This is Part 19 of the Lauren Salzman’s series. We are studying her testimony to try to determine whether she is more victim or perpetrator. In this post, we learn a little more about Lauren and a lot more about Keith Raniere – and what Lauren and other followers were willing to do for him.
This is particularly interesting because it concerns Raniere’s minions, led by Lauren, forcibly holding a Mexican student in a sequestered place – in the fall of 2002 – when she was acting up – and forcing her to take drugs and also putting them in her eggs without her knowing it.
It was a criminal act – and Keith, Lauren, Nancy, and others were involved.
Why this is important is that this happened just a few weeks before another student in Alaska had a so-called psychotic breakdown – and disappeared after telling students that Keith Raniere had gotten her pregnant.
Readers know the name of that woman – she was Kristin Snyder.
And some believe she too was drugged – which may have accelerated her psychotic behavior. Now, Lauren is testifying that Keith and her mother told her to drug a troublesome student.
Lauren is testifying in the trial of Keith Alan Raniere. She is a witness for the prosecution. AUSA Tanya Hajjar is examining her.
Q Ms. Salzman, did the defendant discuss an idea or any ideas about DOS in the future, the form it would take?
A To a degree at times. I mean, I think he envisioned that it would have, you know, thousands or, you know, a million — millions of people in it. That there would be actors, you know, so there would be different areas. He spoke a little bit about having like an area have somewhere in the neighborhood of like 300 members.
And there were ideas for group meetings and how to conceal identities during group meetings. So that you could maintain the secrecy and the type of silent-ism of the group, but still have interaction with people who weren’t part of the group.
Q Can you describe that further in terms of concealing their identity, what does that mean?
A Like if you’re going to attend a meeting and you would have a group meeting but everybody might be in masks, or you might have a pseudonym, or you might – like the first line DOS members had different brands than everybody else. So that those brands you might possibly cover with something that looked more uniform to everyone else.
Q Did the defendant ever talk about the effects DOS might have in the larger world?
A Possibly that we might be able to have a candidate – you know, a DOS candidate in like a high-level political office.
Q The DOS candidate means — in a collateralized vow?
A Yes.
Q Ms. Salzman, I want to go back to discuss your initial recruitment into DOS. You testified that was in January 2017?
A Yes.
Q Who first approached you about DOS?
A Keith first approached me.
Q And what did he say to you?
A He said that he wanted to make our relationship closer. He wanted to bring our relationship closer. And he asked me what I was willing to do for my growth and for my commitment to him.
Q What did you say?
A Anything. Anything. I’m fully committed to my growth and fully committed to you.
Q What did he say?
A He told me that there was something that some of the other girls were doing. He was not specific about who the girls were and — but that they wanted to invite me to something and that they were going to be approaching me. He and I had conversations over the next like 24, 36 hours, so I’m not sure exactly in which they took place in which conversation. But we had a number of conversations concerning my enrollment over the next two days.
Q At the time, were you responsible for running a NXIVM Coach Summit?
A I was, yes.
Q Just very briefly, what is a Coach Summit?
A A Coach Summit is an opportunity for the coaches and the higher-level NXIVM ranks. So the people who run the programs, who work with the students, who come in, who participate in the educational programs and who run those. Who run — who work in the centers. Those are our coaches and proctors and senior proctors. These are the high ranks.
This was an opportunity for us to come together and we would put on a retreat once a quarter, but basically, we had centers in three different — mostly in three different countries. So it’s a lot of people from a lot of different areas coming all together and setting their vision for what they wanted to do or achieve the next quarter. And how they could work together to overcome some of the limitations they were having or support each other better.
Q What was your role at this Coach Summit?
A Well, I was an executive board member so the summits in recent years were run by the executive board. And I was bringing ESP to a higher level, like what you might consider like a vice president or a higher upper-level management position.
But in this case, two of our highest ranks and close personal friends had passed away, [Pam Cafritz and Barbara Jeske] so they were the highest ranks in ESP so they were no longer with us. And then the next highest rank was inactive [Edgar Boone]. And so this was the first Coach Summit where I was the highest active rank.
So, it was very important to me to run it well and do a good job and have people feel I was the leader that they — that they didn’t feel that I had gotten my position through default because everybody died or went inactive, but actually that they felt confident in my leadership and felt glad that I was the leader. So it was — it was especially important for me.
