In Mexico, the Associated Press offers a fact-checking website not dissimilar to Snopes, “to combat misinformation shared online, and includes a collaboration with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of fake news circulating on Facebook.”
In a post in October, written in Spanish, they undertook to verify rumors about Rosa Laura Junco, the daughter of Mexican media magnate Alejandro Junco and her connection to Nxivm.
https://apnews.com/article/ap-verifica-afs:Content:9533647950
The AP format begins with “The Affirmation,” a narration of the rumor, followed by “AP Verification,” which tries to determine if it’s true, and lastly the “Facts,” which could be described as additional background information.
If they had everything correct in their Snopes-style report on Rosa Laura, I would not have added my own clarification. In fact I would have likely not published this article at all.
Here is the AP report, translated from Spanish by myself [largely with the help of an online translation program]:
THE AFFIRMATION: Rosa Laura Junco, daughter of the owner of the Mexican newspaper Reforma, Alejandro Junco de la Vega, was accused of fraud, intimidation, human trafficking and slavery in the case of the NXIVM sect.
AP VERIFICATION: Partially false. Although Rosa Laura Junco is identified as a member of the inner circle of Keith Raniere, the leader of NXIVM, she has not had formal charges brought against her by United States authorities.
THE FACTS: In the social networks circulating, a publication says Rosa Laura Junco, daughter of the owner of the Mexican newspaper Reforma, is implicated in various crimes as part of the NXIVM sect, whose leader Keith Raniere awaits sentencing in the United States. [He has since been sentenced to 120 years.]
However, that statement is imprecise. Junco was mentioned in the trial of Raniere in the United States, but there were no criminal charges brought against her.
The Associated Press reviewed the public documents of the trial, through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records ( PACER) system, and although she is pointed out by victims and witnesses as part of Raniere’s inner circle, there are no charges against her. .
Nor does she appear on the list of defendants. The defendants, along with Raniere, are Clare Bronfman, Allison Mack, Kathy Russell, Lauren Salzman and Nancy Salzman.
John Marzulli, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in charge of the case in New York, confirmed to the AP that there are no criminal charges pending against Rosa Laura Junco.
Frank Report’s CLARIFICATION:
Rosa Laura Junco is the daughter of media giant, Alejandro Junco, president and CEO of Grupo Reforma.
According to its Wikipedia page, “Grupo Reforma is the second largest printed media company in Mexico and Latin America. It publishes ten daily newspapers in five cities, including the leading newspapers in Mexico’s three largest cities: Reforma in Mexico City, El Norte in Monterrey and Mural in Guadalajara. It also publishes the daily Metro in Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla and Toluca, and the afternoon tabloid El Sol in Monterrey. The average daily circulation of all these papers is 1.4 million copies.
“The group also owns the largest content-intensive web sites in Mexico: reforma.com, elnorte.com, and mural.com. It owns the largest newswire service with Mexican information, Agencia Reforma. Cancha, a tabloid with Mexican sports and entertainment news, is published biweekly in Las Vegas in partnership with The Las Vegas Review-Journal. Grupo Reforma also has strategic alliances with leading US dailies to publish their information in its papers, including a daily section of The Wall Street Journal and a weekly section of The New York Times.”
His daughter, Rosa Laura, was a dedicated Nxivm follower, one of the eight first line masters of DOS.
Despite her deep involvement n DOS, it is true that Rosa Laura Junco was not charged criminally, just as the AP report says.
However, the AP apparently did not know that the publication they cited was referring to a civil lawsuit, filed on January 28, 2020, about six months after the conviction of Raniere in his criminal trial, where some 80 plaintiffs are suing him and 14 Nxivm leaders, including Rosa Laura Junco.
Of those who might be able to pay damages, Rosa Laura, along with Clare and Sara Bronfman, are the most appetizing. The rest of the defendants are not wealthy.
The lawsuit is on hold pending final resolution of the criminal cases against the Nxivm defendants.
Neil Glazer of Kohn Swift and Graf of Philadelphia is lead attorney on the case.
The defendants are:
- KEITH RANIERE
- NANCY SALZMAN
- CLARE BRONFMAN
- SARA BRONFMAN
- LAUREN SALZMAN
- ALLISON MACK
- KATHY RUSSELL
- KAREN UNTERREINER
- DR. BRANDON PORTER
- DR. DANIELLE ROBERTS
- DANIELLA PADILLA BERGERON
- ROSA LAURA JUNCO
- LORETA J. GARZA DAVILA
- MONICA DURAN
- NICKI CLYNE
- NXIVM CORPORATION
- EXECUTIVE SUCCESS PROGRAMS, INC,
- ETHICAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
- FIRST PRINCIPLES,
According to the Kohn Swift website,
The lawsuit seeks compensation from NXIVM founder Keith Raniere and members of his “Inner Circle,” including heiresses Clare Bronfman and Sara Bronfman and actress Alison Mack, for fraud, forced labor, human trafficking and for conducting unlawful medical experiments.
