Vicente to Publish Memoir, ‘Quest: How the Bleep Did That Happen?!’

Mark Vicente

Mark Vicente has announced on his website that he will shortly be releasing a memoir, entitled “Quest, How the Bleep Did That Happen?!”

Vicente, one of the top men in NXIVM for 12 years, chose to leave and disclose unsettling facts about its leader, Keith Raniere, a man he had formerly looked up to as a “profound mentor and older and wiser role model.”

Mark Vicente was one of the high-rank of NXIVM, possessing the green sash.

Mark made disclosures to fellow Nxians, the Frank Report, the New York Times and other media outlets. When law enforcement finally took an interest, Vicente was a witness, providing valuable information for the prosecutors about Raniere.

Vicente was one of the main characters in HBO’s docuseries, The VOW and it is expected there will be a season 2, which may be released sometime this year.

Mark Vicente’s efforts to take down NXIVM is seen in the 9-part HBO Docuseries “The Vow”.

***

A Little History

Vicente was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1965.

He studied film and drama, specializing in directing, cinematography and theater lighting design.

He left South Africa and began working in Hollywood, where he became a camera assistant in the late 1980s – then moved up to cinematographer in the 1990s, working on a dozen or more Hollywood films. Among them are Sarafina, starring Whoopi Goldberg – and a Disney film entitled Fatherhood, starring Patrick Swayze and Halle Berry.

Around 1994, Vicente became a member of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment, led by J.Z. Knight, a woman who claims to channel the ghost of Ramtha who lived on earth 35,000 years ago. Vicente stayed with the group for about 10 years.

Vicente, with two other Ramtha students, directed the film What the BLEEP do we Know?!‘”

The plot follows the story of Amanda Matlin, a photographer, using documentary-style interviews of scientists and others, and computer animated graphics, as she encounters obstacles in her life and considers whether mind can influence matter.

.Image result for what the bleep

What the BLEEP do we Know?! enjoyed surprising success for a moderately low-budget independent film. The film opened in art-house theaters, won several independent film awards, was picked up by Samuel Goldwyn Films for distribution and wound-up grossing about $16 million.

Around the time Vicente’s film came out, he became disillusioned with Ramtha.  He described his time with the group and his exodus on cross examination in the trial of Keith Raniere.

Quest

Vicente’s memoir, QUEST How the Bleep did that Happen?! will chronicle “untold stories of what occurred in NXIVM” and he and his wife, Bonnie Piese’s harrowing campaign to escape and expose the organization.

Here is an excerpt about the upcoming book from Vicente’s website:

When Mark first joined {NXIVM], this group and its leader, Keith Raniere, seemed to provide answers for his lifelong questions about consciousness, reality, and the human behavior equation.

Over a 12-year period…  he worked his way up their ranking system to become an owner of two NXIVM Centers, a trainer of salespeople, a leader of a men’s movement, [the Society of Protectors] the head of their media company, a member of the [NXIVM] Executive Board and a man who saw Keith Raniere as both a profound mentor and older and wiser role model.

In his twelfth year, he discovered illicit and morally abhorrent activities….  A secret…  BDSM sex slavery ring, [DOS] fueled by coercive blackmail enforcement… that had trapped and enslaved many of his dearest friends. The entire thing was strategically orchestrated by Raniere.

The book details Vicente’s wife, Bonnie Piese’s attempts to “wake him up, even while the entire organization tries to destroy her.”

Horrified and confused, he embarks with his wife, on an investigative journey and asks himself the most terrifying of all questions: What if everything he has been doing for 12 years has not served nobility and goodness but has been a front for evil?

Keith Raniere, a saintly scientist?

And… what if the man he considers his greatest mentor and most cherished example of nobility, is actually a malignant, narcissistic sociopath… posing for decades as a saintly scientist? A scientist who taught him about ethics, sociopathy, and the dangers of losing empathy and conscience. Teasing him in plain sight… as to his true nature.

What if Mark has been duped? What if for 12 years, he has unknowingly been in a Cult, led by a seemingly gentle …. maniac?

This is a journey from innocent pursuit… to the shattering collapse of his psyche… to a sobering awakening…

Is Keith Raniere a man with anti-social disorder who sought malevolent dominion over others or is he just plain misunderstood?

