Leah Mottishaw, 34, of Vancouver, is a self-employed consultant. Her Linked-in page describes her educational background: “Leah’s formal training began in molecular biology and biochemistry (Bachelor of Science, Simon Fraser University) and was later focused on microbiology (Master of Science, University of British Columbia), with added hands-on experience in the biotechnology of blood stem cells (Lifebank, Corp.).”
Leah is also a founding member of the DOSsier Project, a group of eight women dedicated to preserving the ideals of DOS and defending it from criticism. Mottishaw was a member of DOS and a NXIVM proctor. At one time, she wore the Orange Sash with one Stripe.
As a consultant, she writes, “I help my clients communicate their technical, scientific or medical service to a variety of audiences. I combine my skills and experience of critical scientific thinking, communication and relationship-building to help my clients handle projects such as internal training, patent-writing, marketing copy and special-interest research.”
Before becoming a self-employed consultant, Leah worked for NXIVM-based organizations for five and half years.
She was Director of Operations (Interim) and Founding Leader of One Asian Education, Inc. from – Vancouver where she “planned and executed weekend seminar events, including teaching One Asian material” which was based, in part, on the teachings of Keith Raniere and NXIVM.
In children’s tales there is often an endearing simplicity to the story: a bad guy, who is purely bad, commits a transgression against a good guy, who is purely good, and eventually some karma or external authority or fairy godmother recognizes the truth, smites the bad guy and helps the good guy along to her happily-ever-after. We have heard these kinds of stories since we were young and they are strangely satisfying, despite the fact (or maybe because) they don’t track well to real-life stories.
The narrative about DOS promoted by the mainstream media and government tells a tale along the lines of an unrealistic children’s story. There are good guys and bad guys. The good guys are innocent victims who were abused. The bad guys are crafty villains that have put the good guys “under a spell” (although the narrative prefers the term “brainwashing”). But the compelling simplicity of the story becomes muddied and tangled with only the faintest examination.
For instance, in the case of DOS, the actions of the good guys and bad guys were quite literally the same. A simple internet search will pretty readily introduce you to two women linked to DOS: Allison Mack (the bad guy) and India Oxenberg (the good guy). Allison and India both participated in recruitment of women to the sorority, both acted as a “Master” to those women, both received collateral, both gave assignments, etc. But according to the media, Allison is a bad guy and India is a good guy. Here’s a sampling:
BAD GUY: Mack was “enmeshed in such a bizarre and sordid drama.” And “federal prosecutors described [her] in court documents as the second-in-command of a sex cult that preyed on vulnerable young women.” (Variety, 04-26-2018)
GOOD GUY: “For seven years, India Oxenberg was the frog slowly boiling in the pot of water that was so-called self-empowerment group NXIVM.” (Variety, 10-13-2020)
BAD GUY: “Former [DOS] member Jessica Joan … described Mack as ‘a demon of a woman’ [and said] ‘She sought me out like a predator stalking their prey.’ (Rolling Stone, 06-30-2021)
GOOD GUY: The Starz series Seduced “allows India to explain how she—as a 19-year-old looking for direction—fell for the organization Raniere pitched as a self-improvement program, along with an estimated 17,000 other members … Reclaiming her narrative is just part of India’s extensive healing journey.” (Vanity Fair, 10-13-2020)
And what about the government? Although the fairy tale version would have the government (aka, the “fairy godmother”) swoop in, evaluate the situation and then make things right, that’s not what actually happened. Instead of a savior, the government seems to have been a threat.
Why would I say that?
According to India’s lawyer Anne Champion, “The concern was if India was going to be targeted by these prosecutors” (Seduced Ep 4, 45:03, bold added for emphasis). Champion described India’s predicament as, “one of those situations where your clear choices are to cooperate [with the government] or be charged” (Seduced Ep 4, 39:51).
So the government, including the FBI, prosecutors, and Judge NIcholas G. Garaufis, did not act in good faith as a righter-of-wrongs, but instead used the weight of their authority to achieve convictions. The government did not evaluate or investigate in order to discover if crimes had been committed but rather searched for material to support the predetermined conclusion that crimes had occurred.
