The Dossier Project publishes articles attacking the conviction of Keith Alan Raniere. In so doing, they often attack me, blaming me for Raniere’s and their woes.
The Dossier women claim the forced labor charges for which a jury convicted Raniere were overblown.
They say it is ridiculous to call what Raniere forced Nicole to do “forced labor.” They say Raniere did not force her, and that even if he had, it was far from what the law intended as forced labor.
The jury found Raniere forced Nicole to transcribe five hours of a video one evening. This forced transcription was late at night, when she had already worked until midnight at her paying job as a cocktail waitress. The jury determined she preferred to sleep, but Raniere forced her to stay up and do the transcription.
The jury also found that he forced Nicole to read 55 articles over three weeks.
The judge instructed the jury that Raniere’s actions met the elements of forced labor.
The judge sentenced Raniere to 20 years for forcing Nicole to read the 55 articles and do the transcription on an evening in 2016.
The Dossier Project consists of eight DOS slaves.
Nicki Clyne, Danielle Roberts, Sahajo Haertel, Angelina Hinojos, Michele Hatchette, Samantha Lebaron, and Leah Motishaw.
In this article, the Dossier women compare Nicole’s forced labor with other forced labor victims.
By the Dossier Project
The NXIVM and DOS narratives have been represented in the media with so much sensationalism and spin that very few people know what the government used as “evidence” to support the criminal charges.
These charges led to Keith Raniere being convicted on all counts and sentenced to 120 years in prison. To justify such a sentence, one would assume there was horrendous abuse.
Typically, trials involving charges such as Sex Trafficking and Forced Labor involve gut-wrenching tales of torture and physical abuse. At Keith’s trial, the prosecution did everything possible to create a prejudicial view of Raniere. Still, the question remains: Does the conduct described at trial fit the elements of the charges? And if not, how is it possible he was convicted, let alone charged?
Here is a breakdown of the Forced Labor charge, with some context for legislators’ intent for the law.
U.S. legal definition of Forced Labor:
Forced labor occurs when individuals are compelled against their will to provide work or service through the use of force, fraud, or coercion.
(a) Whoever knowingly provides or obtains the labor or services of a person by any one of, or by any combination of, the following means—
(1) by means of force, threats of force, physical restraint, or threats of physical restraint to that person or another person;
(2) by means of serious harm or threats of serious harm to that person or another person;
(3) by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or legal process; or
(4) by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that, if that person did not perform such labor or services, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint, shall be punished as provided under subsection (d).
Other cases of Forced Labor in the U.S.
U.S. v. Sabhnani
Victims: Two Indonesian women were brought to the U.S. to work as housekeepers for the defendant for 2 and 5 years, respectively.
Work involved:
- Housekeeping seven days a week from 2 am-midnight
- 22 hours daily for 2 and 5 years = 8,030 hours per victim per year
Living conditions:
- Passports were withheld, slept on the floor, and not given enough food, so they resorted to eating out of the trash.
Consequences for not doing the work:
- Physical violence and threats to tell their families in Indonesia that they were thieves.
One woman testified that the defendant:
- pulled her ears with fingernails until they bled
- threw boiling water on her,
- cut her with a knife,
- hit her,
- pinched her,
- forced her to strip her clothes off,
- shaved her pubic hair,
- wrapped her in cellophane,
- Forced her to eat chili peppers until she vomited,
- Then forced her to eat that vomit.
- cut off the hair on her head,
- forced her to wear eyeglasses fastened with a rubber band and covered with tape
- forced her to wear rags.
2. U.S. v. Dan Zhong
Victims: 250 male construction workers brought over from China on specific visas to only work on PCR diplomatic facilities.
Work involved:
- Construction, housekeeping, and chauffeuring
- Seven days a week for 14 hours daily for 10-15 years = 5,110 hours per victim per year
Living conditions
- Passports were withheld, and 20+ people cramped in 1-2 family homes in unsafe conditions and locked in.
Consequences for not doing the work
- Physical threats and threats that their families in China would lose their homes and they would lose the substantial security deposit they had put down to get the job.
When workers tried to escape, they were violently recaptured.
