Lauren Salzman Explains, Defends and Justifies Slavery – and Why It Is Good to Be a Slave

Lauren Salzman

This is Part 17 of our Lauren Salzman series. The series has been largely based on Lauren’s testimony in the trial of Keith Alan Raniere. Our purpose is to explore whether Lauren – one of the leaders of Nxivm –is more victim or more perpetrator in the 20-year criminal Nxivm enterprise led by Keith Alan Raniere.

Lauren was involved in Nxivm for the duration – 20 years.

In this post, we get into Lauren’s views of the slave philosophy of DOS. As she is led by the adroit questioning of Assistant US Attorney Tanya Hajjar, her testimony effectively helps sinks Raniere by revealing the astoundingly sinister slave concepts he taught.

But her testimony also makes it clear that Lauren believes every word [or almost every word] of the DOS slave philosophy.

She does not think it is wrong. She is actually justifying it rather than just explaining it.

AUSA Hajjar is alternately reading and having Lauren read from the DOS bible, the secret handbook that Raniere created – with help from Lauren, Loreta Garza and Rosa Laura Junco – his stenographers in effect – for he was too lazy to write anything himself.

So, we are learning more about the DOS philosophy from the excerpts from the book.

But the real value of this post is that Lauren is asked to explain the meaning of various passages. Her explanations – her interpretations and justification of Raniere’s twisted and perverse teachings – are eye-openers, not so much for what they reveal about DOS, but what they reveal about Lauren.

It shows how fully she bought into this manipulative, destructive, enslavement lifestyle – and how she is still palpably a believer.

I am convinced she would go back to it in a minute if Raniere was free, or if someone came along to replace him and would offer her a chance to be a slave again.

In short, Lauren believes in slavery. She wants to be a slave to a man and perhaps, as we shall see, to a degree a slave master to other women.

In this post, we are, of course, going to get more of Lauren’s run-on sentences, her Nxivm word salad jargon, and her confused articulation at times. But if we cut through that – we will get one of the best explanations of Raniere’s enslavement technique ever offered.

Lauren brings us here a true insight into the secret world of DOS and Nxivm and Raniere and how he ensnared women with lies and manipulation and something that was for some of them incredibly seductive – slavery to him.

Lauren explains how they believed, literally believed, that this was so good for them and good for other women.

Tanya Hajjar is examining Lauren Salzman. She has the DOS handbook entered into evidence as an exhibit and begins by reading from it herself.

Tanya Hajjar

 

Lauren Salzman

Q   Now, … we were at Lesson 8, “A Tool. The tool doesn’t have a want. The tool doesn’t look at its use. The tool is just a good tool. The nature of being a sharp knife is to be sharp, it’s not to care if it’s being used as a murder weapon or being used for surgery.” In this context, what is the tool, what does that refer to?

A   The slave is the tool.

Q   “And the moment you start to care about the use, now you have your pride. To be a tool in a sense is saying ‘no excuses.’” What does that mean in the context of DOS?

A   It meant that whatever use your master had for you was to be done joyously and if you cared about what you were being asked to do or the why, it was your pride, your issues interfering with your success, effectiveness at being a good slave.

Q   Were these principles just abstract or were they applied every day in DOS?

A   They were applied.

Q   Lesson 10: “Joyously offering all your decisions to be made or used by your master.” Under Lesson 10, there are these practices; can you read the practices, please?

A  “ Spend time thinking of how you can proactively further your master with the current capacities you have. Choose to act on one thing that you would not have acted on otherwise.”  And then number two is: “What other capacities can you build to be able to further the master more. Make a plan on building those capacities and how that will further the master.”

Q   Can you explain that in the context of DOS, what that means?

A   That ideally you’re looking to always make your master more successful, more effective, more potent in the world and so you should be always looking at how to proactively be doing that and if you’re limited in your capacity to do that, then you should make a plan of how you can become unlimited so that you can further them even more.

Q   Under the same lesson: “You offer this as an opportunity for your master to use you as a tool. If you see yourself as a tool, the greatest door to opportunity, the greatest door for you is to be the tool, for you to be the vessel.” Can you explain what this means?

A   That the greatest — that you should always be looking for these opportunities for your master to be able to employ you as a tool and that somehow in doing that, being like the vessel or the most open to that and the most willing to do that, to be the tool in any way or whatever it is and derive the greatest joy from that is the greatest opportunity for growth in yourself.

Q  Was a DOS slave permitted to question the motives or the reasoning behind an order?

A   No.