[W]ith the help of his wife and a small plucky band of whistleblowers, Mark would implore numerous law enforcement agencies in multiple countries to take action… and when all else failed, they would risk their safety and reputation, to go public….

Mark attempts to find the strength to bring this monster to justice…. fighting against some of his former best friends….

Inevitably, he will have to face Raniere (his former mentor) and his army of lawyers, in federal court.

On this rocky and circuitous road, he will re-assess EVERYTHING.

His life-long pursuit of spirituality, the message of his film “What the Bleep”, the nature of covert sociopathy and an analysis of the true intent of NXIVM’s ‘Tech’, now understanding precisely how the coercion worked. The educational model had codified abuse baked into it.

At the end of the road, he will find the asset which Raniere tried with all his might to destroy. Goodness. The pursuit of which, has been the driving force of Mark’s life since he was a small boy, growing up in apartheid South Africa.

***

For those who are interested in learning more about the NXIVM story and what Vicente learned, this will certainly be a book to read – and Frank Report will inform readers of its availability as soon as it is published.

In addition to the book, Vicente is in production on ‘NARCS: Invisible Epidemic’, a documentary about Malignant Narcissism, and developing several other films.

About the author

Frank Parlato

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I Hate To Be That Guy
I Hate To Be That Guy
1 year ago

I’m sorry I couldn’t bite my tongue for this one!

“Don’t sweat it anonymous coward softie. I stand by what I write and put my name behind it, something you’ll never have the courage to do.”

Ummmmmmmm……………… Oh, really?! That’s why you constantly wail about people’s 1st amendment rights, meanwhile you’ve been given the gift of a website that could be the perfect demonstration of you having some balls about freedom of speech like you yap about obviously for attention, you savagely control people’s free speech in a more Orwellian way than Big Tech does and constantly steal people’s voices including Patriot God and others!

To make it even worse, every time you’re confronted about it, you know that you can’t defend yourself because you’re guilty as fucking sin! So you run away and hide like a scared little bitch! Yeah! Real “courage”, Frank! Shut the fuck up!

You “stand behind what [you] write”, my ass! You’re no better than this guy!

You’re a patriotic fraud and everybody knows it!

So speak for yourself and your own small dick inferiority complex that makes you censor people to feel big somewhere outside of your own pants, jackass! Because Lord knows, you ain’t going to feel like a big man going into there!

🖕🏻FUCK YOU!🖕🏻

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

Frank and Mark are definitely better than you, so no, dear sir, please fuck YOU. 🙂

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

The moral question still stands:

What will “Make Justice Blind” do for John Tighe?

Alanzo
1 year ago

The moral question still stands for Mark Vicente:

What will he do for John Tighe, and people like him?

Alanzo

Ex
Ex
1 year ago
Reply to  Alanzo

To an anti-cultist, everything is about “morality” and their enemies must answer “moral questions.”

When will Alanzo answer the moral question of what he will do for Mark Vicente and people like him?

Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  Ex

Why does he need to do anything for anyone?

Anonymous
1 year ago

What’s that saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Another book I won’t be buying.

WTB
WTB
1 year ago

Mark Vicente: what the bleep does he know? How to cause and profit from other people’s misfortune.

Prof
Prof
1 year ago

“Nippy”
PUKES….

GL
GL
1 year ago
Reply to  Prof

LOL…Nippy, another narcissist adjacent sociopath

NFW
NFW
1 year ago

“At the end of the road, he will find the asset which Raniere tried with all his might to destroy. Goodness. The pursuit of which, has been the driving force of Mark’s life since he was a small boy, growing up in apartheid South Africa.”

From one SouthAfrican child to another, I’m assuming Mark, that your Zulu is as good if not better than mine, and that you will know this popular gwijo, sang here in ‘freedom’ on the terraces of Alexandra football stadium.
I’m mad for these gwijo vids — by the grace of the struggle— sung now in school, at sporting events, in choirs!

Have you no interest in the Cult that raised you? Before Ramtha there was Hendrik Verwoerd, no?