Q Were one of those individuals who passed away Pam Cafritz?
A Yes.
Q So what happened after that initial discussion with the defendant?
A Rosa Laura approached me, and we had a meeting in her car where she introduced the concept of collateral and me committing my first collateral. So for secrecy.
Q Did you have subsequent conversations with the defendant around this time too?
A I did.
Q What did he say?
A He told me that he had started a sorority. That there were seven members or founding members, and that they were going to invite me to be a founding member. He told me that the intent was that — which I believe I later found out was not true, but that they had always intended that I would be a founding member. And that he asked me if I could guess who the other members were.
He told me that the sorority had started because of a personal struggle that Camila had had surrounding a suicide attempt. And I can’t quite recall. But definitely those things.
Q You said he asked you to guess. Did you guess?
A I did guess. I wouldn’t have guessed Rosa Laura. But once I knew Rosa Laura, I guessed the others. Because there had just been a series of events of things going around me that I had been aware of with the other members, that once I understood there was a sorority, they made sense. So I was able to guess who was in it.
Q And those individuals, those were the women you’ve identified as the first line of DOS?
A Correct, yes.
Q Did you propose — did Rosa Laura, when she approached you, discuss collateral at that time?
A Yes.
Q Okay. And what happened after that?
A I went home to come up with my collateral, and I came up with the collateral that I submitted to her. That was rejected.
Q Okay. So what form did that collateral take?
A It was — I sent it in a WhatsApp message.
Q And you said it was an account of a crime. You described that earlier?
A Yes.
Q Was this true?
A Yes.
Q When had this occurred?
A In the fall of 2002.
Q Can you explain what it was that you — that happened and that you wrote down as part of your collateral?
A That there had been a woman from Mexico who had come to take an ESP course, and in the — in the days of the course she had what I would characterize as a psychotic episode, like a psychotic break.
And she — in my opinion, she should have been hospitalized. But this was something that we hadn’t — we didn’t see, we hadn’t seen in this way to this extent and didn’t know what to do about it.
So we started seeing bizarre things with her throughout the day. And then she showed up at volleyball where Keith was and became very agitated and physically violent to the people around her.
And he suggested that we should take her — he told us to take her out of volleyball and that we can drive around in the car and try to calm her down, and then eventually told us to take her to a friend’s house. And so we took her a place where she could be safe and wouldn’t hurt herself. Which we did.
And then he was communicating through my mom to me. And later he said it would be good if she could sleep. That he thought if she slept that she could have like a — she would be able to — she was over-processing. She would be able to process and become lucid again. But that this was some type of like a spiritual crisis or something. If she could get through, it could be very progressive for her.
And so we couldn’t get her to calm down or to sleep. And he [Keith] told my mom — he told my mom that if she took Valium she could sleep.
And so my mother had a prescription of Valium that she had gotten from my father [Dr, Michael Salzman], which she gave to me, and in –we wanted her to take the Valium, and she didn’t take the Valium.
And then at one point, she became physically violent. And two men who were there, one man restrained her so that she would stop hitting and kicking other people. And the other one basically ‘pilled her’ like I pill my cat. I just took the Valium and put it right down her throat.
And then — and she was expressing at the time that she felt hurt, like she was being hurt being held down, didn’t want to be held down, and she wasn’t liking what was going on. She wasn’t — most of what she was saying was pretty incoherent. That was not incoherent.
And then she slept for a little while, but then was up again. And there was concern that she wouldn’t — we were concerned that she would still be psychotic. So somebody put another Valium in some scrambled eggs and fed them to her for breakfast. And so eventually she did calm down and reset and went back to what would be considered normal.
But my collateral basically was laying all this out that this woman had been administered prescription medicine against her will. That it implicated Keith, my mom, my dad, and all the friends who were there in this.
And it was the most damaging thing that I could think of that hurt the most important relationships in my life, and I thought would be the most — and was true, and that would be the most weighted collateral. And it would hurt me, you know, so I thought it was the most substantial thing that I could come up with was this.
Q At any point was that women taken to a hospital?
A She was not, no.
Q Did she know that she was being administered Valium in the morning?
A I don’t know. I never told her she was and she and I never discussed it, and no one ever told me she was, so I believe no.
