By Jeffrey Jay, AKA Mockingbird
This is the fourth in a series that examines the similarities of NXIVM and Scientoloy. We are using the excellent book Scarred: The True Story Of How I Escaped The Cult That Bound My Life by Sarah Edmondson to help illustrate our points.
I recommend reading these posts sequentially.
Part 1 NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged;
Part 2: NXIVM Is Scientology Repackaged; 12 Point Mission Statement
Part 3: NXIVM is Scientology Repackaged – by Mockingbird
Collateral
Regarding “collateral,” we have a bit to look at.
“Collateral” in NXIVM is material that can ruin an NXIVM member’s life.
Though more specific to NXIVM subgroup DOS, Keith Raniere also collected it on various NXIVM members unaffiliated with the secret female sorority.
Collateral is material a member gives that is embarrassing, humiliating, and could harm the reputation, career, freedom, and standing in the community of that member.
Collateral is nude photos that show both the genitals and face. A video showing a member confessing to a crime or crimes. A video in which a member says exceptionally negative things about friends and family members that could destroy their relationships if their collateral was released.
The contents of the video confessions were often false and intended to be ruinous to the person who provided the collateral if released.
Many people don’t have a list of secret resentments and crimes that could ruin their lives. Instead, they had to make up collateral so that they could ruin their life if released.
I would NEVER believe any statements in collateral unless entirely separate evidence was sufficient to prove them!
Auditing
Scientology has things that serve the same purpose.
If you get auditing in Scientology, you are encouraged to disclose everything you have ever had any negative feelings about, including your actions and thoughts.
Scientologist John Joseph Travolta demonstrates the e-meter, which is used in auditing.
Scientology in many organizations has auditing sessions videotaped, and the organization permanently hangs onto the video.
Scientology tells members that auditing is confidential under a priest-penitent privilege but routinely violates this agreement with members.
You are encouraged to disclose evil and hidden acts and thoughts through “OW write ups.”
OW stands for “overts and witholds” in Scientology.
Many Scientologists spend many hours writing up OWs and filling folders with them. I am sure I have written hundreds.
The most personal and embarrassing things that one may see qualifying as overts or witholds are written up, and Scientology saves these (usually permanently).
Additionally, auditing can include the disclosure of OWs that may involve hundreds of hours of these disclosures.
Scientology and Dianetics auditing uses hypnosis and extreme pressure on members to find and disclose OWs.
Scientology auditors routinely and repeatedly push a member in auditing to disclose many instances of events that never actually occurred to satisfy a requirement!
This is true in auditing and the OW write-up procedure.
Scientists are often convinced they committed many hidden evil acts in both this life and past lives, which they confess repeatedly.
So, in both the statements made for collateral in NXIVM and the crimes and secrets disclosed in Scientology, I find these “confessions” are of no evidentiary value!
Truth Rundown and Ethical Breaches
Scientology’s The Truth Rundown is possibly the most apparent effort at brainwashing in any cult.
Used almost exclusively for Sea Org members, the Truth Rundown is gaslighting.
A Sea Org member who has fallen out of favor with Scientology leader David Miscavige is sent to the Rehabilitation Project Force, a re-education gulag within the Sea Org.
There, a member must do hard physical labor, eat scraps, run everywhere, be considered a degraded being and usually a suppressive person, and undergo “therapy” sessions in which they are asked for negative acts, remarks, or thoughts they had about or toward Miscavige or other high ranking members of Scientology.
The heart of the Truth Rundown procedure is convincing the person that they have done something evil regarding Miscavige or some other high-ranking Scientologist.
If they saw Miscavige beating a staff member, being cruel or unfair, or having flaws of any kind, that means they had done something evil which made them SEE something that NEVER HAPPENED!
In other words, the procedure relies on the assumption that Miscavige is perfect and infallible in word and deed!
It relies on the assumption that every person who observes Miscavige lying, beating people, committing crimes, and so on has a mental deficiency, a character deficiency, that makes them do evil acts, then hide them, then distort their perception, so they see evil in others where it’s not there, and hide evil in themselves that is there!
Vanguard, Keith Raniere with his Prefect, Nancy Salzman
This is how Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman, and other people in NXIVM, used the “tech.”
Nancy and, most of all Keith must be right. When there is disagreement, criticism, or doubt, the person lower in the organization hierarchy is ALWAYS wrong!
Raniere acted like everyone always had to please him, or it was an ethical “breach.”