Q   Lesson 11: “Surrender your life, mind, body and possessions for unconditional use. What goes on within my body is personal to me and that too is the use of that as much as I can give over I do.” What does that mean?

A   It means that anything they want, your goal is to be able to serve them regardless of what it is and as much as you can, whatever goes on with your thoughts, your emotions, your body, your capacities, your work product, whatever it is, it is just all to serve them and to do that — as much as you can do that, that’s the goal.

Q   And “them” is who?

A   The master.

 

March 18, 2019 – New York, New York, United States: Lauren Salzman leaves the Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn escorted by her legal team. (Natan Dvir / Polaris Images)

 

Q   Turning to Chapter 3, can you read the text at Chapter 3?

A  “The joy of obedience is far greater than the distaste of any command. The harder the task required, the greater joy to complete. The harder the task completed, the greater proof to your master and yourself of your strength and commitment.”

Q   What does this mean?

A   It means that ideally you should be able to build joy in obeying and that that joy is far greater than anything you could be asked to do no matter how hard or distasteful it is, the joy should be better and the fact that it is harder or distasteful should make that joy more because you’re proving to your master and yourself that you’re that committed that you’d be willing to do anything, even really difficult and awful or distasteful ugly things, whatever they are.

Q   Here’s some examples of requests or commands here: “If the master were to command you and say, at the bottom, take off all your clothes, run outside and jump up and down and say everyone, look at me, look at me, look at me, you would be taking off your clothes already and seeking to understand that, you’re not worried that it’s cold out, you’re not worried that there’s a public, you’re not worried that the police might come, none of that is involved, that is your evaluation of it.”

A   Yes.

Q   What does that mean to you?

A   It means that you should be doing the command before you even question the command and that the objective is just to seek — to understand how to do that command best, not to question why that command or any consequences of the command.

Q   Did you convey these, the concepts expressed in the book, did you convey this concept to your slaves as well?

A   Essentially, yes. I don’t know that I specifically read this part but, yeah, the concept of it, their job was to do that.

Q   So, under Lesson 11, “Pushing Beyond Indoctrination. You believe certain things are good and bad and that constrains, that circumscribes your life and they’re just not true.” What does that mean?

A   It’s a statement of our indoctrination, that like basically the way we’re raised we come to believe certain things that are limiting, that certain things are bad which may not be bad or certain things are good which may not necessarily be good, getting hung up on the goodness or badness of it is constraining because we should be able to transcend our indoctrination because it can be limiting.

Q   Was this a concept that was taught in NXIVM more broadly, this idea of social indoctrination?

A   Yes.

Q   Was this a concept the defendant taught?

A   Yes.

Q   In this concept, the social indoctrination, that certain things are good and bad, is that something you are intended to get out of?

A   I don’t understand.

Q  Is a social indoctrination a bad thing in this concept?

A Well, that certain aspects of social indoctrination can be limiting and so to transcend that would be to evolve beyond those limitations.

Q   Can you give an example?

A   Sure. Like — I don’t know, you can think of like in any social custom but let’s say, for example — well, I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where like as a child growing up you go over to eat at somebody else’s house and their family does something like completely different than what your family does, so it just feels kind of awkward or uncomfortable, that’s just like a simple example of you’re indoctrinated in a certain way in your family and you may find as you come to grow that there are other ways to do things but there may be something that like maybe your religion says is bad, like getting divorced for example, you know, or your culture may say that that’s really bad where another culture may not think that’s bad; so, to realize that it is not bad in itself, it serves a function, you might be able to take advantage of that function where you didn’t perceive it as an option before. That’s just like a simple neutral example.

Q   Did the defendant in the defendant’s — as he explained this concept, did it go further than that, did it go to things that were assessed as good and bad?

A   Yeah, I mean when we started getting into things more along the lines of like Jness curriculum when it was first introduced or SOP, then you start getting into more I guess you could call them like heated subjects, like people have more investment around, like having monogamous relationships, for example, like and in Jness then we started to introduce like the concept of men being more naturally polyamorous and women being more naturally monogamous, so somehow transcending our — as women, our belief that we need to own our men and own the sex that they have as just as our own somehow this limiting belief and that if we could come to understand their more biological nature and some of the social constraints that have been put on them, them being men, in general, that as women we would not be so fearful or controlling and we would come to accept and be really grateful for the things that they give us and not need to own them or put constraints on them to feel secure in our relationships.

Q   Do you have a view on that concept now?

A   Well, I mean certainly through the curriculum it legitimized the lifestyle that I think Keith wanted to live and had a whole community of people who could understand that and support it or even defend and protect it against criticism or other consequences.