Q Was there a concern about taking her to the hospital?
A I believe there was a concern that if she went to the hospital, it would make NXIVM look bad. Like somehow we caused her to have that. That we have done that to her somehow.
Q You testified you chose this as your collateral because it was particularly damaging to you. Why? Why was that?
A Because it was criminal that I had done. And also because it was — or that I participated in, and I was complicit, and it implicated the people who the most important to me in the same way.
Q And at the time was the defendant one of the most important people to you?
A Yes.
Q Did Rosa Laura Junco accept that collateral?
A No, she rejected it.
Q Did she tell you why?
A She told me that she rejected it because it would be a conflict of interest for Keith to release the collateral because he would be implicated in the collateral. So if I were ever to leave The Vow, he wouldn’t be able to use it, because it would hurt him, so she didn’t accept it.
************
We see from this post that Keith Raniere was willing to order a woman drugged and held forcibly.
It was in the fall of 2002. In February 2002, Kristin Snyder was in a similar circumstance – only worse for Raniere. She was claiming she was pregnant with Raniere’s child – something far more damaging to Raniere than a mere breakdown that could be attributed to Nxivm courses.
This is evidence that the Nxivm rats were capable of drugging problematic students.
Did they also secretly and/or forcibly drug Kristin Snyder?
It is also evidence that Lauren was prepared to do just about anything for Keith.
It might be true that Esther Chiappone Carlson and company felt the same way too during that fateful week in Alaska.
**************
Part 1: How Lauren Salzman Described Her Branding Session
Part 3: Lauren Salzman Describes Collateral She Got From Her Slaves, After Lying to Them About DOS
Part 5 Lauren Salzman and Her Slaves Got Bare-Ass Paddling
Part 6: Lauren Salzman Manages Her Slaves – With Cruelty and Insanity
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 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 16 Lauren Salzman Reads From DOS Bible — ‘Women in Particular Are Miraculous Excuse Finders’
Part 17 Lauren Salzman Explains, Defends and Justifies Slavery – and Why It Is Good to Be a Slave
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
[…] Part 19: Lauren Salzman Testifies That She and Raniere Secretly Put Drugs in Scrambled Eggs of Disturbed Stud… […]
There are stereotypes for a reason.
“There are stereotypes for a reason”, I knew I was right about you! 😉
I don’t know where to begin to research this without getting killed, but I’m curious to know if this curiously unnamed Mexican woman Nancy and Keith had the audacity to drug, is who I think she is:
Anna Fox, daughter of the then newly elected Mexican President Vincente Fox — who was the great hope to overtake the Salinas Sinoloan Drug Cartel stronghold on that Country’s highest office but who, after winning U.S. ATF monitored elections — a “do over” after the PRI party was caught cheating as usual on the first go-round — but who turned out to be another Salinas puppet himself. ?
Gina told me a bit about Anna and I’ve always wondered how she wandered up to Albany, NY from Mexico to attend then little-known NX classes to begin with. Albany is not exactly a diverse, cosmopolitan city and the Fox fam didn’t come through Ellis Island, either.
I have a funny feeling Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Senator for New York or Pam Caffritz’s D.C. socialite democrat campaign contributors & partyers or maybe just foxy old Nancy Salzman, somehow took this Mexican lady under her wing as an immigration favor (?) and, short of OD’ing her, thus began the exodus of Mexican Elites and, maybe, some of their laundry to Albany through NXIVM. (?)
In any case, Raniere and Salzman are damn lucky they didn’t kill her if her family cares. Not that it’s her. If it is, hi Anna. Como estas? Hope you feel better. My sister thought you were cool. Were you the first Mexican person in Albany, NY? I don’t blame you for being pissed about being there or for the eggs. Rotten thing to do to anyone, let alone a foreign VIP guest.
The first Mexicans I saw in Albany were the Boone family. I believe it started with Edgar Boone in 2000 who then recruited his Brother Omar, mom Perla and his Dad who walked out after the fifth day of the Intensive. Many elite Mexicans followed…..
Do you know how Edgar & Omar discovered ESP / NXIVM? And Bumfuck Albany, NY for that matter?
No. Do you?
Maybe this item from Crazy Days and Nights was right on target.