This is evident in the words of lead prosecutor Moira Kim Penza, who explained that “we were in a situation where we needed to have charges that we could put into place quickly while continuing our investigation” (Seduced Ep 4, 29:22).
Furthermore, during proffer sessions with the government, DOS members reported that, “it seemed [the government’s] goal was to tell me my perspective” (Michele Hatchette) and that Penza appeared “vested in her opinions and hypotheses being correct. As I asserted contrary data or opinions to hers she often got visibly upset…” (Danielle Roberts).
Specifically, the government sought to force the simplistic good guy/bad guy narrative as a rewrite over some women’s own lived experiences. Danielle described how “at the end of the first interview [Penza] offered me victim support services so that I could be properly ‘treated’ for the abuse I had undergone, clearly indicating to me she had dismissed my testimony and rendered me incompetent in her mind” (bold added for emphasis).
Michele recalled that “At one point, the prosecutor raised her voice in disbelief of my ownership of my decisions, insisting instead that I only acted out of fear because I felt threatened… It seemed clear to me that the government was trying to manipulate me into saying that my decision to join DOS… was without my consent and I was in constant fear that [my Master] would expose my collateral” (bold added for emphasis).
The tale of DOS is absolutely not a simple story of good guys and bad guys. In this article, I have barely scratched the surface of the public narrative and already we see how the people involved are much more complex than two-dimensional storybook characters of a pure dark or pure light nature.
And the women of the Dossier Project are further proof that DOS cannot be shoehorned into the mold of a children’s story. In stark contrast to the “fairy tale” version of DOS, we stand firm in our assertion that our participation in the DOS sorority was entirely borne of conscious choices we made as adult women. We aren’t the victims or villains that the media and government tries to paint us. We aren’t fantastical characters, good guys or bad guys. We are real people with a real story – it is imperfect, complex and true.
***
Interesting choice to dye hair gray. Got to admit she pulls it off.
How hard would it have been to be completely honest about DOS, who created the branding and what the brand was? Full disclosure from the jump and would have avoided the whole thing, NXIVM and DOS would still be around with an ever growing harem. By now Mottishaw would have recruited who knows how many woman to get that branding for Raniere and how many of those would she had sex with while Raniere watched? Good times to her I am sure, dashed by unnecessary secrecy.
Remember when we lied to our closest female friends and used blackmail to get them all to unwittingly brand our collective master/boyfriend’s initials near the pussies?
Fun times!
Though summer
Turns to winter and
The present disappears
The laughter we
Were glad to share will
Echo through the years
When other nights
And other days
May find us gone
Our separate ways
We will have these
Moments to remember
Good morning, M’
Will eat less today
Acts of care – wait
Is that my hair?
Blank i stare.
Strands in fingers
Not on my head
I ask myself (again)
Am I dead?
So cold here it may be true
Text photo of my food to you.
I think I died
When he touched me
Deep inside
With his tongue
My branded vagina
It went numb
So hungry, tired
I feel dumb
It’s warmer home
In L.A.
But in Albany
I stay
Please tell me Master
What to do?
I’d be so lost
If not for you.
Nice verse — much appreciated!
Agreed, nice writing. Funny and sad at the same time.
Anon 947
Mr. Mottishaw-
Question:
Did your WIFE have unprotected sex with Keith Raniere?
Answer:
Go get yourself an HPV test.
Warning:
HPV can lead to penis and throat cancer.
Don’t believe me? Then go ask Michael Douglas.
I keep wondering why: ANY former NXIVM associate who is still adamant and loyal, would come to Frank, ask him to post their viewpoints and expect any other result than the posters here will reveal any and all flaws in their thinking and otherwise rip them a new asshole? Honestly, you don’t really need this kind of attention – think it through without making yourself a public spectacle! And don’t fall for further multi-marketing schemes like “Symmetry Financial” you can do better than selling life insurance and annuities as Esther Carlson’s downline! Get a job and lay low!
SO PATHETIC. SO DISGUSTING. The smarter women have already revealed that coercive control was employed. F these detractors who would rather defend a CHILD RAPING PIG over women that were scarred and burned after being misled about what the branding symbols even were!! She should be ashamed of herself. Uglyhearted old vile POS.
