It is peculiar.

Somehow Suneel K. Chakravorty, a Nxivm member, a devotee of Keith Alan Raniere, and a financial dependent of Clare Webb Bronfman, saw fit to write an oddly embarrassing letter in support of Clare.

And her attorneys saw fit to include it in their sentencing recommendation package to the judge.

In Suneel’s letter in support of Clare, he mentions that after the heiress injured herself, he had to bring her to the toilet.

Yes, you read that right.

Suneel wrote that after Clare injured herself in a fall in her apartment, “She couldn’t move at all on her own, so I made her food, brought her water, helped her take her medicine, charge her ankle monitor, and even brought her to and from the bathroom, lowering her down onto and raising her up from the toilet seat.”

OK,

Good on you Suneel.

But I wonder how the hell this helps the convicted Nxivm leader, who spent at least a hundred million on Nxivm, including millions for lawyers who set out to destroy Nxivm’s enemies.

As an ardent member of The Forgotten Ones, Suneel dances weekly in front of the MDC for his Vanguard.

He was mentioned by the prosecution as a man regularly in touch with Raniere by phone and whose conversations with his leader were recorded by the government.

In his letter, Suneel says he also visited Raniere in prison, [pre-COVID I assume.]

In his letter to the judge, he professes loyalty to Clare and describes what a wonderful person she is. His argument about her being wonderful seems to be little more than what any person would do: He gives her big credit for abiding by her bail conditions and finds it inspiring that she encouraged him to jog, something that Clare has been doing for years and which Suneel joined her in doing.

What he sees as noble and inspiring, skeptics might see as her simply not wanting to go to jail for violating her bail conditions and wanting to have a jogging companion rather than jogging alone.

Suneel also explains that poor Clare has been devoid of friends, and he seems to be her only companion.

While he paints a picture of a lonely, suffering, and isolated Clare, he says nothing about the years she used her millions making others lonely and suffering.

Finally, he says nothing about the money she pays him to attend her. Rest assured, Suneel is not visiting the heiress without compensation.

I want to warn readers that if they have a tender heart, cry when watching Lifetime Movies or when listening to sad love songs, or are susceptible to emotional appeals, they should not read Suneel’s letter, for they will undoubtedly break down and cry..

It’s a real tearjerker.

Suneel’s Letter in Full

Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis United States District Court Eastern District of New York 225 Cadman Plaza East Brooklyn, NY11201

August 26, 2020

Dear Judge:

My name is Suneel Chakravorty. I graduated from Harvard College with a degree in mathematics and I now reside in Brooklyn, New York. I am by profession a data scientist and software developer. My past business was a software consulting firm, which I grew to 15+ employees from 2015-2018. I love teaching people to code and learn new skills to advance their career and that is the focus of my new business, teaching people how to use the tools of coding, data analysis and data science.

I am writing this letter of reference for Clare Bronfman because I believe I have unique insight into her character, as I have befriended her during a very challenging part of her life. I met Clare once or twice in passing in the 2 years that I was in ESP, from 2016-2018, but I only got to know her better in the past year. While I did take some ESP courses, I was never a professional coach and was never employed by NXIVM or its affiliated entities.

From June 2019 to this moment that I’m writing this letter, I have had the pleasure of spending time almost every week with Clare and getting to become her friend. Usually we’ll go on walks or runs in the area that she is allowed to walk in on the days she is allowed “outside time” and other times she makes me some healthy, nutritious vegetarian lunch or we’ll watch an inspiring movie together. We even watched Eliud Kipchoge break the 2-hour barrier for running a marathon.

Since July of 2019, she has been encouraging me to run, which has been one of my lifelong dreams which I had shied away from because of prior injuries. She has supported me in helping me come up with training plans to compete in a 5K in Brooklyn and a 10K in Central Park and would check in with me throughout the week on how I was feeling, how my legs and body were adjusting, and my general progress. I found this not only incredibly helpful but also very moving.

She is someone that has been made out to be someone terrible and facing years in prison yet in every interaction with her, her chief concern with me is how to help me progress and grow.

One thing that has been tough for her is that she can’t see most of her dear friends, because almost all of her friends for the last 10+ years are people affiliated with NXIVM. I have seen firsthand how this isolation from her friends has been on her. She spends most of her time alone in her apartment, with some breaks from that solitude through visits with me and tangential acquaintances from her past or her doctors and lawyers.

She has expressed to me how hard it has been not being able to see her friends. However, she has implored me to not to share with anyone that I visit her because, as she explained to me, she is not allowed to have contact with certain people affiliated with NXIVM and she does not want to run the risk of violating any part of her release conditions. I believe this shows the type of person she is. Even though it is hard for her to be so isolated, she respects and honors the court’s orders. This became even more apparent when I started to visit Keith Raniere in prison. When I informed Clare that I was considering visiting him after trial ended, she instructed me to keep the content of the visits to myself because she cannot have any type of communication with him. I saw first-hand how important it was to her that she remain in compliance with her release conditions ordered by the court.