“Sara Bronfman named in Crazy Days and Nights Blind Item about forced sex with Allison Mack, India Oxenberg and Keith Raniere”
https://frankreport.com/2019/01/01/sara-bronfman-named-in-crazy-days-and-nights-blind-item-about-forced-sex-with-allison-mack-india-oxenberg-and-keith-raniere/
“Blind Items Revealed #33
Today, January 1, 2019, the popular website, Crazy Days and Nights’ Blind Items Revealed #33, lists three names:
Allison Mack, India Oxenberg and Sara Bronfman.
Frankly, I am puzzled by the mention of Bronfman but perhaps readers can figure it out.”
Here is the blind item post, which from November 20 until today was anonymous, [or blind item] and today was revealed as Mack, Oxenberg and Sara Bronfman:
“Over the last couple months, what seems like the last remaining insider in the NXIVM scandal has basically shut down communication with everyone including me. What were fairly frequent emails has turned into infrequent screeds and links to positive thinking news articles and message boards. Then, two nights ago, that changed when the insider was ticked off. Lies, lies lies was the subject line and for two paragraphs, the insider described multiple times that the former almost network actress forced women to have sex with her and then would hold them while the leader had sex with the woman. Other times, the leader would force our actress to have sex with another woman in front of him and would give instructions. If the instructions were not carried out, the actress would make the other woman do as she was told. On multiple occasions, the other woman was the celebrity offspring of this actress. In addition, our insider said that if the actress thought someone was not doing a good enough job of pleasing her or the leader, she would subject the woman to hours of instruction which was confinement and isolation and denial of food until they became more compliant. If there was a woman that the leader really wanted to have sex with but who was not being compliant, the actress would force feed her drugs, often addictive drugs to get them hooked. If the addiction would get out of control, the subject would be put in isolation and forced to go cold turkey for days. This cycle would often play out multiple times.’
And here is the answer:
Sara Bronfman/Allison Mack/India Oxenberg
https://frankreport.com/2019/01/01/sara-bronfman-named-in-crazy-days-and-nights-blind-item-about-forced-sex-with-allison-mack-india-oxenberg-and-keith-raniere/
And here is Nicki Clyne’s comment as Pea Onyu
Pea Onyu
January 2, 2019 at 9:28 am
Nobody was force-fed drugs. Nobody was forced to join Allie, Keith and I. This is nonsense. And to disgrace the name of Sara Bronfman is horrible. She has a child who will soon be able to get on the Internet. The events described were entirely consensual. Keith was teaching us how to enjoy each other’s bodies regardless of whether it was male or female. He has been criticized by the scoundrel Frank Parlato for being the only male we were allowed. But, honestly, who could – who would – want any other male after we were enjoyed by the perfection of Vanguard?
Guilty Lauren the victim criminal…..
….Yeah, Lauren was a hapless victim
(total sarcasm).
Lauren deserves 3-5 years in prison for incarcerating Dani, drugging a woman, and everything else she did.
All people in prison and most of the people on this website have had hard lives, myself included…
…Does having a hard-life negate culpability or responsibility for criminal activity?
BTW:
Allison Mack took advantage of a young woman she knew had been sexually assaulted and molested, and used collateral to manipulate the young woman into having sex with Keith Raniere. Yet many of you believe Allison Mack should walk Scott-free.
Mack is not the Antichrist, but she is far, far-away from being an innocent victim. She is a victim of sorts but deserves to go to jail. She deserves 3 to 5 years.
“Allison Mack took advantage of a young woman she knew had been sexually assaulted and molested, and used collateral to manipulate the young woman into having sex with Keith Raniere. Yet many of you believe Allison Mack should walk Scott-free. ”
No she didn’t…it’s an allegation by a “victim” who was ready to recruit without being fully collateralized…This testimony doesn’t fit properly chronologically.
Only Nicole is a real victim.
So stop with this BS…
BTW, you read a story about drugged person with valium (blue pills) and you know that Raniere had undisclosed drug (same color)…
We also know that Allison was amongst the girl who had a powder to add to their water in their diet but you immediatly try to blame her for unproved crimes…
SHE IS INNOCENT, like it or not mr idiot…not of sorts but a full victim…when someone need to be starved, coerced , drugged and sleep deprivated to commit a 2 year of jail max kind of crime , i would never say “she deserves 3 to 5 years)
You really start to sound like a soft shadow state (especially on a story that Don’t refer to Allison at all)
And BTW, someone who collect material (on order), while being coerced and etc deserve as much as someone who is drugging, abusing (without any excuse),incarcerating another person, and committing way worse than Allison?