Q   Is this the same concept, the same section, “Unique Experience Breaking Through Your Indoctrination”, is that the same social indoctrination concept you explained?

A   Yes.

Q   Chapter 4 is titled “Quality;” can you read the text under “Quality?”

A  “ You must give your master your very best at all times. All things done for your master must be of the highest quality you can offer.”

Q   And under Chapter 5 titled “Aliveness,” can you read that chapter?

A  “ As such, a good slave actively seeks to give her master a competitive advantage over all other people and in all situations. Always make your master increasingly more powerful, influential and capable through your actions and thoughts.”

Q   And this concept, did that take — did that have practical applications in the context of DOS?

A   Yes.

Q   Can you explain that?

A   Well, we were always looking to be able to uphold our master, I mean in my case Keith, to help him, to edify him, you know, and help others see that — like his good contributions and in essence we were — I mean specifically in DOS, I mean not just the edification, I mean tribute was very prevalent and pervasive in ESP; in DOS especially we were seeking to find influential people to bring in to help increase the potency and the influence of the group and ultimately the group’s objectives which were, you know, Keith was at the helm of that, they were his goals and objectives, his vision for the group. And in NXIVM it was part of that too, having powerful and influential people. It wasn’t as much the objective but, you know, certainly you become more — you have more capacity if you have more power and influence.

Q   And by recruiting people of influence or power into DOS, did you see that as by extension making the defendant more powerful or influential?

A   I didn’t think of it that way at the time but I do think that, I do think it is that.

Q   Lesson 5 is “Good Versus Bad” and under that section, I just want to — I’ll just read this paragraph to you, a little bit above that there’s a highlighted phrase: “The strongest bond that we can have as being for the good is a new bond that’s created which is the vow. Criminals won’t turn each other in because they’re scared of being killed. The reason why people of the vow won’t turn each other in, you can say that they are scared of the collateral but it is a collateral that they put up to certify that their bond is as good as any criminal bond, any bad bond.”  What’s the criminal bond, what’s the bad bond?

A   The criminal bond is that if you — it’s like in — I guess you could look at like criminal organizations or mafia organizations, why you don’t rat on the people in the group, because you get killed if you do that.

Q   So, criminals won’t turn each other in because they’re scared of being killed, that’s the criminal bond, the bad bond?

A   That’s the concept, yeah. I mean it says it, right, they’re scared of being killed, that’s the criminal bond.

Q   So, the collateral that they put up to certify that their bond is as good as any criminal bond, any bad bond; what do you understand that to mean?

A   That the collateral is as scary as that or even more scary than that and we — I mean we looked at it in the part we read before, where you’re supposed to see it that death is not even a way out of it, so it’s supposed to be stronger than even the fear of being killed if you were to violate the vow, that’s how strong the collateral is supposed to be.

Q   This is under Lesson 12,” Powerful and Influential; if you’re not always making your master, the time when you’re not always, you’re a minion for the bad, you’re a minion for evil. Always make your master increasingly more powerful which means they’re at a certain level of power, is that enough.” What does that mean?

A   Well, there are some concepts that were laid out a little bit before in the book that talk about that fear and comfort basically are vehicles for tools of hate or for evil because ultimately the reason we’re being hateful is to be more comfortable or we’re being hateful to get things that we haven’t earned and so — and that — so, laziness, comfort, fearfulness breeds hate, these are the concepts that we lay out in the book before this but also that we’ve been taught within NXIVM. So, it’s saying like that ideally you know that you’re not breeding that by always being disciplined, always being vigilant, always working and so it links it up with the master in this context, if you’re not always making your master, you know, increasingly more powerful, then you’re being a minion for evil because you’re being lazy about it or the only reason you wouldn’t do it is either laziness or issues, fear, so somehow that breeds evil, you know, doing this is good and not doing this becomes evil.

*************************

Grandmaster Keith Raniere.

Aside from the obvious criminal implications in the language of the handbook – such as the knife doesn’t care if it is used for murder, or that the DOS bond is akin to the Mafia bond only worse – there is a ceaseless and relentless effort on Raniere’s part to get his slaves to obscure the differences between good and evil, safe and dangerous, and healthy and deleterious.

He is mind-fucking them.

And the curious thing is that at this stage – even after his arrest – and her facing prison – Lauren is still on board.

Sure, she is saying the things she thinks will help her, what the prosecution wants to hear.

But of all the witnesses who came and testified against Raniere, Lauren was the only one who testified about the glories of the teachings, as if it were anything but moral rot and sadism thinly disguised.

