Today is Clare Bronfman’s 43rd birthday.
She resides in the Philadelphia Detention Center, one of the USA’s most unhealthy and punishing federal slave pens. A Chamber of Horrors that future humanity will one day look back at and wonder how medieval and cruel this period was.
No sunshine, no fresh air, never outdoors, terrible food, mold, dust, vermin, dank, cold, an obliterator of health that our society condones for those we hold in custody. And we relish it.
She is now in her 18th month of an 81-month sentence for crimes of convictions that carry a 21-27 month federal sentencing guidelines range. As everyone knows, she got triple the sentence because she did not renounce Keith Raniere.
Clare Bronfman inherited a lot of money, and once upon a time, this simple, uneducated girl who never graduated from high school had some noble dreams and manageable ambitions. Then her sister Sara met someone who introduced her to the world of Executive Success Programs, and Sara brought her sister into it.
Sara escaped with only losing $100 million or so – which her investment advisors easily made up. But Clare did not escape. Her dreams morphed into what Raniere and his special assistant Nancy Salzman wanted them to be.
The young lady became a harsh taskmaster under Raniere, even usurping Salzman’s role in time.
On her birthday, some of us might care to wish Clare a little good fortune, say, like her sister, who was thoughtful enough to escape and leave the country and abandon a rascal in light of all the evidence before her.
Clare herself might have landed close to her sentencing guidelines had she only shut her mouth and not written a letter to Judge Garaufis proclaiming her devotion to Raniere on the eve of sentencing. She would be getting ready to leave her cage in Philadelphia and return to freedom and a new start.
Instead, she is getting ready to move to a less punishing prison to Danbury, CT, where she will reside in a lower security prison appropriate for her conviction crimes but serve a sentence that is still way out of proportion to what she confessed to having done.
No one should mitigate, least of all me, the man she filed a criminal complaint against, which changed my whole life, the harm she has done with her wealth, serving it up to the Dark Lord, whose love of punishing people he calls justice and ethics.
Still, one cannot help but think what would have happened to this young lady – not so young anymore – had she not met the monster, had her sister not inveigled her into crossing the seas and coming to Albany and meet one of the world’s most uniquely dastardly cruel human beings.
She became cruel herself, under his care and abstemious feeding, but somewhere inside of her, the little girl wanted to do good. And I think these two ideas were constantly at odds — the kindly, shy, awkward girl who was afraid of people, nervous about her wealth, unworthy because she had not earned it, but wanting to do good for the world to make up for her lack of merit in the earning; she would earn distinction in the spending so she would be as good as anyone who earned it and selfishly possessed it- versus this callow monster inside her – grown and nourished by Raniere, a woman who thought no one was worthy of a dime in payment unless they were superior to her, a woman who would punish people in the name of ethics and justice, a savage feminine version of her Dark Lord.
He was fashioning her like him but always under his thumb. He made her a criminal. And yet there was still the good side to her. Even her loyalty to him is a sign of it, while she suffers for what he persuaded her to do.
On her 43rd birthday, I would wish she reinvent herself, go back in part to the young lady she once was, and with a mind disciplined enough to renounce the scoundrel and take a second chance even before and especially after she gets out of prison.
She will still be a young woman, and she can get a new start, even a big opening. She will still have her wealth, and she could do what hundreds have done before her- realize she was tricked, duped by a master conman. He stole from a lot of them. You see the names of a few in the lawsuit. He stole from Clare too. Not only did he steal her money, but he stole her freedom.
One day perhaps she will look back and be thankful she went to prison if it helps her break free from the conniver who would have kept her for life in his thrall. She had a life sentence with Raniere. She got only 81 months, and he, why he’ll be in Tucson with a cadre of pervs of his ilk and no females to abuse the rest of his life.
Happy birthday and if there were a cake with candles, I would wish that your eyes be opened, and you realize that you were perhaps his victim #1.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
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Being in prison around those less fortunate has made Clare more empathetic. For instance, instead of using her money to sue her enemies, she now gives money to all fellow inmates who demonstrate they can resist their violent physical tendencies. They call her “$aint Clare.”
What?? You must be sarcastic!
The Bronfman family money came from illegal activities, the distribution of alcohol, and other immoral means.
They aren’t special compared to the married school teacher who lives honorably and morally, teaching thousands of kids for forty years, and helping to raise a family who are just like them for the next generation with only around 50K per annum over that period of time in relative terms.
Money doesn’t automatically make you special or a person of character anymore than being born with beauty (which is just a gift) does. In fact, it makes you MORE responsible in how you use them.
Just like being an ethical example, makes you MORE responsible in not being a hypocrite.
Tolstoy said, “How complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness”.
The same thing applies if you replace the term beauty with money. The Bronfmans are part of the one percent of the one percent. Those who become part of that “club” likely haven’t gotten there honorably, and those who unlikely did so are likely the one percent of the one percent of them.
Morality and goodness have nothing to do with the mere possession of any amount of money. The former only comes into the picture with respect to how you obtained it and how you use it.