Get help, seriously.
Anonymous,
Nicole is who I am referring to in my comment.
How would you feel if Nicole were your daughter?
How would you feel if Nicole were your sister?
How would you feel if Nicole were your mom?
Think of women in your life whom you love. Now imagine she is Nicole.
I said Allison should get a 3-5 year sentence. Also, I clearly stated Allison Mack is not the “antiChrist”. I believe any sentence longer than 5 years is wrong and criminal. I also believe less than 3 years is an injustice to Nicole.
Blackmail is blackmail, anonymous.
Allison Mack blackmailed a sexual assault victim into being sexually assaulted again.. …by Keith Raniere.
If Allison Mack were a man, would you be defending him?
At the end of the day, the judge makes the decision, not you or me.
I am soft, Shadow?
….Now that is insulting. I am not insulting you and I know who you are, and I don’t insult women generally. I usually agree with most things you say, but I disagree with you on one thing…And you hit me with the “you need help” label.
You’re partially right: I do need help, but not for your reasons. 😉
I am capable of changing my opinion when I err and apologizing…Perhaps down the road I will re-evaluate and apologize to you for holding a counter viewpoint.
Anonymous,
Nicole is who I was referring to. Who did you think I was referring to, Tinker-bell?
Assisting in a de facto rape is the the same to me as assisting in a “real” rape. Coercion is coercion whether it be physical or blackmail. Did Nicole want to f*ck Rainier? No she didn’t. When a woman is forced to have sex with a man, it’s called rape. I don’t know what planet you’re from but, on earth it’s called rape.
If Allison was a man would you be defending him?
I am not cutting hairs with you, I am not a barber. You want to sugar coat everything so the bitter truth will be more digestible.
At the end of the day it’s the judge who decides the sentence so you’re arguing in vain with me. You might as well stand in a mirror and scream.
I don’t believe Allison Mack is an evil person. I just don’t believe there’s any excuse for committing a criminal act such as assisting in rape.
To Anonymous:
The Federal government is taking Victim Impact Statements from as many victims as it can find.
And these Victim Impact Statements will affect the sentencing of all of the NXIVM defendants.
All of these Victim Impact Statements will contain allegations to which the defendants can reply.
(I suppose Kathy Russell will have only a few Victim Impact Statements and Allison Mack, Lauren Salzman and Keith Raniere will have numerous Victim Impact Statements to respond to.)
Allison Mack knew that this young woman had been sexually abused as a child.
And what was Allison Mack’s advice to this young woman?
To allow Keith Raniere to sexually abuse her in her young adulthood!
And who was this young woman?
A student in Allison Mack’s acting school!
A woman who was looking to Allison Mack to serve as a mentor.
Instead, Allison Mack was another exploiter in this young woman’s life.
Allison Mack’s advice is horrendous!
It demonstrates how Allison Mack is a freak and a creep.
So Lauren Pimp Salzman is not only a Sex Trafficker, she is a Drug Trafficker to boot.
And if Kristin Snyder was covertly fed Valium without her consent, a possible side effect is SUICIDE!
Diazepam
Diazepam, first marketed as Valium, is a medicine of the benzodiazepine family
Serious side effects are rare.[5] They include suicide,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diazepam
Allow me to repeat the relevant passage for the members of NXIVM.
Serious side effects of Valium include SUICIDE!
If X covertly drugs Y with Valium and Y, as a result of the covert drugging, commits suicide, that is HOMICIDE!
“And then he (Keith) was communicating through my mom to me.”
So we fast forward a few months. In regards to Kristin Snyder’s disappearance and the seminar she was attending – There is a 100% chance that Keith was directing Nancy and Nancy was comminicating the directions to Esther.
Fast foward or reverse?
Fast forward. I think the time frame is important and not coincidental. Patterns galore.
The sequence was the Mexican and then Snyder, so by the time Snyder’s crisis occurred, Nancy may have already known what to do without Raniere’s input.