Always interested in the reflections of fellow white SouthAfricans on the subject of apartheid.
So few seem to have the guts for it.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  NFW

Hendrik Verwoerd [Partial excerpt from Wikipedia]

Early life
Hendrik Verwoerd was born in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1901. Verwoerd was South Africa’s only foreign-born prime minister. He was the second child of Anje Strik and Wilhelmus Johannes Verwoerd. His father was a shopkeeper and a deeply religious man who decided to move his family to South Africa in 1903 because of his sympathy towards the Afrikaner nation in the wake of the Second Boer War. Verwoerd went to a Lutheran primary school in Wynberg, Cape Town. By the end of 1912, the Verwoerd family moved to Bulawayo, Rhodesia, where his father became an assistant evangelist in the Dutch Reformed Church. Verwoerd attended Milton High School where he was awarded the Beit Scholarship, established by diamond magnate and financier Alfred Beit. Verwoerd received the top marks for English literature in Rhodesia.

In 1917, the family moved back to South Africa since the congregation in Bulawayo had appointed a second minister of religion. His father took up a position in the church in Brandfort, Orange Free State. Due to the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic, the younger Verwoerd only sat for his matriculation exams in February 1919, achieving first position in the Orange Free State and fifth in country.

Verwoerd studied at Stellenbosch University, where he was regarded as a brilliant social science academic, and it was widely claimed that he possessed a photographic memory. Verwoerd was fluent in Afrikaans, Dutch, English and German. He obtained his B.A with distinctions in Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy, and then completed his Masters cum laude. He then went on completing his Doctorate in Psychology in 1925 at Stellenbosch University. Verwoerd’s over three hundred page Doctorate thesis titled “Die Afstomping van die Gemoedsaandoeninge” (Afrikaans: The numbing of the Emotion) was at the time regarded as a monumental academic achievement in field of Applied Psychology in South Africa.

Due to the work undertaken by Verwoerd in his doctoral thesis[citation needed], he was awarded two scholarships for post-doctoral research abroad—one by the Abe Bailey Trust to study at the University of Oxford, England, and another one to continue his studies in Germany. He opted for the latter, due to the fact that Verwoerd wanted to continue his research under a number of renowned German psychology and philosophy professors of the time, and possibly due to his own anti-British views at the time. Verwoerd left for Germany in 1926, and proceeded to research psychology and sociology at the University of Hamburg, Berlin, and Leipzig. In Hamburg he studied under William Stern, in Berlin under Wolfgang Köhler and Otto Lipmann, and in Leipzig under Felix Krueger. Most of these professors were not allowed to teach anymore once the Nazis came to power in 1933.. Claims that Verwoerd studied eugenics during his German sojourn and later based his apartheid policy on Nazi ideology, are still being evaluated by scholars. Critics contend that eugenics was usually taught at medical faculties during this period. Christoph Marx asserts that Verwoerd kept a conspicuous distance from eugenic theories and racist social technologies, emphasising environmental influences rather than hereditary abilities.

Verwoerd’s fiancée, Betsie Schoombie, joined him in Germany and they were married in Hamburg on 7 January 1927. Later that year, he continued his studies in the United Kingdom, and then proceeded to the United States. His lecture notes and memoranda at Stellenbosch University stressed that there were no biological differences between the big racial groups, and concluded that “this was not really a factor in the development of a higher social civilization by the Caucasians.”

Apartheid
Hendrik Verwoerd is often called the architect of apartheid for his role in shaping the implementation of apartheid policy when he was minister of native affairs and then prime minister. Verwoerd once described apartheid as a “policy of good neighbourliness”.

At the time that the NP came to power in 1948, there were factional differences in the party about the implementation of systemic racial segregation. The larger baasskap faction, favoured segregation, but also favoured the participation of black Africans in the economy as long as black labour could be controlled to advance the economic gains of Afrikaners. A second faction were the “purists”, who believed in “vertical segregation”, in which blacks and whites would be entirely separated, with blacks living in native reserves, with separate political and economic structures, which, they believed, would entail severe short-term pain, but would also lead to independence of white South Africa from black labour in the long-term. Verwoerd belonged to a third faction, that sympathised with the purists, but allowed for the use of black labour, while implementing the purist goal of vertical separation.

Verwoerd’s vision of a South Africa divided into multiple ethno-states appealed to the reform-minded Afrikaner intelligentsia, and it provided a more coherent philosophical and moral framework for the National Party’s racist policies, while also providing a veneer of intellectual respectability to the previously crude policy of baasskap. Verwoerd felt that the political situation of South Africa had become stagnant over the past century and called for reform.