3. U.S. v Rivera
Victims: 8 undocumented migrant women
Work involved:
- Waitressing and sex work (hours, years, and money unknown).
- After the women agreed to work as waitresses, the defendant directed them to solicit patrons to buy them alcoholic beverages, which the women were required to consume, and eventually forced them to engage in sexual acts with the patrons in exchange for money, which he kept.
Living conditions unknown
Consequences for not doing the work
- Rape and beatings, as well as threats of deportation.
The NXIVM Case
4. U.S. v Raniere
Victim:
- One 29-year-old American woman, Nicole, who lived in Brooklyn. She worked at a high-end cocktail bar in Manhattan and traveled freely and frequently with family and friends. The defendant, Keith Raniere, lived 180 miles away in Albany, NY, and saw Nicole on average once a week for a couple of hours. Allison Mack and Keith Raniere mentored Nicole in an acting program called The Source. She also spent time with both socially.
Forced Labor Alleged:
- August 2016: Reading 55 articles over three weeks and rating each by filling out a Google form.
- January 2017: Transcribing a short video clip for a friend’s memorial service.
Living conditions:
- She lived in an apartment she rented with a roommate in Brooklyn and traveled freely across the U.S. to visit friends and family.
Consequences for not doing the work:
- In one instance where Nicole didn’t follow through on a promise, Allison took a cold shower as a consequence. In every other instance, there were no consequences for her refusing or failing to do an assignment, including the transcription and article assignments.
Article assignment:
- The “article assignment” was given to 24 women.
- The task was to read 55 philosophical articles (ranging from 3-10 pages each) and rate them on a Google form.
- Seven (out of the 24 women) did not complete the assignment. There were no consequences for them for not completing it.
- Here are a few of Nicole’s entries in the Google form:
Memorial transcription:
- The transcription Nicole completed was not a DOS assignment. It was simply a request from someone within the community who was managing the memorial service. The memorial was an NXIVM community initiative. If Nicole hadn’t done the transcription, someone else would have done it.
Email from Sylvie Lloyd sent to India Oxenberg, forwarded to Nicole, asking for help with transcriptions. When Nicole did those transcriptions, the jury decided it was forced labor.
Keith Raniere was charged with Forced Labor of Nicole because:
- Nicole read and rated 55 articles over three weeks in the fall of 2016.
- Nicole transcribed a short video for a friend’s memorial service in January 2017.
The judge sentenced Raniere to 20 years for Nicole’s rating 55 articles and transcribing Pam’s video.
Nicole attending Pamela Cafritz’s memorial service after the forced labor of transcribing a video the previous night, resulting in a Forced Labor conviction of Keith Raniere.
Allison Mack with her slave Nicole, who the jury decided was a victim of forced labor.
Nicole, Michele Hatchette, Allison Mack, and India Oxenberg in July 2017 (six months after the alleged Forced Labor incident).
The prosecution’s closing arguments at trial:
Nicole and others transcribed recordings of Pam Cafritz speaking for her memorial service, and you heard that Nicole stayed up all night to do that after getting home from her nightclub job…
Nicole… edited the defendant’s articles for hours a day for weeks straight. I submit that the purpose of those articles being edited was to benefit the defendant and make them available for curriculum or for the defendant to publish.
From the defense’s closing arguments:
The government urges an unreasonably broad interpretation of “labor or services” to include isolated personal favors and kind gestures that were understood as such in the context of DOS.
To conclude that Nicole’s occasional “acts of care” for Mack and an isolated incident where she transcribed Cafritz’s speeches for her memorial service qualifies as a “condition of servitude” or the type of “labor and services’ intended under the statute renders the purpose of the force labor statute meaningless.
From Raniere’s appeal:
Defendant’s forced labor conviction must be vacated where no DOS members were living in a condition of servitude and whatever small tasks or “acts of care” they completed did not amount to the type of “labor or services” contemplated by the forced labor statute.”
The government successfully distracted the jury from its deficient proofs in a calculated attempt to breed hatred for the Defendant and indifference to his constitutional guarantees, including the right to be convicted only by proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
This marks the end of the Dossier Project’s article.
Going forward, begins my comment. Just in case anybody is confused: FR comments start here and Dossier Projects report is done.