She doesn’t see that. Why? Because Lauren Salzman is a slave.

Perhaps Lauren is truly emblematic of a type – the kind of woman that could become enslaved by Nxivm.

Lauren is by no means stupid. She is bright. But there is some terrible flaw, some weakness in her, some lack of confidence or belief in herself that makes her embrace the notion of slavery to a certain man.

 

Sarah Edmondson with Lauren Salzman

She was not ugly. She could have found another man. But she would rather share a slave master with 20 other women than have a man who might love her as an equal.

This should be studied and understood. The type who seeks to be a slave as fulfillment, and once enslaved, abdicates all moral responsibility to her master as if she were a tool – whether used to murder or perform surgery – Lauren [and Raniere] trained her mind to not judge.

But just trust.

She had 20 years of this.

So, is she a victim?  Is she mentally incapable of doing anything differently? If so, should she not be excused for much or all of what she did that was criminal?

Her biggest crime was not telling other slaves that Raniere was the secret leader of DOS. She admits for the sake of not going to prison longer than she has to – that this was wrong. But I do not really think Lauren thinks it is wrong.

She was a tool. Raniere’s tool. He told her to do it, and she simply obeyed. There was no intent to do harm. She probably thought – if she thought at all about it – that she was doing good.

She was just a tool in his hand. She was to obey the command before she thought about its rightness or wrongness.

And we don’t charge the knife if it is used for a crime.

****

Earlier posts in the Lauren Salzman series.

Part 1:  How Lauren Salzman Described Her Branding Session

Part 2: Lauren Salzman Recruited Sarah Edmondson by Lying and Agreed Sarah Should Cuckold Her Husband if Raniere Commanded

Part 3: Lauren Salzman Describes Collateral She Got From Her Slaves, After Lying to Them About DOS

Part 4: Lauren Salzman Brands Five Slaves Lying to Them About the Brand; Becomes the Leading Recruiter of DOS

Part 5 Lauren Salzman and Her Slaves Got Bare-Ass Paddling

Part 6: Lauren Salzman Manages Her Slaves – With Cruelty and Insanity

Part 7: Lauren Salzman Describes Sex Life With Keith, Threesomes, Nude Photos, How She Kissed Another Man and How She Talked Other Women Into Staying With the Monster

Part 8: More Insanity: Lauren Salzman Touches Man at Volleyball; Keith Says ‘No Avatar Baby’

Part 9 Lauren Salzman Sent to Mind-F–k Gay Woman Who Did Not Want Keith as a Sperm Donor

Part 10 Lauren Salzman Describes DOS First Line Slave Masters, Admits She Wrote Letter Supporting Nicki Clyne’s and Allison Mack’s Fake Marriage

Part 11 Lauren Salzman Explains Raniere’s Creepy Readiness Drills 

Part 12 How Lauren Salzman Was Cheated Out of Motherhood by Keith Raniere and DOS

Part 13 Lauren Salzman Names Inner Circle and Keith’s Relationships With Them 

Part 14 Lauren Salzman Discusses Up Close Vagina Pics She, Allison Mack and Other DOS Slaves Took Together – Keith Was Having Sex With All of Them But Her

Part 15  Relentless Collateral, Staging Fake Crimes, Standing Barefoot in Snow, Locked in Dungeons, Being Kicked on Ground, Paddled — Welcome to the Insane World of Lauren Salzman 

Part 16 Lauren Salzman Reads From DOS Bible — ‘Women in Particular Are Miraculous Excuse Finders’

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  • My first thought in reading this is that it’s so Old Testament – subjugation of women, multiple wives, slavery – sort of Raniere’s version of FLDS on the Hudson, or a fundamentalist Christian ministry like James Dobson’s Focus on the Family with no holds barred.

    Raniere’s notion of “A Tool” is scary – the bloody images he sets up, “a murder weapon or being used for surgery,” shows where he is going with it. Thinking and questioning is negatively framed as somehow “prideful.”

    Salzman seems to have gained some insight into Raniere’s self-serving purpose with her response that “certainly through the curriculum it legitimized the lifestyle that I think Keith wanted to live.” That’s the real egoism, or “pridefulness” at work in NXIVM.

    This all clearly shows that, typical of a high control group or cult, Raniere is trying to get followers to get followers to believe they’re being freed when in fact they’re being indoctrinated and controlled, to stop thinking for themselves, and to abandon established norms of ethics and morality, instead re-defining “good” as what suits the organization and its leader. It’s subjugation, not “collateralization” or accountability or whatever they were calling it.