Under the Premiership of Verwoerd, the following legislative acts relating to apartheid were introduced:

1. Promotion of Bantu Self-government Act, 1959
2. Bantu Investment Corporation Act, 1959
3. Extension of University Education Act, 1959

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrik_Verwoerd

jc
jc
1 year ago

I have no sympathy for Mark as he and Edmonson have profited off trading their former experience of destroying lives to conveniently riding the wave of prosecution. In some ways, he is actually more contemptible than Raniere as he seems to benefit from every association he makes in these weird cults he seems to be attracted to. He’s as much of a malignant narcissist/sociopath as Raniere. He’s just not as self-destructive. Raniere was a magnet for these types. None of them should be profiting from their behavior.

Therapist
Therapist
1 year ago
Reply to  jc

There are different sorts of narcissism including what’s called healthy narcissism, narcissistic personality traits, which is different than healthy narcissism. Then there is malignant narcissism, which is quite different from the previous two types. Keith was a malignant narcissist. Mark and Sarah certainly do not fall into that definition.

Ex
Ex
1 year ago
Reply to  jc

Your bias prevents you from having sympathy for anyone who doesn’t subscribe to your worldview. It is easy to label someone you don’t understand or agree with as a “narcissist/sociopath” so you don’t have to engage your brain and think.

Aristotle’s Sausage
Aristotle’s Sausage
1 year ago

Don’t expect anything much from Vicente’s memoir, other than self-serving half-truths. The man sees himself as a savior and a hero. He’s a legend in his own mind.

I regard him as nothing more than a bullshit artist.

His self-promotional blurb for his memoir is nauseating. Listen as he seeks “…answers for his lifelong questions about consciousness, reality, and the human behavior equation.”

What the holy fuck is this “human behavior equation”? He’s selling Raniere-style cult lingo pseudoscience. The same bullshit that raked in $16 million for his idiotic quantum mysticism movie “What the Bleep”.

He’s still peddling pseudoscience. “Human behavior equation” my rosy-pink ass.

Thomas
Thomas
1 year ago

One “bleep” experience plausible. Two – after 12 years at the top, not so much. So many former worshippers profiting from claims they alone took down the cult.

Jane Myers
Jane Myers
1 year ago

He took on Raniere. And it took a man to do it. The women felt confident in Mark to come forward. He is a hero.

Sure he made mistakes and the Ramtha thing is hard to fathom. But he is a man who seeks and tries and gets bashed sometimes but does his best.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

Who gives a shit about this guy whose built himself into a hero for finally seeing what 99% of the world already saw?

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  Anonymous

LOL. I kind of have to agree.

Mark Vicente:

“I was an idiot to fall for two cults even when all the signs were telling me they were both cults. But I stood up to the leader of the second one because I finally saw after twelve years of living off of it and making a bunch of money that he was doing some really bad shyte and so now I am kind of hero in trying to help others not be as clueless as me.”

99% of the rest of the population when looking at Raniere and NXIVM before joining:

“The guy’s an obvious charlatan and NXIVM is a scam with a bunch of red flags. I’m not even going to waste my time with him or the organization.”

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

Hey Frank,

What is it going to take for you to allow Patriot God and his crew of fellow patriots be able to come back on here again and be completely uncensored?

Come on, Frank! You’ve put them in shackles long enough! Can’t we please have some uncensored comedy without you doing this! I really only come here to see his reactions to things and you keep not letting him post!

So what’s it going to take to make you stop censoring them all?

Alanzo
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank Parlato

As many here can attest: At the Frank Report, the freedom of speech is not free.

I hope my check cleared this time, Frank.

Sorry about that.

Alanzo

NB
NB
1 year ago

I’m also really looking forward to NARCS.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  NB

It may actually be interesting … Vicente is apparently interviewing H G Tudor as part of his documentary. Tudor is billing himself on his website and youtube as the ultimate ‘ultra narcissist’ and so far has provided very detailed analysis of how the narc’s mind work and what ‘fuels’ them (a pathological desire for control, mostly), using well-known people in the news to do so, from Pettito to Megan Markle and others.