By Frank
There is of course an element of the absurd in saying that transcribing a video and reading reports is federal forced labor. Yet the mistake the ‘Sublime One’ made was having collateral in the mix. With collateral anyone could allege they were forced to anything and everything.
They all lost the right to consent to anything. This was the theory that won the day for the feds.
Poison Pills they were – for the Grandiose One.
Viva the Executive and His Success!!
The Grandmaster, Keith Alan Raniere by artist Marie White.
Re: Article assignment
“… The “article assignment” was given to 24 women.
The task was to read 55 philosophical articles (ranging from 3-10 pages each) and rate them on a Google form.
Seven (out of the 24 women) did not complete the assignment. There were no consequences for them for not completing it. …”
Note to any of the 24 women — or friends who can answer for them:
A few questions:
Were those 55 articles on separate pages? In a booklet?
Were the articles online?
If the articles were online, were phones or laptops with cameras to be used to read the articles?
Is it possible that “article assignment” was to observe the reactions of the 24 women while they read the articles?
Is it possible reactions and data points were collected remotely via phone/computer cameras to collect data on eye tracking / facial expressions / emotions triggered while the women read those 55 articles?
In what way(s) was the content in those articles significant?
Could someone post the list of articles with titles, authors and sources?
I agree it is a difficult issue which has arisen with many cults which is why prosecutions tend to be things like child labour FLDS – children picking pecans for no pay), transporting an under age girl across state lines – US to Canada because all the other ills of the FLDS and many other cults like Scientology making you pay ridiculous sums are so hard to prosecute. However it is not wrong to have this as part of the Nexivm case. You have to take this in the round – KR did all kinds of dreadful things from the fall of his first business and later and he is in the right place in jail convicted of about 1% only of his moral wrongs.
As soon as collateral is collected, there is no longer free will. It all falls under the category of slave labor.
Where can we find more information about the NXIVM “Article Assignments”?
Who was involved in the creation of those assignments?
Brian Porter? Nancy Salzman?
Conducting Scientific Experiments Without Consent or Due Process is a crime.
In a non-consensual experiment, every action and every non-action is forced labor.
In an experiment without consent, subjects forced or fooled to participate do “forced labor” for those conducting the experiments.
If NXIVM “article assignments” were small experiments (or part of one larger experiment) forced labor occurred.
Whether or not the 24 non-consenting subjects of the experiment (if it was an experiment) completed the “assignment”, they were victims of a forced labor crime.
In that case, their forced labor included:
1. deciding to read the articles or not
2. reading the articles
3. rating the articles
4. experiencing feelings such as shame and rejection if they didn’t complete their “assignments”
5. the absence or presence of emotional reactions and behavioral responses after reading (or not reading) the articles
In the Starz Originals documentary, “Seduced”, one screenshot of an email reads:
________________
From: Allison Mack
To: India Oxenberg
Subject: articles you read and rated
Desires, Beliefs and Mortality
Why Should I live? (Will I remember?)
There will be Murder
Fork in the road
And the flights of the angels sing thee to thy rest
The Swap
Killing me?
_______________
A few questions from this voluntary reader of Frank Report:
1. How many of those 55 articles contained references to: mortality, questions about why one should live, murder, angels singing one to rest, killing etc?
2. Who gave that “article assignment” to which 24 women?
3. Why were those 24 women asked to rate 55 articles on a Google form?
4. Were all 24 women told to read and rate the same 55 articles (how many of the articles had morbid themes)?
4. Is that list of articles and authors available to the public?
5. Who chose those particular 55 articles and why?
6. What purpose(s) did the ratings on Google serve?
7. Was the article assignment a non-consensual experiment?
8. What were the 24 women told about that “assignment”?
9. What specific feedback was given to all 24 women after the “assignment”?
10. If feedback was provided after the “assignment”, who provided that feedback and why?
If the “article assignment” was an experiment, it doesn’t matter that there were no consequences when some subjects didn’t complete the task. If the “assignment” was a non-consensual experiment that was forced labor.