The complaint alleges that the defendants peddled an inherently risky “pseudo-scientific hodgepodge of psychotherapeutic methods” as expensive self-improvement courses, taken by thousands of unsuspecting people, many of whom lost their life savings and were severely traumatized by the process….
“Defendants systematically stripped women of their self-esteem, and those who fit certain criteria were then groomed to become Raniere’s sexual partners,” said Glazer. “Through an insidious process of slow, subtle indoctrination and manipulation, NXIVM’s leaders drew ever closer to its Albany headquarters those students who had become most vulnerable to defendants’ abusive and coercive methods.”
The lawsuit further alleges that the defendants employed fear tactics to suppress internal dissent, prevent defections and intimidate those who left into keeping silent. According to the complaint, sisters Clare and Sara Bronfman spent millions of dollars bankrolling campaigns of vexatious litigation against NXIVM’s perceived enemies, including lodging false criminal complaints and having lawyers send letters threatening lawsuits and criminal prosecution to the women who were leaving “DOS,” the so-called “master-slave” group that Raniere created and secretly ran…
***
An Unfortunate Email
The most explosive mention of Rosa Laura Junco at the Raniere trial was when a witness, FBI special agent Michael Weniger, read an email she wrote to Raniere into the record. In it, she mentions her teenage daughter, Lauris.
Weniger testified that Junco’s daughter was a minor when the email was written, on October 4, 2015, though he couldn’t recall her exact age. [A source in Nxivm told me she was 15 or 16 at the time.] Raniere was 55.
Here is the email:
Hello, M. [Master] I fear I may be affecting Lauris and your possibility for success. I used to easily feel inspired and alive. I feel now crippled to operate my daily life. I am being a crappy sl. [slave].
I can’t find the inspiration to become uplifting, regaining some hope.
What triggered this state has been experiencing the complexity of your life and commitments and knowing intuitively that it will only get more complex and complicated. I love you and have enough of a conscience to want only what’s best for you and serve you. I don’t want to add more to your burdens.
Wanting anything from you automatically makes me a burden, so I can’t allow that. Part of me feels love, but the other part of me feels neglected, doomed to miss out. I should know better than to want petty things.
I humbly share this because it may be affecting Lauris, keeping her away from you. If I don’t experience my commitment to you joyfully, I cannot genuinely projectively want that for my daughter, and she probably feels that. Personally, I feel it’s a phase that I will outgrow, but we don’t have time. I have failed to overcome it and I want your thoughts before I do more damage.
I am 100 percent clear that you are what I want for my daughter and, obviously, for myself.
I am sorry for my shortcomings. [Frown face emoji.] RL. [Rosa Laura].
***
Much has been made of this email in the media, especially in Mexico, where her father is a well known figure. The meaning is not completely clear, but the inference the prosecution intended the jury to make was that Rosa Laura was offering her teenage daughter up as a sexual partner for Raniere.
Based on past allegations and texts introduced at trial between Raniere and Camila, a woman he was accused of having sex with when she was 15, it is suspected that Lauris was intended to be a “vessel” or “successor” for Raniere.
He asked Camila and others to help him find and shepherd a virgin through a “pure” life until he was ready for her. Raniere told Camila that he originally intended this successor role to go to Camila, but she disqualified herself after she had an affair with another man.
Rosa Laura believed that DOS was a brilliant plan to raise the power of women in the world. Here is a text Rosa Laura wrote to a DOS slave about the brand that was scarified on women’s groins as part of their vow of slavery in DOS.
Here’s more data re: branding. About the branding: It is a symbol that she will hold herself higher than her body. It is part of being willing to be humiliated around our pride – so we can be free of our false image and truly fee of soul and spirit.
Branding is a constant reminder of keeping ourselves humble and not prideful – pride limits who we are and keeps the fear in place.
We’re meant to come to love and cherish our brand – as a constant reminder of a life other than petty suffering – true love – true freedom – and our commitment to be on that path forever – which assures us we’ll get there!!
In her testimony at trial, Lauren Salzman said she believed Rosa Laura was the only woman of the eight DOS First Line Masters who did not have sex with Raniere. However, another source told me the two did have an intimate relationship.
We have no absolute evidence that this is what Rosa Laura meant when she said she wanted Raniere for herself.
There is also no evidence that Raniere actually began privately training Lauris. It is known that Raniere offered to be a casual tutor for the teen in math. She was encouraged by her mother to view him as a great teacher and approach him with questions.
Lauris would come to volleyball and Raniere would talk to her about her math homework and she would ask him questions about dance, which was one of her interests. It is not known if the Vanguard of the community and the teen, whose mother wanted him for her, were ever alone.
[…] Rosa Laura Junco in Snopes-Style Fact Check in Mexico & Analysis of Email Wanting Her Teenage Da… […]
She must pay, my cousin was involved in DOS thanks to Rosa. Rosa Laura was her mistress, and my cousin was 23 years old at the time. Because of threats, we have kept quiet, and we have been afraid because it is a powerful family. Loreta and Monica must also pay, I don’t know why they are not called to trial.
Hola Frank. ¿Cómo puedo contactarle? Soy María Cabadas, reportera del periódico El Universal. Muchas gracias.