    I’d like to see this “bible” published in its entirely – or at least extensive “fair use” excerpts to study and criticize.

  • “So, is she a victim? Is she mentally incapable of doing anything differently? If so, should she not be excused for much or all of what she did that was criminal?”
    Excuse me, but you don’t consider this as a real possibility for Allison, who is genuinely a victim…but for Lauren, you dare to ask this question?

    Lauren was empowered by her position, she made decisions by herself (contrary to Allison). She did it for 20 years (while Allison was in for way less and let’s not talk of the inner circle…she entered in 2015 (officially).

    Lauren committed serious undisputable crimes (not just collecting collateral but also imprisoning Dani (or at least participating enough to decide not to give Dani her documents when she left)

    What is Lauren’s excuse for her actions? That he promised her a baby? He promised that to several girls…

    Lauren was deep in, she is behind most of the crimes and was the one abusing certain hypnotic thérapies against others…

    A victim? Her? No!

    BTW, the beating is only referred by her testimony…

    Allison was also beaten (Chernisky demonstration), ridiculed (caged) and way more abused (and I’m not even talking about the semi-starvation, the sleep deprivation and the potential drug-induced control that Raniere had on her…)

    Laure,n a victim…
    20 years of misbehavior and not under coercion for a long time…

    • Do you not see a tiny bit of hypocrisy in your continual efforts to teach us that 20 years is SO much different than 7 years (or however many AM was involved)? As I’ve typed before, it might help your girl more if you also had sympathy for the other females that were involved. Trying to show that Lauren was in deeper than AM is probably a winning argument – but taking a one-pronged approach and showing Keith was a psychopathic leader who had these women doing fucked up things (IMO) is a more beneficial angle for your desired outcome. In other words, you helping to get Lauren a longer sentence won’t help AM’s sentence. It would hurt it.

  • I get the impression Salzman isn’t testifying or answering questions. Instead, she is in teaching mode, or trying to recruit (enroll in NXIVM-speak) Hajjar to become a NXIVM member. She may not know any other mode.

    Salzman also did far worse things than merely not tell her slaves that Raniere was in charge of DOS, she kept Dani confined and was a monster to her slaves, for starters.

    • This is exactly what I thought, Scott. It sounds like her recruitment spiel. Funny also how the prosecutors happened to be found attractive women. She said in prior testimony she was a very good recruiter/sales person. It is what she knows.

  • Re “Lauren Salzman Explains, Defends and Justifies Slavery – and Why It Is Good to Be a Slave”:

    This latest excerpt is the most telling thus far.

    A few thoughts on this excerpt:

    1. Lauren is as indoctrinated as any member of ISIS or David Koresh’s Branch Davidians.

    2. Raniere made his followers literally and figuratively into total “tools”. He owned their souls. They were drones and he was their queen bee.

    3. How are Raniere‘s teachings different from any other religious teachings? Just take any god’s name and substitute it for “master”. Try and find any religion that does not talk about being a “vessel” and turning yourself over towards blind obedience to the master (god). Good luck!

    4. Did any of the NXIVM members ever wonder if there was an end game? Or did they all believe they would be both slave and master for all eternity?

    5. Is there any real hope Lauren will ever be normal?

    6. I pity and do have empathy for Lauren. Lauren helped to hold Dani captive and there is no excuse for that. Lauren is both victim and villain. Anyone involved in Dani’s home confinement deserves a 3-5 year sentence.

    7. Many people on this site seem to think Lauren is enough of a victim to deserve only 1-2 years. If a man committed the same crime to a woman, would they be so forgiving?

  • Lauren testifying, “It means that anything they want, your goal is to be able to serve them regardless of what it is and… whatever it is, it is just all to serve them, and to do that….”

    Even the attorney, Hajjar, asked Lauren “and who is ‘them,’ since “they” and “them” implied that Lauren was serving more than one entity. Lauren answered, “the Master.”

    Lauren might never have developed an independent sense of self with Nancy Salzman as her mother. Always Lauren could have experienced herself as being pushed to the background. Perhaps Lauren’s use of a plural term, used to signify her Master, indicates that Lauren perceived herself as in servitude to more than only Raniere?

    Some of Lauren’s least guarded testimony came out whenever she was talking about her personal struggles with feeling “lesser than” other women, who were being given more attention by Raniere than she got. She struggled contending with women as competitors, especially if she perceived the competition as being more vivacious than she, as being ones who were receiving more attention or as being of more sexual interest to Raniere than she found herself to be. She had cooperated with training herself, no matter what she was experiencing, to blame herself for her perceptions, to invalidate her emotions and even her experience.