But what did Keith do about his ethical breaches? What did Keith do about his constant lying about his credentials, education, and achievements? What did Keith do about the fact that gossip was discouraged, but he made negative remarks about everyone?
What did he do about pretending that people should give up attachments, but he wasn’t the celibate “renunciate” he claimed but had numerous sex partners and lied to many of them about the others?
He lied to the group and often the families of the women and girls he had sex with, and betrayed their trust.
Scientology founder Lafayette Ronald Hubbard also had numerous affairs. In fact, he was legally married to two women simultaneously! He abandoned and betrayed each of his three wives.
He even had one wife, Mary Sue, go to prison for him.
And after he shed himself of Sara, he had her removed from his photographs.
Stay tuned for part 5
For more of the author’s work, see https://mbnest.blogspot.com/
Pilgrim
This dead-ender argument is faulty logic.
A person can feel one way at the time but based on new information feel differently later. That’s not being a liar that’s being intelligent.
A person could believe (for example) that they had a great marriage and later find out that their husband was a lying, cheating, pedophile. Now everything is under a completely different context.
Would you still say you had a great marriage if your husband was lying and committing criminal activity the entire relationship?
Likewise, a woman could believe that she was in an all-female organization getting a brand of the elements in solidarity with only other women involved. And later she finds out that it was actually the front-line women in the organization lying and branding them deceptively with their shared boyfriend’s iInitials.
That puts it in a different context.
Everything was a lie from the very beginning. No man was supposed to be involved in the organization whatsoever. Let alone a man they all knew and some worked for and others considered avrenunciate mentor while many other slave women had a secret sexual relationship with him.
That puts everything in a different context. Again. That doesn’t make someone having a change of heart or a different perspective latet a liar.
It just means that based on additional information and finally seeing a full picture they later arrived at a much mor fullly realized and accurate perspective.
At one time Bernie madoff’s victims believed investing with Bernie Madoff was a good idea. When these same victims testified later against Bernie in terms of the damage done to them financially did that make them liars? No.
People can and do change their mind upon receiving new information.
This frequently put forth unsuccessful attack on the uninformed (intentionally misinformed and misled) slave women being branded under false pretenses is a failure.
If this is an argument Keith the allegedly smartest man in the world and one of the allegedly top three problem solvers in the world (lol) constructed and has instructed his followers to use in his defense it really shows vanguard’s lack of intellect, reasoning and his dead-end followers’ willful ignorance.
DOS “collateral” was just blackmail plain and simple, so I don’t see how that establishes that Nxivm was “Scientology repackaged”.
As for the phoney baloney of auditing, all I can say is that picture of John Revolta is hilarious and the “e-meter” looks like something you’d find at Toys R Us. People believe in this nonsense? Wow. Just wow.
Not to digress from this blog entry, but does this video show someone forced into a brand or someone who was a willing participant and happy to get it? Be honest. They are holding her to keep her involuntary reflexes from messing up the brand. Just like a woman getting a tattoo or keeping a woman from causing issues during child-birth. Sarah is a fraud.
https://www.redgifs.com/watch/demandingembellishedarcticfox
Blackmail. They slaves were blackmailed. Forced is correct.
The women did not know the true nature of the brand.
They were lied to about the brNd and that is not iinformed consent.
At the time of the branding it was unknown to the slave women Keith was running the sex trafficking ring let alone they were branded “all mine” devil emoji with Keith’s initials. As Keith’s property.
Anonymous, the collateral was to deep DOS a secret, that’s it. She or all of them could have walked away at any time they wanted and the collateral would not have been used. Sarah was angry because Keith was fast tracking India to the top. Also, she thought she deserved more credit for recruiting 2000 people into the cult. But Raniere was busy banging her friends and she was seethingly jealous that he barely noticed her. She got her revenge in a big way.
WOW! Expose..
—Sarah was angry because Keith was fast tracking India to the top
Sarah Edmondson was the number one sales recruiter for NXIVM, bar-none.
It’s laughable you’d say “she was jealous.” Jealous of what?
Niki\kevin\pilgrim you need a serious reality check.
Hilarious, Pilgrim! Sarah was angry because she looked in the mirror and saw Raniere’s initials burnt into her groin instead of the 4 elements LOL. That would make me a bit peeved too, especially if I had a long term partner.
Deserved more credit? The only thing Clyne had right was that Edmondson was more than well remunerated for her efforts. LMAO!