Good point. You may be correct. I’d still bet Keithy was crapping his pants next to Prefect as he tried to fix his pregnant Kristin problem.
I don’t think it makes much difference.
Sure. If you don’t care who was calling the shots on how they treated Kristin Snyder. If you do care, and Keith was calling the shots on a random mexican lady, then a two year old could connect the dots to see he was involved in calling the shots with Kristin.
As I said, Salzman may not have needed his “guidance” for Snyder, she already knew what to do from the Mexican woman experience. In any event, it is a very minor issue.
With NXIVM’s close ties to Mexico, it is no surprise that people were drugged from time to time to keep them compliant.
Stereotype much?
Or you could also say that with NXIVM being run by Italians, it is no surprise that they made like the Mafia and pushed narcotics on Americans.
It’s all just meaninglessly speculative, and subject to irrelevant biases, isn’t it?
By the way, The Google will tell you that the Mafia was big into drugs long before Latin America became important – and at the time in question, the Mexicans didn’t yet have much of a role in NXIVM.
AnonyMaker
Tell me why even DEA agents hesitate to travel to Mexico.
Tell me how El Chapo, the most wanted man in the world, was able to buy his way out of a Mexican prison.
A book you should read “Fentanyl, Inc.”
How Chinese chemical companies ship Fentanyl precursors to Mexico for the drug cartels to use in making Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more deadly than Heroin.
Fentanyl, Inc.
How Rogue Chemists Are Creating the Deadliest Wave of the Opioid Epidemic
by Ben Westhoff
https://groveatlantic.com/book/fentanyl-inc/
And it is moronic liberals who will not let Donald Trump control America’s borders because it is “racist.”
News flash, Dr. Detroit aka Shadow!!!!
Trump could send the 82nd and 101st and those military divisions would still not be enough to stop all of the illegal immigrants flowing across the 1,933-mile Southern border of the United States.
I don’t like Obama, but liberal Obama deported more illegal aliens than Bush. It’s not just Obama and the liberals. All the Mexican fruit pickers and landscapers in this country are illegal Mexicans. A lot of illegal immigrants provide cheap labor for agriculture. There are Republicans working behind the scenes. Do you think it’s just liberals? Red and Blue state industries profit while our taxes fight illegals. Shadow, we are being fucked by both sides. The deep state is all-inclusive liberal and conservative elites.
Read the article below:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illegal-immigrants-us-jobs-economy-farm-workers-taxes/
I don’t like illegals because they cause wages to fall and stagnate.
Niceguy,
Every house needs a door and every country needs a border.
If you opened up the windows of your house and tore all the doors of the hinges, your house would not be your house for much longer.
As writer Mark Steyn put it, “Borders are good things because borders imply choices.”
Americans choose one type of society while Canadians and Mexicans choose different types of societies.
NXIVM is the prime example of a NAFTA inspired transnational crime organization.
The corrupt elites of Canada, America and Mexico have joined together to form an international crime cartel involved in human trafficking, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering and a host of other crimes.
You might note that in 2016 Trump ran against both the corrupt Republican elite and the corrupt Democratic elite.
Mitt Romney, whose Mormon father was born in Mexico, hates Trump as much as Hillary Clinton does.
If America fails to secure its borders because of a treasonous elite, then America is doomed.
America’s culture and values and historical legacy should never be for sale at any price.
Otherwise America will end up like this:
Emiliano Salinas for El Presidente of the United States!
Alex Betancort for Il Duce!
Clare Bronfman for Legatus!
Nancy Salzman for Prefect!
Hail Vanguard!
Free Reefers for Everyone!
Shadow, those are non-sequiturs.
Mexico is like Chicago was a century ago, when they had to arm the G-Men with military weapons to go into the neighborhoods and deal with the Italian mob. Have you considered that perhaps how Mexico got the way it is – including the demand that fuels the drug trade – originates with the US in some complex way that defies simple sound bites and drama-wrought anecdotes?
You are on to something with your reference to Fentanyl precursors coming out of China, but you need to use The Google a bit more thoroughly to get real answers. The Chinese also ship a lot of precursors, including for synthetic drugs, directly to the US. And that points to a larger problem: most of the drugs that come to the US come in through ports of entry, including along US coasts and seaways, not with human “mules” crossing the border – and not to mention the huge amount that is produced domestically, whether legally and diverted or misused (such as prescription opioids), or illegally.