    This could be the story of Lauren’s life, that she was unable to find or to learn any real self-respect or even how to think things over for herself, as doing so could’ve meant that automatically, she was not staying true to her expected form, as “less than,” as unworthy, as merely being an accessory to her mother. As if Lauren had always been an afterthought, she fell right in line with that self-unworthiness mess inside of herself with regard to Raniere.

    On another note, Lauren was assigned to supervise the imprisonment of a young lady for around two years. She was willing to contribute considerably and directly to this imprisonment, and supposedly Lauren was being a dutiful slave herself. Removing someone’s human rights and freedom for 23 to 27 months was one of Lauren’s tasks. The girl being held in a room by herself was not an American citizen, yet Lauren cooperated with confiscating the girl’s identity papers, passport. The girl was allowed to have a pen and some paper, not much of anything else. The girl was told to write, pretty much to write about how wrong she was or to make a few book reports for Raniere. So the girl was held captive in more ways than one. She couldn’t even return to her own country without considerable risk; no money and no identity papers.

    But I propose that Lauren was well aware of her prisoner’s youngness, of her vulnerabilities, of her attractiveness to Raniere as a sexual object and of her prisoner’s willingness to take risks and that her prisoner had more liveliness within herself than Lauren ever did. Lauren does not acknowledge that she herself took grim pleasure in getting someone who Lauren saw as a sexual rival, out of the way.

    This is one of the fundamental dishonesties that Raniere made up to entrap his harem. He was insistent that each person had to deny their own emotions, particularly concerning his sexual interactions and his dominance. He instructed his subjects to mangle their thoughts and feelings and to accuse only the self. Unless Raniere had sanctioned rejecting someone to teach that person “a lesson,” and then everyone was expected to jump on that condemnation and to become a part of it. But otherwise, Raniere insisted that each individual was to blame the self for every “uncooperative” thought, word or action.

    Lauren and every DOS firstline “slave” lied by omission, concealing that the so-called women’s secret sorority was really commanded not by the women’s fledgling slave-collecting hierarchy, but that Raniere was the only one in charge of it all. So not mentioning Raniere’s leading role was not a lie or a manipulation exclusively used by Lauren Salzman.

    Everyone, while pretending to look for personal integrity or group integrity, was lying to everyone else. All of the time. This was one of Raniere’s most foundational requirements. His subjects had to uphold all of his deceptions, as their sacred truth and duty. Either cooperate or be condemned.

    I don’t know what Lauren did that could be called “the worst” of what she did, not really. Lauren was completely accustomed to lying, and not only to others, for Raniere benefit. She was lying to herself. She wanted, so hopelessly to be one of the head rats, monsters, jackasses. She juggled her own feelings of status vs. not having or feeling any status, and she was on that treadmill constantly, nonstop for twenty years. She was too caught up in this worthiness/unworthiness even to think it over or to try to reckon with it.

    She was even willing to keep a young woman, younger and prettier than she, stashed away without any liberty. Lauren did this, not for a day or so, a week or so. That would have been crazy and horrible to have done to anyone, even for 20 minutes or for an hour, but Lauren kept at it for a couple of years.

    Would Lauren do something like that again? Well, Raniere is not exactly available now to boss Lauren around. However, Lauren seems to be right by the side of her original commander, Nancy Salzman, even today. Lauren, standing with her head down, holding the door, holding the bag and still holding herself captive. Disturbingly, Lauren never seems to have discerned any difference at all between being a vessel, as opposed to being a tool.

  • I see lot of hate, fear and objectivism in the comments. There is no empathy, and just promote almost the same are you against to. This website seems like a cult, radical way of think, doing similar practices as a cult member does, like speaking with dishonour, judgements about others do, no self examination. If you remove the word slave and replace it by associate or employee, the postulates of L stated seem a better idea. Which entrepreneur not look a trustful and reliable person to work with, if the entrepreneur woman or man is polygamous matter? of is just a preference as monogamous o bi or homo. To have preferences imply that you are not human anymore?

    • Keith collected blackmail material of women and then forced them to be branded. He had one Mexican woman confined to a room for almost two years. He raped a minor. What kind of empathy do you expect?

      Entrepreneurs don’t do that. Do not normalize criminal behavior.

      • Thank you, Mexican Lady. My sentiments exactly.

        I find this commenter’s willful twisting of the meaning of words like “cult” and “preferences” to be offensive.

        The “book” crafted from Raniere’s musings explicitly endorses the subversion of the law and instructs on how to cripple moral decision making in individual followers.