I agree that it is difficult (if not impossible) to know what people meant in private correspondence, especially without context.
I appreciate the journalism that is being done by Frank; separating facts from opinions is extremely important for accurate journalism, as well as making room for questioning other possibilities. In my interpretation of this email, I see love, but love has many different faces; we don’t love our mother and our partner quite the same way (hopefully, yet it is still love.
Thank you, Frank, for bringing up that “the meaning is not completely clear” in Rosa Laura Junco’s email about herself and her daughter. I think it’s always hard to know what people mean in private correspondences when you don’t have all the context. Meanings could be very different when considering such things as what “inside jokes” people may share, whether they’re talking about things hypothetically or not, what past conversations they’ve had, etc.
While the meaning of the email could indeed be what you propose as the “the inference the prosecution intended the jury to make,” I think it’s good, especially as a journalist, to always question things, acknowledge uncertainty, and look to see if there might be other possibilities.
So wild to read this email from RL. As our boss/leader/teacher at the Knife, I thought she was so…impressive. A smart and kind woman. Articulate. Her aura was sort of motherly, but also a bit hard to touch. I guess the “hard to touch” part of her was the dark part of her that volunteered her young daughter to Keith and somehow saw him as a worthy partner for herself as well.
I feel the comments from the video of Emiliano Salinas dancing for the Vanguard are perfect for this story: https://youtu.be/mFmoaSvOP1c
One comment says :
“I have always said that should not envy the life of anyone else. Here you have Mexico’s elite humiliating itself for a pendejo (idiot)”
Indeed! One of the richest women of Latin America simply humiliating herself for a fat smelly guy who has less money and power 💰 than her …”
Gross. Offer up my daughter so I can be a better slave. Where’s the puke bucket? Shame on you.
The mother was clearly in love with him in my view from that email, knew she could never have him to herself and was trying to make that okay with herself although I bet she wasn’t at all happy with it and is parroting back with KR wants to hear – that she is tolerating sharing him.
It is not clear if the daughter was meant sexually for KR but that would be classic with predators so sounds likely.
I wonder if the Frank Report will be addressing the Times Union piece on Dr. Michelle Mengele Roberts
https://www.timesunion.com/news/amp/Scars-of-NXIVM-could-seal-doctor-s-fate-15822282.php
Yes, in fact I will be doing a piece on Dr. Roberts in the near future. Her first name by the way is Danielle, not Michelle.
Interesting to see the disease notification suggestion (in the light of CV19 probably something more on our radar than then)
Poor Rosa Laura Junco!
I guess Rosa Laura Junco is not afforded the same protection as Allison Mack and the esteemed Dr. Michelle Mengele Roberts
Maybe Rosa should join the Nxivm 5 and make it the Nxivm 6.
(1/2 kidding)
Okay, that letter she wrote sounds like a pathetic horrible nightmare. I hope she and her daughter get help. I’m surprised to say that The Knife was actually something I found online back when it was active and thought it was a helpful smart way to parse media info. I had no idea who was behind it or why at the time but when it disappeared, I was disappointed. Then, after finding out it was them on The Vow doc, I was shocked but thought what a shame because it was indeed a good idea. If this is what Mark and Bonnie et all put their minds to, it’s too bad, once again, it was born out of Keith’s insecurity of being discovered. This is where we can find some usefulness in the shadow of this little man’s fears. We do as a society need to sift through all the lies of media, it’s a good idea. Maybe one of the few good ideas Nxivm was able to pull off, if ever so briefly. This is something we might be able to mine from this atrocity, like they mined Nazi scientists after WW2 for their important knowledge, despite their immoral conduct.
Re the last four sentences: as a former Knifer, I agree. FWIW, on the inside, it didn’t feel like we were doing disingenuous work. We all worked multiple hours on our analyses, alongside other people doing the same thing.
I didn’t realise Nicki is on the list of defendants in the lawsuit. I wonder what particular allegations are against her.
Natashka-
Nicki is guilty of being a good person. Didn’t you know? I say there must be a conspiracy afoot of epic proportions. It’s the work of the devil, Robert Mueller, or the Kabbalah.
You know why QAnon types call the liberal conspiracy the Kabbalah? The Kabbalah is the Jewish word for devil. You see the label of Kabbalah that QAnon and our own Paul Serran uses has a double meaning.
You can’t say Liberal Jew conspiracy. You can say Liberal Kabbalah conspiracy. I am positive Paul Serran had no idea of the double meaning behind the use of the Jewish word for devil which again is Kabbalah
> The Kabbalah is the Jewish word for devil.
No, it is not.
Kabbalah is not a Hebrew, Yiddish or “Jewish” translation for the devil. It is the body of knowledge derived from verbal teachings of the faith. I’ve studied it some — there’s nothing devilish about it.
QANON is rife with anti-Semiticism…and misogyny. 😛
I love it when you write, Frank. You have investigative, tabloid, thought-provoking, objective, opinion-free articles that give your readers the opportunity to clash opinions. It’s not a blocked news site, that’s for sure.
Frank blocks comments.