Calm down, anti-cult tribal ninny. Take a chill pill.
So you want people to be chill about child rape?
There are some things in life that are worth getting upset about and raping children is one of them
You cannot make a fully conscious choice when you lack critical information. When you intentionally withhold critical information from people, you are participating in a conspiracy to take their fully conscious choice away from them
Is Frank Report ever going to end? Or just report the same story over and over?
What about Frank’s own criminal case? One where he’s a defendant. Let’s hear something about that! At least it would be a new story!
Let’s say we grant that was the experience of Mottishaw and 7 others.
Aren’t there many more than 8 other people, who have said they found it controlling and abusive? Isn’t it then likely that those in the DOSsier project either were lucky and missed the worst of it, or were exceptions in some other way, rather than representative?
One of my observations from the study of high control groups or cults is that members often mimic the leaders’ and gurus’ self-centered egoism, and willingness to benefit from the exploitation of others. That comes out of utilitarian ‘ends justify the means’ and even amoral ‘might makes right’ philosophies or worldviews, including a tendency to blame victims and to view the disaffected and defectors as those who just failed to live up to standards and surmount challenges.
It’s thus not uncommon to find apologist members or ex-members who seem satisfied that they got something they wanted out of their participation – again, perhaps because they were lucky enough not to have experienced some of the worst manipulation and abuse, or even in some cases even because they were deliberately favored and groomed. They are often seemingly unconcerned that others, perhaps more often than not, may have suffered, unbothered that they may have benefitted at the expense of others, and even blame the disillusioned and victimized for not having made the best of it.
Absolutely, people can suffer different levels of abuse in a high control group.
Even in a dysfunctional family, not every child is molested. In fact, it is a well-documented fact that sometimes an entire family chooses to abuse a specific child while treating the other children in that same home with what would be considered traditional family values.
It is the height of arrogance, disordered logic and tunnel-vision to insist that what was true for you in a given situation must be exactly the same experience for a 100 others.
You cannot possibly know that. You can live in the same home as others and not even know everything that is happening under its roof.
AnonyMaker-
“t’s say we grant that was the experience of Mottishaw and 7 others. Aren’t there many more than 8 other people.”
I’d say there are roughly over 30z
***
You almost always make incontrovertible points.
Except for the time you thought Epstein’s island helicopter landing-site, berm was an oil depo. ;)!
huntingpeople2 January 9, 2022 at 10:09 pm (who is certainly NOT a sock puppet for Alanzo) makes an insightful point.
Why wasn’t Raniere smart enough to instruct his attorneys to use the “way of making new friends” defense?
Demanding blackmail material, branding, trafficking young girls across international and state borders to make them available for rape and other forms of sexual abuse by a hairy troll… those are definitely unique, women-empowering way of making new friends, right?
This is the 4th or 5th submission that tells the same story. “We were in an organization where we called ourselves slaves and acted like slaves, and it was immensely empowering and not like slavery at all.” That sounds dumb to everyone else. It always will. Just deal with it.
Where’s the like button?
“That sounds dumb to everyone else. It always will. Just deal with it.”
-Abelard
Sadly, cultists like Leah Mottishaw and ALANZO will never understand how dumb they sound to everyone else.
Mottishaw and Alanzo are both repeating the same MANTRA they were brainwashed to say.
I pity both poor souls.
:-)))
When your only argument is, “But India…”
After all these years.
Once again, they ignore collateral, branding and Camila.
While I agree that India is no hero, India’s status as a “hero” had no bearing on the trial. As for the defense of DOS, this remains weak sauce as they still refuse to confront the main arguments the government had against NXIVM and DOS. Instead, they are effectively whining the government did their job of using DOS to help their case against Raniere. Well duh, of course, they were going to do that.
Really, they are upset their past keeps coming up and are trying to change the PR of it all. They then hope magic occurs and everyone loves DOS which will somehow lead to Raniere’s exoneration (the mind boggles how they arrive at this as a feasible thing.) But how is a PR campaign supposed to work when article after article from these women have no coherent reason on why DOS is good beyond “well we liked it and thought it was great. Besides, we volunteered for all that stuff so that makes it all right.” The morality of it all remains an area they give no viewpoint on which is telling.