        Embracing what the commenter calls “preferences” would amount to allowing megalomaniacs to roam freely about competing for the most “slaves.” No wonder Raniere wanted his own country.

    • There’s plenty of empathy here, Anon — for the true victims — if you discount the assholes like Flowers, Bangkok and Scott Johnson.

      You are forgetting about those who were financially fleeced, mind warped, scarred for life physically and emotionally through deceit. How can you compare that to working for any old entrepreneur?

    • Oh please, anonymous. What you are describing of the commenters is normal and natural behavior from people who have, what these women didn’t, instinct and reactions when faced with something dangerous and evil. You can’t claim that nobody has empathy. People can have compassion and empathy but also the ability to criticise by being able to see the vileness in certain human behaviours. People can’t get a free pass especially people who have committed crimes and are now on the witness stand explaining/justifying/selling their beliefs. However, I am absolutely fine in you believing we are part of a Frank Report Cult and engaging in cultish behaviour. I assure you Frank Parlato is not forcing me to read or comment on his blog. I am unaware of him having access to my humiliating photographs to hold these against me should I not do as he pleases. I do appreciate your concern though and will seriously consider going to the FBI and being deprogrammed should he threaten the release of any said humiliating photos if I refuse to print off his blog and paper cut his initials into my skin using it.

      • Natashka, you brings up some interesting points. Maybe it would be a good thing for you to send Frank some nude pictures? He will take good care of them. He only shares his collection with his best sources.

        And am I the only one who noticed the FP in the DOS brands? The KR is evident. Is it possible Frank tossed out the idea of AM being in the brand as a way to divert us off the FP trail? I’d like to request a few articles that critically analyze this possibility.

        • I gave my consent to being part of this Frank Report cult. I clicked “post comment” for the first time and my life, as I knew it, was over. I have now seen the light. Anonymous helped me realise it. I now live in fear and cannot stop reading Frank Report and commenting ever! God help me!

          Back to reality, there is nothing collateral worthy on my phone, honest. Only emarrasingly mundane!

  • So female empowerment is being indoctrinated to blindly follow orders? These first-line DOS assholes are even worse than the Hitler Youth! Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I read somewhere about how blind loyalty led to a mass genocide. I’m thinking it may have been in the 1940s in some country called Germany or something like that. Who has time to read when you’re trying to set up a kick-ass woman’s movement! And so much for that Bachelor’s degree that Lauren received. She may as well wipe her ass with it.

    Lauren is already in her own prison. Either she laments that her true Master is incarcerated, or she is coming to the realization that she squandered decades of her life by her own volition. The fact that she is still associating with her mother is some proof that she hasn’t made that realization. At some level, I’d bet that she is still holding out hope that her beloved Vanguard gets off. She knows that all she would need to do is go back on a 500 calorie per day diet and perform oral on him to get back in his good graces.

    After all, I doubt that there are any self-respecting women out there that would even want to come close to this felonious, cross-eyed foot blister who claims to be the world’s smartest man.

    And for any guy out there who eventually comes across a woman with a sideways KR brand in the pelvic area? You got yourself a real winner! Good luck with that!

    • “Lauren is already in her own prison. ” Jarhead

      The strongest most impenetrable prisons are those we build for ourselves.
      I fear that most if not all of the women in NXIVM will be in their mental prisons for the rest of their lives.

  • Lauren’s the first “slave” I’ve ever seen sporting a Versace ensemble, Sassoon precision hair cut, her own stylish oft-remodeled suburban home, a pair of “Goldfinger” Siamese felines she can’t even be bothered to care for herself…

    She didn’t just transcribe a belief system that “supported Keith’s lifestyle,” as she admits, Lauren co-wrote this crap — and she helped package it in an enticing, exciting way: a secret, magical book, ha! — to indoctrinate the “slaves” to support her own and her Mother’s lavish lifestyles — as well Keith’s.

    And she admittedly damn well knew exactly what she was doing.

    It was a HUMAN PYRAMID with Lauren sitting pretty on the top tier, enslaving everyone ‘beneath’ her to maintain her privileged, rare position in the hierarchy.

    The only principle in any of this is the principle of getting ahead by suckering, subjugating, using and abusing other people, other people’s money AND their bodies — sacrificed to not only Keith but to the enterprise she and her mother, her family, owned.

    Hopefully, Judge Garufis sees through all this dizzying, circular “slave” logic.

    …Almost makes you want to scream: “THERE ARE NO VICTIMS!” Lol, JK.