If it was a non-consensual experiment, the subjects’ completion/non-completion was a different kind of forced labor than the enslavement, torture and misery described in U.S. v. Sabhnani, U.S. v. Dan Zhong and U.S. v Rivera cases The Dossier Project offered in comparison.
May the women of The Dossier Project hurry up and remember how free they used to be.
“Deep inside every slave there is a repressed, dormant master.”
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
How large a population could a government hypnotize?
Wasn’t the goal of NXIVM to change the entire world?
Besides Cafritz money, Charles Manson and Keith Raniere had a lot in common.
https://odysee.com/@erichunley:3/scott-adams-says-what-about-hypnosis-!:f
Scott Adams told Nicki Clyne:
“I’m here to tell you that you can’t make people do things they don’t want to do. Hypnosis doesn’t work that way.”
Nicki Clyne agreed with Scott.
Krystyna Lennon, “The World’s Best Hypnotist” didn’t agree with Scott.
Could a government hypnotize a large population?
For whom did NXIVM want to change the world?
Besides Cafritz money, Charles Manson and Keith Raniere had this in common:
a troubled youth with sociopathic tendencies
an interest in hypnotism, scientology and dark practices
eventually … somehow … they both somehow became involved with politically influential international networks
Slow start to this video, then it’s interesting:
https://odysee.com/@erichunley:3/scott-adams-says-what-about-hypnosis-!:f
[…] your argument that the existence of collateral makes the article reviews and memorial service transcription a […]
Hey Nicki, you’ve got an amazing talent for the understatement! Ever thought about a career in far right politics? You and the gals would be great.
How about this? Members (slaves) of DOS were:
Starved, sleep deprived, beaten with paddles on their bare asses in front of their peers whilst it was filmed for Raniere’s perverse sexual gratification, forced to stand for hours in the snow, forced to do pointless physical exercises like burpees till they collapsed or vomited, forced to eat disgusting Vegan dishes (they would have vomited, but were too hungry to), physically and emotionally bullied, threatened with the release of collateral, forced to provide collateral that was in many cases not even true, forced to grow their pubic hair, branded naked with their Master’s initials using a cauterizing pen by a quack doctor over a 20-25 minute period without anaesthetic whilst being held down, forced to do any number of menial chores for 20+ hours per week, forced to answer to a mobile phone text within 60 seconds at any time of day or night (usually night)…..I could go on.
Given the choice I’d rather be one of the Sabhnani, Rivera or Dan Zhong victims.
Seem to remember that Daniela also had her passport taken, as well as her ID while you lot imprisoned her in a room for 2 years.
I think this all needs to be looked at in a larger context.
Weren’t people being “groomed” for sex with Vanguard? Weren’t some of the slaves looking for new sex partners for Vanguard? That was their mission, or “job”. Wasn’t he saying that’s how his energy kept recharging, or something like that?
In my personal, humble opinion, if there’s subliminal distress or ” brainwashing ” involved for grooming for sex, the word ” coerced” would apply to lots of different situations, including grooming for an anticipated sexual liaison.
My humble opinion.
It is their time to waste.
Frank, your argument that the existence of collateral makes the article reviews and memorial service transcription a form of forced labor can be applied to any company, school, Govt agency, or religious organization that makes it’s employees, students, or worshippers volunteer on their own time, for no money, in exchange for staying in the good graces of the higher ups and under threat of punishment if they do not participate.
Do you think those company employees and students in their cheesy neon team t-shirts, do you think they’re really volunteering on a Saturday morning to pick up trash on the side of the road? You don’t think they’re participating out of knowing that it will hurt their performance review or result in a reprisal of some sort of they stay home?
Almost every company, business and school does this. In the real world, our employment, and the threat of termination, is collateral. And these things are used to get people to do things off the books for no compensation all the time, and no one would care, because we’re not all attractive blonde women with Hollywood and royal pedigree.
People who have followed this case believe Raniere was convicted for rape, for sexual assault, and for sex trafficking. Are you telling me that if we read the court transcripts that we’re not going to find any of that, and instead find example after example of someone reviewing an article on Google or transcribing a late friend’s memorial service in an air conditioned office?
And Allison is in prison for this? Or is it for asking Nicole to go on a walk with Keith? Something that resulted in a sex act happening, but which Allison had no prior knowledge of?