If Danielle Roberts’ testimony that failed to convince the prosecutors was so favorable to DOS, why didn’t the defense present it instead?
If the “participation in the DOS sorority was entirely borne of conscious choices we made as adult women,” why not explain why adult women would make a conscious choice to supply blackmail material BEFORE even knowing what they were joining?
If Kristin Kook was too smart to head One Asian or even join, why didn’t others take the hint?
You said Kristen Kook and smart in the same sentence.
“You said Kristen Kook and smart in the same sentence”
Kook isn’t serving a sentence like Mack is, so that’s smart at least.
“Smart at least” isn’t letting the smelly one ravish your body. Hmm.
Pea Onyu is the only one who claims that Smelly ravished Kook. I suspect Pea is just a troll, and others are just speculating or fantasizing. Me thinks if Kook was a harem girl, Smelly would more likely have ravished his cream-dream’s pretty face than her body.
Consenting to abuse does not change the fact that you are being abused.
Mottishaw seems confused. She starts off by saying real life isn’t like fairy tales, with good guys and bad guys (really??? You don’t say!!! 🙄)
Then, she expresses amazement that the government officials aren’t pure good guys.
Of course, they’re not. Doesn’t change the fact that Raniere is guilty though.
With this genius in charge, no wonder The Knife of Aristotle failed.
She needs to learn how to construct a coherent argument.
Her parents and family must be very proud of her.
Her mom must show her DOS photos to all her friends and talk about her shared husband Keith Raniere to all her friends.
It’s everything we wanted for our daughter, her parents must tell their friends.
Our daughter is a key figure in this program leftover from NXIVM and fights for what is right in the world.
It’s every parent’s dream for their child.
Reminds me of one of only two [that I know of] protestant jokes:
Daughter returns to family home after long absence bearing expensive gifts for her parents. She tells them she has something to confess:
“Mummy, Daddy God forgive me, God have mercy on my soul I’ve become… a prostitute”
On hearing this the father looks like he is about to expire from a heart attack… but soon recovers.
‘Jeez-o, a prostitute?.. thank God for that..I thought for a moment there you said you had become… a protestant”
All the women who continue to defend this group are buffoons and not remotely “empowered” at all. They were deceived by a pseudo-intellectual hack, who barely maintained a C average in college. Only ignorant fools can be swindled to believe that the “collateral” that was actually blackmail was like a bank loan.
Those photos of Leah are old and still her grey is on full display. I’d hate to see what she looks like today, almost as she hates what she sees when she wakes up and looks in the mirror every morning.
As all the Discarded DOS Dolls learn the hard way, anorexia and menopause are a nasty combo.
Who cares what you think of a woman’s hair color? Jamie Lee Curtis rocks hers happily, why does it matter to you?
The two small pix of Leah in the post reveals her lush full lips — and as the Big Bad Wolf said to Red Riding Hood, “Better to service the master, my dear…but only if your service is entirely borne of a conscious choice made as an adult women.
Would love to have a look at what you see when you look in the mirror, but I can’t help but think it must be frightening
Yeah I don’t get it. Despite still supporting this cult idiocy, Leah is quite an attractive woman even with the gray. She should break the mental and emotional chains of this fruitless endeavor and truly be an empowered woman by herself in her own profession and with her immediate family and real friends, not some clique bound to the thoughts and actions of a disturbed man who’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
So the remaining cult slaves DO believe that a woman CAN act out of fear – if the government asks the woman to cooperate (and there’s a perceived threat hanging over her head from her own wrongdoing).
But the cult slaves DO NOT believe that a woman can act out of fear if there’s life-ruining collateral hanging over their head…
Huh. Convenient.
It’s not surprising that a group for Asian women founded on the misogynistic, antiquated ideas of a white male failed.
It is a surprise that even 20 women were willing to pay $ money $ to drink bubble tea, watch movies and shop with each other.
Friends don’t usually charge each other for that kind of company.
Hmm, many groups charge dues so they can try new things together perhaps was similar in nature?
A way of making new friends.
Do you speak from experience?
Must you pay the other girls to be your friend?
They are all insecure.