Nancy Salzman’s New Life at Albany Halfway House Should Be Safe; May Offer New Adventure for NXIVM President

Nancy Salzman will return to Albany, NY from her unpleasant prison cell at FCI Hazelton in West Virginia.

The BOP has decided to remove the Prefect of NXIVM from Hazelton on September 7th – and transfer her to the Horizon House in Albany, a halfway house where she may live for the next ten months.

Her new residence is in the South End neighborhood of Albany, an area that some describe as unsanitary, unpleasant, unsavory, and unsafe.

A comment from someone who knows:

• That place is a horrible dump right behind the City Mission. A real drug-infested hellhole. She will make it worse.
• This place is in the South End, off South Pearl. Smells like piss and even the homeless from the City Mission won’t walk in front of it. Nancy will also be the only white woman there unless they have a white crack whore around.

The Albany Times Union wrote:

“South End is nobody’s idea of what the neighborhood should be. After decades of disinvestment and decline, it is a depressed and often depressing place where residents, children especially, are trapped in poverty.”

While some pessimists think Nancy will do poorly, others know better. Horizon House is an excellent place for Nancy to live and improve the area.

On the Horizon

The Horizon House has 42 beds mostly bunks – and houses men and women transitioning back into their communities from federal incarceration.

For more than 25 years, Albany was Nancy’s community.

She lived most of those years in Waterford, NY, only a short hop from her Vanguard, Keith A. Raniere, who lived a few houses away.

Both the Prefect and the Vanguard lived on Oregon Trail. Nancy graced 3 Oregon Trail, and Keith immortalized 21 Oregon Trail, where he lived with Mariana and Pam Cafritz.

Only Nancy will return.

Mariana has retreated to Monterrey, Mexico.

Pam, a lifetime member of the Cryonics Institute, lives there with the good people who run the facility in that cold climate in Clinton Township, Michigan. She appears to be in Tomb 144.

Raniere has relocated to the warmer climate of Tucson, Arizona.

Photos of the Interior of Nancy’s House at 3 Oregon Trail

The Horizon House Reentry of Albany, NY, provides “assistance to federal offenders nearing the end of their sentences.”

The Horizon House helps “men and women rebuild their ties to the community and facilitate supervising their activities during this transition phase.”

A New Horizon

Our investigation of Horizon House indicates that it has 18 staff members – administrators, residential staff, and case management workers – who oversee some 31 inmates, a ratio of one staff member for less than two inmates. However, there are only so many staff on site at any specific time since three shifts of workers must manage the facility 24/7.

The facility had 28 male and three female residents in the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prison or the Federal Probation Office on the date of our inquiry.

Our investigation revealed Horizon House has three buildings.

Two adjoining three-story buildings are at 35-37 Elizabeth Street, and these buildings are where all inmates live.

It is where Nancy will stay when she comes there.

Across the street, at 28 Elizabeth Street, is an administrative, intake, and conference area.

The residence area has two outdoor fenced recreation areas The two main buildings (green and beige) above. one for the men and one for the women.

One space is larger, with a basketball hoop and picnic tables; the second is a small garden space.

Nancy may teach some inmates NXIVM tech or provide quiet Explorations of Meaning probes in the garden.

The first floor has a one-person room, a four-person room, the staff monitoring station, and the kitchen/dining area.

The four-person room on the first floor is the female unit where Nancy will likely be assigned. There is no separate TV area for the ladies.

Much like NXIVM kept track of its adherents with cameras, at Horizon, 25 cameras film common areas, staircases, and exterior spaces of the three-story buildings. Five additional cameras film the administrative building.

The staff dutifully watches the monitors displaying the scenes from the cameras, paying close attention to residents in the common areas. On top of that, the staff performs tours of the facility, including random visits to bedrooms and bathrooms.

It is less intrusive than what Nancy is familiar with at Hazelton, where guards would inspect the facility, her cell and anywhere else The two main buildings (green and beige) above. including any suspect bodily cavities.

It is also less intrusive than when she was the Prefect, when Raniere would drop in at any hour to get whatever services he required of his number one assistant.

A Pleasant Horizon

Unlike Raniere or the guards at Hazelton, the polite staff at Horizon House always knock and announce their presence before entering a bedroom or bathroom.

Each bedroom has bunk beds and lockers for personal storage, and Nancy will have her own personal locker to store her valuables.

She stored about $500,000 in cash in shoe boxes and other clever storage areas when she lived in Waterford.

The provision of a locker should be most helpful to the fastidious NXIVM teacher.

Changing Horizons

Horizon House has a rule for residents in common areas or their bedrooms: they must wear clothes in the common areas and not sleep naked in their beds.

Chase the Horizon: 

One of the significant concerns for any decent lady is whether the menfolk will treat her like a lady.

Horizon House is designed to be safe or safer than any place that houses two dozen or more men, including sex offenders, and three of four women. 

Some men have been in prison for years without female contact with women, and four women in one room in the house on the first floor might be a tantalizing feast for the imagination.

The men and women are not there for hanky-panky or to satisfy some lustful urges, but to transition from prison. 

Horizon has policies in place that work.

Frank Report knows of no incidents of sexual assault made in recent years.

The staff makes random tours and goes to areas outside the range of cameras whenever more than one resident is out of view.

But dignity is maintained. Horizon House does not do strip searches, including searches to determine one’s genital status. Technically, that means that residents could hide a very significant fact from the honest staff.

Horizon House also does not allow a male staff member to pat-down a female resident. And there are no female staff patting-down the men, though some have said they prefer it.

Pat-down search training was added for staff, including for transgender and intersex residents.

If there were a sexual assault, the Albany police department would handle the criminal investigation.

Horizon House also gives every resident a Sexual Assault Awareness brochure. Horizon House has a “Zero Tolerance” stance.

Nancy’s education regarding preventing sexual assault will begin even before she gets to Horizon through a handbook sent to her at Hazelton.

Horizons of Knowledge 

Once she gets here, Nancy will be educated about the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA)  during her admission meeting with the Intake Coordinator.

Within five days of her arrival, Nancy will meet with the Facility Program Director, Monique White, who will explain critical aspects of the Horizon House’s expectations.

Individuals with mental health histories, including sexual offenders and those who have been sexually victimized, are carefully scrutinized. But Nancy may be placed with transgender, intersex, or LGBTI persons since Horizon House does not separate housing rooms based on a person’s sexual identification.

The Sexual Assault Brochure, the Resident Handbook, and posters throughout the facility give directions on reporting Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment.

Horizon House does not use polygraph examination or any other truth-telling device if there is a reported incident.

You are trundled right off to the Albany PD.

Though there will be as many as eight men for every woman, which is the opposite of NXIVM, where eight women were on the scene for every man, Horizon will prohibit Nancy (of, for that matter, any inmate) from having consensual sex at the facility.

It says so in the Resident Handbook. So no one should be surprised that the staff monitors all potential relationships closely – their job is to keep inmates from falling in love and retreating into the bunk beds together.

Though there has been no rape reported at Horizon house, sadly, the staff have caught a few residents in flagrante. Though these joinings were consensual, the participants were kicked out of Horizon House.

It is unknown if they hooked up later after completing their prison sentence for their offense.