Or is it that Allison trafficked India to Keith in exchange for payment for Allison’s work in The Source, even though the e-mail everyone references as evidence shows Allison politely asking for payment for her work, and promising to work with Clare Bronfman to streamline the process going forward? The e-mail where sex and other DOS women aren’t mentioned once?
My team at work contributed our weekends for two months in the summer on community service projects for five straight years, for 12 hours a day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in the New Mexico heat. All in the name of a community service competition that our Squadron had to win to make our managers happy.
So for myself, that’s 36 hours per weekend (on top of our regular work week), for eight weekends. So that’s 288 hours of work for each summer. Multiplied by five years, that’s 1,440 hours of unpaid, physically demanding work in the outdoors, in borderline 100 degree heat. Multiplied by the number of people in our group, approximately 10, that’s 14,400 hours of unpaid, physically demanding work, off the clock.
Frank, do you have Moira’s number? Do you have Neil Glazer’s number? Do I have a case? Do my teammates have a case? What’s that, you say? We don’t? Oh, that’s right, we aren’t the right kinds of people, so the legal protections afforded to these upper class women won’t be afforded to us. Because we pick and choose who we protect, not based on who needs protection and based on the nature of what’s happening, but on the basis of who people are, what they look like, and how much social capital they have.
Would it change things if I told Moira and Neil that four of the team members were attractive women in their 20s and 30s, almost identical to Nicole and India? Except that they didn’t come from money, which might lower their value by a hair.
I can say that my intuition of never allowing my female subordinates to help with any volunteer projects has been right on the money. No woman under my supervision will ever volunteer for a Squadron event under my watch. The 16-year-old male intern, yes, but I don’t have to worry about a US attorney making a sex trafficking case out of me asking him to clean the shredder or take out the trash.
“Dossier Slaves Attack Raniere’s Forced Labor Sentence of 20 Years”
Shock horror – well they would, wouldn’t they? Drop the dead donkey…
“To justify such a sentence, one would assume there was horrendous abuse”
Abuse like having women branded on their nethers with his initials?
The forced labor of Nicole was not an isolated incident, it was part of a pattern. The prosecution proved that this was a criminal racket, a long term criminal enterprise serving Raniere, the point of which was to subjugate these women. The petty tasks they were coerced into performing were not the point. The point was to enslave them. Raniere himself repeatedly used the words slave and master, and not just about Nicole.
That’s why Raniere got 120 years. And he deserves every one of those years.
Hey dummies…this has already been argued in a court of law…by lawyers…he was convicted…that’s all she wrote…go find another cult to join you tramps.
There are DOS documents that explicitly lay out a pyramid scheme to get free labor.
Those documents were generated by the Grand Master of the slave ring. There’s even some equations by the so called genius mathematician Vanguard showing how each master could get up to a certain amount of free labor hours out of each slave.
The slave ring manuals detail making each slave work to the highest of their ability for free. For example a lawyer should do legal work. For free.
The manuals call for masters to coerce through blackmail and their position of power over the slaves free labor. These criminals actually were stupid enough to write out their intent. And then carry it through. So there’s no question about intention. The labor was to benefit the master not the slave.
Oh and there’s blackmail!
And yet Danielle had NO SLAVES to be beneficial to her ? Hmm
If that’s some kind of “pro DOS” argument it’s reaaallly weak ass.
Maybe ex doctor Danielle just sucked at recruiting “friends” to be exploited, blackmailed and lied to?
Thank goodness!
No matter.
It was a Weak. Ass. Rebuttal.
Rumor has it Danielle loved to take a bare assed spanking for being a naughty girl
Exhibit #54,186,405,845,390,452
From: Alison Mack
To: Keith Raniere
Date: March 3, 2016
Subject: thoughts
Hey you. I’m so sorry to bug you but I have not been paid as a head trainer for The Source since last year and I’m struggling a little with income. Clare says she cannot approve the payments until you review them. Is there some way you can review them sooner rather than later?
I know you are slammed, so if there is any way that I can help make this simpler, please let me know.
I will try to figure out how to be more streamlined with this too.
I love you Master
XO, A.