Did you know that means that even if the US sealed the Southern border to all human traffic, almost all of the drug flow into the US would continue? You’re apparently falling for some appealingly simplistic but faulty narrative being fed to you, much like Raniere’s followers.
I thought you were going to connect Italians with pizza…and hot sauce. Those are two things Raniere will probably never eat again.
Scott, there is a connection in that Gina and Heidi’s family the Romanos, had an Italian restaurant in the building that became NXIVM’s Apropos clubhouse – and almost certainly served pizza. And that may ultimately connect to the Parlatos and the Bronfmans, but that seems to be a conspiracy theory that Shadow hasn’t picked up on, so it can wait to be taken up another time….
The USA is the one with the opioid and drug addiction problem. Not Mexico. It makes sense someone in the US would drug participants .
The meetings in masks reminds me of the film Eyes Wide Shut, sex all over the place in masks. Not very original, Keith.
The drugging incident is very reminiscent of Scientology’s “introspection rundown,” when people are having psychotic-like symptoms after sessions – a longstanding problem with the sort of techniques, including regression and reliving of trauma, used in NXIVM as well – are isolated, and then in that other organization sometimes given the sedative/hypnotic chloral hydrate, used because the drug was originally specified in the era when their founder Hubbard was still alive.
The Times Union article of 2004 mentions other cases of psychiatric problems around this time. But I haven’t seen any reports of incidents since, suggesting that NXIVM either found a way to avoid problems, or keep them quiet. That’s one of the mysteries I’d like to hear more about from an insider, as it seems unlikely they then went entirely without participants and members running into psychological trouble.
It’s also a reminder that Kristin Snyder’s case was one of several in which participants had severe problems.
Now this is real evidence of very bad and illegal behavior. Not sure why it took so long to come out. Is the entire court transcript available?
The government should investigate ALL of NXIVM and its top members.
From the get-go, I felt that there was some kind of drug trafficking angle to this story.
Too many NXIVM people kept fooling around in Mexico.
Is talking about prescription drugs such as valium, to appease a student who has a psychotic episode and your assets with drug theories and even call Lauren drug dealer, you do smoke green, shadow, and certainly where traffic Lauren drugs if everything happened in the same house.
I believe Frank reported on this drugging incident at the time of Lauren’s testimony or perhaps it merely mentioned as part of the day’s events. I can’t remember, it was a while ago.
I would be surprised if something more doesn’t come of this. I am hoping things are progressing well with more charges. It sounds like NXIVM’s routine treatment for, what they would deem, a troublesome student having a “psychotic break”. Disgusting. People need to be held accountable.
Perhaps he did and I missed it/forgot it. But I think I would remember someone forcing a pill down someone’s throat and spiking eggs. I don’t recall Snyder mentioning blaming the family for raping her sister when she was a girl, either, and that was a MAJOR part of the story.
Students left with bad psychological reactions were not so uncommon. I saw two students in the same intensive and the coaches looked the other way. I think they only attempted to subdue the student if they had a public outburst that would be detrimental to the cash cow Nxivm was becoming.
Thankfully, I was left to hang in the wind. These are very cruel people who were all about money and sex,
It took me 20 years to rid myself of the harm they did to me in 16 days!
Frank, reading this blog has helped me put in perspective my own doubts that have haunted me all these years.
Reading and learning what was done to others has helped me immensely.
Perhaps someday we shall meet and I can thank you personally.
Thanks for contributing, it always helps put things in perspective to hear from people with actual experience.
I find it particularly interesting to hear from people about the initial levels of involvement. I think we need to understand better how it was that people were attracted to NXIVM.
Was it obvious at the time, that they were cruel, or at least that something was very wrong?
To me, it was not at all obvious. The only obvious things were to question if the classes were helping, and why the weird rituals. At the beginning, IMO it was not obvious because there wasn’t really anything wrong going on. Keith was busy laying the ground work (for the students, coaches and inner circle) and trying to grow the business.
It was a self-improvement era. Most were attracted by the promises of what ESP would provide. The smartest man in the world teaching you the secrets of life and helping you become integrated was the snare.
Thank you for sharing!