People can and do willingly get scarified (branded). This does not mean women like Sarah Edmondson were willing.
How can you tell the difference? Try asking the woman.
Finally a truth from you
People do willingly get scarified.
Since she lied so extensively on her NYT’s article regarding the amount of time the scarification took, extreme pain worse than childbirth , held down forcibly vs. Stabilized to not hurt herself , asking the woman directly seems almost moot to me.
All pain is ultimately worse than childbirth, because from labour you get a beautiful hopefully very much wanted child.
From unhygenic DOS branding in Allison’s condo you get deceptive, unwanted, initials that look like shit of a child rapist and your friends’ shared secret boyfriend scarring your pubis for life.
Really intense pain is hard to quantify accurately in time. It can feel like it lasts forever. Big whoop if Sarah wasn’t like with a stopwatch and the exact time. Lol her fucking flesh was melting while she was held down nude by a bunch of other nude people. Lol
“It wasn’t that long”… That’s such a meh and tired dead-ender argument.
Except when your about to make yourself a public figure , some ‘real thought’ should be applied to accuracy, btw, it’s usually childbirth that lasts for hours , not scarification!
Time spent in pain does matter, just ask a POW !
or a dentist for that matter.
Or a prisoner !
Unlikely that you found the video by chance on this page, whose link they provide. It is more likely that you uploaded it to this website yourself.
Yeah, be extremely cautious about clicking that link. It came out anyway that dead-enders (Nicki Clyne being one) edited Sarah’s branding recording.
This cult has a history of doctoring recordings to serve their dishonest purposes and narrative. It’s well documented in court records.
Suneel is running around showing off illegal photos of sexual abuse of a minor and/or copies of copies. Not to be trusted either.
Proof that the blackmail was also revenge porn? A fully nude recording of Sarah was released to the media by the cult dead-enders
An edited version of Sarah’s branding torture.
Any attempted misdirection by the dead-enders that it was the government who released the recording or other b******* is just lies.
To this day most of the blackmail has not been recovered. And Sarah’s was released. It was blackmail. It was always blackmail. It’s still blackmail.
And the dead-enders should really return the blackmail. But the Keith groupies have absolutely no Integrity, moral compass or ethics so they won’t.
The site is an adult site, but I believe it is non malicious. It was the only domain I could find with the leaked video. Not my intention to lead anyone to a porn site, however, seeing the video – I believe – illustrates this was NOT a forced/violent branding. These women were 100% willing to go through with it. I think we need the context because Sarah – in my opinion – has not been forthcoming enough. I initially believed women were kidnapped and held against their will and branded. This is and was never the case. Don’t get me wrong, NXIVM, Keith and company are dangerous criminals and are where they belong. If NXIVM was not brought down, this could have ended very badly. Buts let’s remember, some of these ‘vivtims’ stuck with Keith to the very end and only turned on him when they were looking at jail time. That is typically not the pattern of women being tortured by a madman. There are many dynamics at play here…
This is typically the pattern of cult members being loyal to their cult.
She certainly seems to be a willing participant. I also notice no flopping around, as well as a short duration.
This video proves Sarah Edmondson lied to the New York Times when she said “I wept the whole time”.
It’s factual evidence which everyone must consider in this whole NXIVM shit-show.
Thank you to “Pilgrim” for publishing it, and to Frank for letting it through.
Remember Moira Penza’s shore story:
Moira Penza said this was the genesis of her investigation into NXIVM, ‘knowing’ there were crimes here.
An AUSA federal prosecutor going off of a story in the New York Times, which has proven lies in it.
Resulting in a 120 YEAR SENTENCE for a person with no criminal history, and no history of violence.
Think, y’all.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/17/nyregion/nxivm-women-branded-albany.html
Alanzo
I’m not sure it proves anything Alanzo. It certainly doesn’t appear that she’s enjoying it. I think the dogs in the streets of Albany knew there were very odd things occurring there, and certain authorities refrained from acting in the face of growing evidence for a considerable time. I would agree though that the sentence was perhaps excessive, but then you Americans seem to favour consecutive rather than concurrent sentences for some reason.
Many thanks Pilgrim for providing that footage. I will be honest though, the video is quite blurred in places but to my eyes her face does look contorted and she doesn’t look like she’s enjoying it. No sound, so we don’t know if she’s crying. It’s more or less what I imagined from the descriptions I’ve come across.