    (Unfortunately, there were far too many victims but Lauren Salzman was not one of them, IMHO.)

    • Heidi:
      It has been long noted that even Nancy took Lauren to task for her free-spending ways.
      All of the top tier women of NXIVM, the women on trial minus Kathy Russell, were an arrogant crew who savored abusing other women.
      Lauren, Allison, Nancy, and Clare were not victims.

  • I’ve often heard the women being compared to abused wives. What I do find interesting is that I’ve heard many women, who have been victims of domestic abuse, explain that if their friend/loved one told them that they were being abused by their partner they would feel outraged and clearly see it as abuse but because it was happening to them and the manipulation around that and them being convinced they are to blame, they failed to see that they were a victim and it continued for some time.

    Now I question these women and their relationships with one another and how they could stand to see someone else being abused mentally and physically and accepting of that. Obviously, they were accepting of their own treatment thinking it was for growth and the greater good but they were also witnessing the treatment of others, which is different to the treatment of oneself. Others they called their close friends.

    They must have felt they were benefitting from this scenario in some way. Certainly, the ones higher up in the chain enjoyed the power, as they were dishing the abuse out as well as being abused themselves to some degree. It’s such a bizarre thing but very interesting. I hope these women are getting professional help because Nxivm really stripped them of a lot of their mental faculties and there is a great risk that those higher up who were dishing it out are still dangerous, I believe.

  • Lauren’s high-octane glibness as she surveys the landscape of DOS-world is unsettling. I sense a still-present enthusiasm for Raniere’s “vision.”

    Regarding her culpability, I don’t think having a predisposition for being easily tricked into breaking the law, for a “master” in this case, or even having some hypothesized cortical malady that leaves her in a “theta loop” gets her off the hook.

    Still, for better or worse (which, I, for one, can’t fathom), Lauren isn’t your run-of-the-mill grifter or pilferer. In a sense, given her enthusiasm for towing the line according to Raniere’s craven maxims, she out-masters the master.

  • A recent Frank Report story referred to the “NXIVM DOS bible”.

    It is not the bible.
    It is Keith Raniere’s version of the Koran.
    Keith Raniere is the figurative reincarnation of the perverted Muslim prophet Mohammed who preached female sexual slavery, polygamy and pedophilia.
    Both Mohammed and Keith Raniere are Satanic figures in human form.
    And Keith Raniere should be treated precisely like Osama Bin Laden and Iranian terrorist General Quaseem Soleimani.
    (Infowars published a beautiful picture of Soleiman’s charred and dismembered corpse. Solemani is responsible for the murder of approximately 608 Americans.)

    As for Raniere’s demented, depraved, degenerate followers, they are stupid weak-willed women who lust for their own slavery.
    They all should be locked up in prison for decades for their own good.

    Look at this asinine actress Rose McGowan who apologized to Iran for killing their top terrorist!
    Rose McGowan and the freaks of Hollyweird need brain transplants.

    Look at the videos from the Middle East.
    In all the street demonstrations.
    WHERE ARE THE WOMEN?
    The whole Islamic world looks like a giant Sausage Festival where the main game is “Hide the Sausage in Qaseem’s Butt.”
    Well, Donald Trump played the game “Hide the Reaper missile up Qaseem’s butt.”

    • Shadow, you should get to know the Bible – and religious history, and perhaps history in general.

      Essentially, for both Raniere and Muslim prophet Mohammed – not to mention fundamentalists like the Mormon FLDS – the source is the Old Testament. Slavery, polygamy and pedophilia are all there – not to mention brutal treatment of one’s enemies, and the vanquished.

      If anything, NXIVM and Raniere’s FLDS on the Hudson was a “la cosa nostra” with Roman Christian roots – Raniere (Ranieri) himself, Del Negro, Natalie (Natali), Ciappone, the Romanos (Gina and Heidi’s family, whose former restaurant was the NXIVM lair – there’s a connection you should “research”) and so on. It’s probably no accident that the Mexicans, steeped in a similar Mediterranean Christian culture, formed the next most important contingent.

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.” Parlato was also credited in the Starz docuseries "Seduced" for saving 'slave' women from being branded and escaping the sex-slave cult known as DOS.

Additionally, Parlato’s coverage of the group OneTaste, starting in 2018, helped spark an FBI investigation, which led to indictments of two of its leaders in 2023.

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 premiered on May 22, 2022. Most recently, he consulted and appeared on Tubi's "Branded and Brainwashed: Inside NXIVM," which aired January, 2023.

IMDb — Frank Parlato

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

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