Clare’s sad story actually is similar to the cliche: Unattractive lonely rich woman seduced by a man who takes her money.
If Clare hadn’t acted like such a bitch to other NX-ers, people might have sympathy for her.
Clare reportedly lied to put people in prison. Why not lie to keep herself out? Unless Clare wanted to “stand for a principle” in some misguided Nxivm manner? Or perhaps it’s simply Clare’s “penance”?
There is the oft repeated theory that renouncing Keith would have gotten Clare a lighter sentence. But maybe it really would not have? Possibly Clare was considered an egregious offender and her considerable fortune would allow her reign of terror and crime to continue full force and unabated unless the court stiopped Clare?
If Clare even suspected that she’d get less prison time for repudiation of Vanguard and chose not to help herself out, then that’s not just sad, it is also dumb. Clare could have been getting out fairly soon. She’d be free, helping Keith and getting nxivm going under a new name.
It would be interesting to know what Clare was actually thinking back when she was sentenced. And now. But because we don’t know than this is always going to be speculation on our part. Same with the second guessing Clare’s sentencing.
Who knows? Really? Who cares? Really?
The dead-enders rarely even mention Clare
She doesn’t seem to really have anyone in her corner…
Doesn’t say much for Sara that she would draw her younger sister into this, and then not protect her as she protected herself.
Clare definitely participated and acted of her own volition, however, the severity of her punishment shows further injustice and abuse of power– Makes a mockery of the entire system.
There’s abuse everywhere you turn.
43?!?
Her eyeglasses and makeup look older than 43.
This woman is not aging well, Tom said understatedly…
Clare was bathed in the “blue light” so often having sex with Keith that the blue light aged her skin.
Is it possible for radiation damage to occur from blue light? Clare has seen too much and too often the blue light, so she wears tinted glasses. So blue light can also be harmful to the eyes. I didn’t even know she had sex that often.
Anonymous 12:23
Blue light? Nope! It was a blue flame which was caused by Kieth’s baby batter. It’s rumored his batter is what Tinker Bell used to make people fly.
What on Earth leads you to believe that either of the Bronfman sisters were any more virtuous or promising before they became willfully immersed in this abhorrent cult? They were eager to part ways with millions they had not earned in the service of their own gratification and adulation before they were introduced to the DOS subculture of NXIVM.
I have utmost empathy for those who fall prey to the very real bait-and-switch tactics cults and sweetheart swindlers employ, that can psychologically seduce otherwise sensible people into isolation, blind indoctrination, loss of identity and startling denial. But these two women have always had agency, and I think their lives have always been defined by entitlement, childish rebellion, self-centered narcissism and downright kookiness.
Surely there must be others victimized by Raniere and Mack far more deserving of so many maudlin paragraphs of grief. If these two vacuous flakes hadn’t encountered NXIVM, I’m convinced they would have found some other means to fritter away their lives one way or another. They’ve made no efforts or contributions in their privileged lives that warrant memorialization in the press—I’d be grateful if you moved on to those more deserving, if not simply interesting.
I think you’re dealing with a dengerous woman who is counting the days till she can get you dude
Beautiful letter, Frank.
This also means it’s my unbirthday and what a treat it is to free.
I’m blubbering over that poor little rich girl. You sure know how to ladle it on. If I didn’t know this rat bastard, I’d be signing petitions and dancing in front of the Philly prison after reading your soap opera
Clare Bronfman’s a year older and not one iota wiser.
Good analyses and it would be a good thing if Clare renounces Keith and does something good when released from prison. Alternatively, while incarcerated, she might be fueling her rage against people she perceives as enemies, Parlato among them, and when released from prison, unleashes her wrath with more terror by litigation.
Frankly, I am more concerned with the people of Eastern Europe where the Bronfman family originated.
The Bronfmans came from Moldavia, a small country wedged into the Southwestern corner of Ukraine.
The lands between Russia and Germany have been called “the Bloodlands” for all the blood shed by both the Nazis and the Communists.
Ukraine itself means the Borderlands in both Russian and Polish.
The geopolitical chaos roiling that remote region of Europe results in the deaths of numerous Ukrainians and Russians.
Many of those people are pawns in a political game they do not understand.
Regardless of the outcome of that game, there will be no winners.
Instead of being thankful for being in the relative tranquility of North America the Bronfmans had to hook up with a first-class charlatan.
A man whose name is a mark of shame.
It is difficult to feel sorry for such dolts as the Bronfmans.
I will reserve my sorrow for others more deserving.
ShadowState
—I will reserve my sorrow for others more deserving.
Well, we all know that list doesn’t contain any nonwhites….
Anonymous
April 10, 2022 at 11:05 am
—I will reserve my sorrow for others more deserving.
Well, we all know that list doesn’t contain any nonwhites….
Let’s set the record straight.
A close family friend, Ratish Prasad of the US Navy, is the first Hindu buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Since you are so obsessed with skin color, his skin was as dark as Mindy Kaling’s or Kamala Harris.
http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rprasad.htm
Don’t play the race card with me, Shadow State
Does he have an Instagram page?