Fairgamed Educo victim
Reply to  Anonymous

I hadn’t heard HG Tudor was going to be in it. His personal nomenclature put me off at first, but, once I was past that, I really enjoyed his take and I think he knows his stuff. There are 4 interviews of HG Tudor by ex-Sc**nt*l*g*st Doug Scott Kramar on YouTube; here is the first https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kzdr0-U329g .

Doug’s a really great guy, and it was his videos that revealed to me Sc**nt*l*gy used Hypnosis, which was news to me!

Just Sayin'
Just Sayin'
1 year ago

https://twitter.com/markvicente/status/1484834267142176771?t=YAQeGTAUTP10FsIAm-3dLQ&s=19

Very interesting comment. I thought it was strange that Clyne has dropped off her Twitter life support system recently.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

This is certainly better to read about than “JohnTighe”

rich
rich
1 year ago

Vicente is an opportunist. He knew he was going to profit off of filming Keith. Vicente would never have quit unless Keith was arrested. Vicente saved his own ass and cut a deal to stay out of jail….not because he actually thought Keith was wrong. Vicente will be in another cult soon enough. He just can’t get enough.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

Frank, why don’t write anything about your legal proceedings?

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank Parlato

Tell it to the judge!

Sherizzy
Sherizzy
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank Parlato

Frank,

You know you can’t plead guilty and profess your innocence on this blog at the same time. You will have to allocute that you are pleading guilty because you are in fact guilty. If you claim innocence here, the Judge has the right to reject the plea agreement that you made with the government.

I’m interested to see how this plays out.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  Frank Parlato

That was an incredibly stupid thing to post, Frank. You can delete it, but you know Keith’s minions record everything you post on this website. The door of Keith’s trap just shut behind you.

John Tighe can give you good advice on how to survive in jail. Chomo by proxy for your NIXVM PR recruiting is not a good look.

Good luck!

Fairgamed Educo victim

I am looking forward to “NARCS: Invisible Epidemic” for which Sam Vaknin says he has been interviewed for. Digesting The Frank Report, it’s comments-sections, The Vow, Sam Vaknin and Dr Ramani, I shook myself out of a stupor and realised a different cult surrounded me. I’ll always be grateful to this site and its comments-section. Thank you, Frank

shadowstate1958
1 year ago

The Stronger the Pressure, the Harder the Concrete

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

Shadow – I knew you were a traitor to the US and democracy.

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago

🤮

shadowstate1958
1 year ago

Vicente:

Tell us how you fell for the Ramtha fraud before you fell for the NXIVM fraud.

Honest to God, you believed that this huckster woman “transformed” herself into a 35,000 year old Lemurian warrior God.

If you can believe that, you can believe anything.

Vicente, you are as stupid as Allison Pimp Mack.

Beverly J Sutton (@BJSutton52)

Such inflammable language. Tsk, tsk. Fell for? Searching explorer who took much time to vet the group to recognize the fraud. Some of us are slow to be able to determine efficacy of a movement based on our upbringing. There are so many people who fell for several multilevel marketing groups over and over. It happens. It doesn’t make any of us stupid or bad. Allison endangered her health becoming emaciated and perpetrated the same on dozens of other women. I just can’t correlate Vicente as stupid in comparison with Mack.

shadowstate1958
1 year ago

Beverly:

I use inflammatory language because the world has grown increasingly stupid.

With all due respect, Vicente and Mack are both stupid.

I lived through the era of Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, pedophile priests and a host of other con artists.

So did Vicente and Mack.

Let me leave you with these words of wisdom:

“Only the paranoid survive.”

StevenJ
StevenJ
1 year ago

Not to forget Jim Jones…. Everybody must have heard about him and the massacre…..if that is a not a sufficient warning to stay clear from cults……you’re doomed……

Alanzo
1 year ago
Reply to  StevenJ

Yes. Every group that is called a “Cult” is the same as Jim Jones’ People’s Temple.

Don’t forget Heavens Gate.

And the Manson Family.

Alanzo

Anonymous
Anonymous
1 year ago
Reply to  StevenJ

…and the Catholic Church.

Alex
Alex
1 year ago

Thank you, Shadow! 😀

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: frankreport76@gmail.com

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