On Christmas Eve 2019, I witnessed another severe downside of her isolation. I received a call from Clare around 5 or 6 in the morning in which she asked me if I could come over as soon as possible. She explained that she had had a terrible back spasm, passed out in her bedroom and knocked her head against something on the way down. Luckily one of the staff in her building was able to help her to the couch.

By the time I got to Clare’s apartment, she was looking very bad. She was immobile, on the couch and drained of energy. I spent the next 3 days and nights with her, helping her to convalesce. She couldn’t move at all on her own, so I made her food, brought her water, helped her take her medicine, change her ankle monitor, and even brought her to and from the bathroom, lowering her down onto and raising her up from the toilet seat.

When we experience these indignities of illness, normally we have our family, or a partner or an old friend to help us through these somewhat humiliating circumstances. But because of Clare’s unique situation with the bail conditions, her family being on a different continent, and her lawyers and doctors were out of town for the holidays, all she had was me: a guy friend that she had only really known for a few months at the time.

I am grateful that this experience brought us very close together but I was also very sad to see how she was in a situation where, without my being there, I’m not sure how she would have managed at all. While I know this situation was extremely hard for her, she never once complained to me, and I mention this story because I know she never would.

Although I believe that some of the effects of this isolation have been extremely difficult for Clare, she has not complained at all to me and has not blamed anyone. Instead, she only expressed gratitude that I was able to be there to help.

As her sentencing has approached, I have seen her deal with the stress of this situation, and it has impacted her health and general wellbeing. That said, in every walk, every run, every lunch we have had, she doesn’t burden me with her stress. I imagine that the words I’m writing will sound hard to believe for anyone who has read what is written about her, but all I can tell is you is my genuine experience of spending time with Clare during one of the most difficult and unique periods of her life. I believe she is a good person with strong moral character and an earnest desire to help those around her. Most of our conversations have centered around how to help people and what she can learn from her situation that will empower her to have a positive impact in the future.

I humbly request that you grant her the most lenient possible sentence so that she may use her considerable skills and resources for the betterment of others.

Sincerely,

Suneel K. Chakravorty

A Few Notes on the Letter

Though Suneel graduated from Harvard College with a degree in mathematics and is a data scientist and software developer, like all Nxivm members who are not heiresses, he is probably dead broke.

He had a business, it seems, a software consulting firm, which had 15+ employees from 2015-2018.

But as he admits, he got into Nxivm in 2016 and he now refers to his company in the past tense. Many who got involved in Nxivm left their lucrative and successful positions to become full-time Nxivm members.

I imagine, like Nxivm members past and present, Suneell is probably 100 percent financially dependent on Clare.

Suneel wrote, “She spends most of her time alone in her apartment, with some breaks from that solitude through visits with me and tangential acquaintances from her past or her doctors and lawyers.”

This suggests that Clare has no friends or family who take the time to visit her. Yet, she does, in fact, have lots of family members in New York City.

But Clare cut off the rest of the world during her 17 years in Nxivm. Whenever anyone came around, she insisted they take Nxivm classes or get away from her [and her money].

According to the terms of her bail conditions, she is forbidden to associate with anyone on the 2017 coaches list. Suneel is not on the coaches list so he technically is not forbidden from seeing Clare.

Suneel tries to paint a picture that the bed Clare made for herself by cutting off the non-Nxivm world is one she does not deserve.

He uses expressions like “how hard it has been not being able to see her friends,” “she is not allowed to have contact with certain people,” and “it is hard for her to be so isolated” – and casts her as noble because she is not meeting with them covertly because “she does not want to run the risk of violating any part of her release conditions. I believe this shows the type of person she is.”

Yeah, it shows she does not want to go to jail for violating court orders. What’s special about that?

As mentioned above, Clare does have lots of family members in NYC – some of her father’s children and their children – but none of these have come to visit their sister and aunt. Nor have any of them written letters of support on her behalf to the judge.

The fact is she has humiliated them. A source close to one brother said the family feared Raniere and despised what Clare did to their father.  And she has hardly helped the family name.

Clare in her letter to the judge makes a big deal of how she was with her father during his final illness.

Four sources told me this is a lie.

One source told me that Clare visited her father rarely during his final years.

Another source said that on one of those visits, Clare tried to badger her dying father into making a deathbed video confession that he was wrong to call Keith Raniere evil and Nxivm a cult.

Yet another source who knew Edgar Bronfman said that Clare only visited her father a few times during his last days – and that seemed to be because she wanted to ensure she was not cut out of the will, or have the money she was to inherit placed in a trust that would prohibit her from spending it all on her Vanguard.

While I was touched by Suneel’s letter, touched by sadness at his evident stupidity and lack of awareness that this letter won’t help Clare in the slightest, I cannot bring myself to feel much sorrow for a lonely heiress who hurt so many. There are more than 100 pages of victim impact statements in Clare’s presentencing report.

I’m also touched by the fact that Suneel, formerly a business owner and now Bronfman’s errand boy and fool, is so dimwitted that he thought that telling the judge she needed help going to the toilet – because she has no friends – would somehow win sympathy from the judge for her.

Time will tell. The lonely heiress is scheduled to be sentenced on September 30.

This month, therefore, is officially declared “Clare Bronfman Month” at Frank Report.

Frank Parlato