a massage table, and first I knelt down and there’s a line that you read that …everybody who is getting branded [has] to read, “Master please brand me. It would be an honor, an honor that I want to wear for the rest of my life.”

So that’s how it starts.

And then you get up and lay on the table, and my arms were held above my head. Then I had like all my circle around me, holding my legs and touching different parts of my body.

I was clothed because I was above Danielle in rank, but normally everybody would be nude…

It was really painful… It’s electricity, but it’s like a pen. It cauterizes the skin. So, basically, it makes… a third-degree burn, so it creates a scar, ultimately creates a scar. Immediately, it just burns the skin in a line.

Once it goes across, the skin is dead, so you don’t feel it afterwards. It’s only when it’s making the line that it hurts, but it’s incredibly painful. It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced…

It looks like a third-degree burn after you get it…  it’s raw skin that then becomes scabbed over and the scab falls off and then it scars. But it’s electricity, so it shocks the skin as it goes across and it – feels like what it is.

It hurts a lot…

The actual branding or the burning of the skin only took a few minutes, but the whole process took about half an hour, 45 minutes to go through the actual branding plus the script, the reading back and forth.

[It was videotaped by] Loreta [Garza].

Loreta Garza, a First Line slave master.

***

This is not Lauren’s brand, but a brand of one of her slaves. Lauren’s brand was similar – and reportedly was two inches by two inches. The brand contains the initials of Keith Alan Raneire and some say, Allison Mack.

Despite her being branded, Lauren, as we shall see in a subsequent post, had no diffidence about recruiting others to the same fate.

Five of her slaves were branded. All of her slaves, it seems, were lied to about DOS, and most significantly, that the leader of DOS, this purported all-women sorority, was a man: Keith Alan Raniere.

Lauren took the mark of the beast upon her person right below “the bikini line” she said.

And, in turn, she offered it to others.

Lauren knew Raniere was the man behind DOS. She was branded with his initials. She was not nude when the branding occurred for, as she noted, she was higher in rank that Dr. Danielle Roberts.

It is hard to say she did what she did completely naively.

In our next post, we will discuss how Lauren recruited and got her slaves brandedwhile they were nude – and the collateral she took from them to ensure their slavery.

Two branded DOS women – Lauren Salzman with Allison Mack.

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Frank Parlato

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About the Author

Frank Parlato is an investigative journalist.

His work has been cited in hundreds of news outlets, like The New York Times, The Daily Mail, VICE News, CBS News, Fox News, New York Post, New York Daily News, Oxygen, Rolling Stone, People Magazine, The Sun, The Times of London, CBS Inside Edition, among many others in all five continents.

His work to expose and take down NXIVM is featured in books like “Captive” by Catherine Oxenberg, “Scarred” by Sarah Edmonson, “The Program” by Toni Natalie, and “NXIVM. La Secta Que Sedujo al Poder en México” by Juan Alberto Vasquez.

Parlato has been prominently featured on HBO’s docuseries “The Vow” and was the lead investigator and coordinating producer for Investigation Discovery’s “The Lost Women of NXIVM.” In addition, he was credited in the Starz docuseries 'Seduced' for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Parlato appeared on the Nancy Grace Show, Beyond the Headlines with Gretchen Carlson, Dr. Oz, American Greed, Dateline NBC, and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, where Parlato conducted the first-ever interview with Keith Raniere after his arrest. This was ironic, as many credit Parlato as one of the primary architects of his arrest and the cratering of the cult he founded.

Parlato is a consulting producer and appears in TNT's The Heiress and the Sex Cult, which premieres on May 22, 2022.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Parlato,_Jr.

Contact Frank with tips or for help.
Phone / Text: (305) 783-7083
Email: frankparlato@gmail.com

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