Suneel: Debunking Glazer’s Claims of Tourette’s ‘Cure’ in Civil Lawsuit
By Suneel Chakravorty
In my opinion, I have debunked the nonsensical claim in the Glazer lawsuit about the ‘Human Fright Experiment’ and Jenn Kobelt’s claims.
By the way, I have to admit that even I enjoyed calling it by Frank Parlato’s despicable propaganda label, ‘Human Fright Experiment.’
But now, in conversation I can only bring myself to refer to it as the “Emotions Study,” which it accurately was. But if what I presented about the “Emotions Study” has even an iota of debatability, this next one really does not.
Next comes my debunking of Glazer’s claims about the Tourette’s Study as well as the use of the NXIVM “technology” in supposedly ameliorating symptoms of OCD.
Glazer mentions “Tourette’s” in his First Amended Complaint in many different points. Let’s look at the salient ones:
- Defendants claim NXIVM “cured” Tourette’s
- The Tourette’s Study was “unlawful”
- The Tourette’s Study was “traumatizing”
- Jane Doe 21 and 22 were “directed” and “told” to participate
- Tourette’s was a Bronfman “Propaganda” film
- Sara Bronfman had to do with The Ethical Science Foundation behind the Tourette’s Study
- Jane Doe 20, NXIVM and “OCD”
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Defendants claim NXIVM was a “cure”?
Glazer writes, “7. Defendants also claimed that NXIVM’s system or “tech” could cure medical conditions, including Tourette’s Syndrome and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. None of this was true.”
One thing I agree with Glazer is when he says: “None of this is true.” Yes, none of what Glazer said about the Tourette’s Study is true.
Yes, there was a NXIVM study of Tourette’s Syndrome. You can watch the documentary film about it here on YouTube.
There were 11 participants in the study. Five of them are in the film. All of them experienced marked reductions in their symptoms of Tourette’s, some within a matter of hours.
But nowhere do Nancy Salzman, Keith Raniere or anyone else organizing the study call it a “cure.” Look at the movie and try to find even one instance.
Furthermore, Marc Elliot and Raniere discuss the apparent results of this study in the Keith Raniere Conversations Youtube Channel. Here is a clip:
Here’s an excerpt of Raniere talking to Marc Elliot and, of course, you can listen to the whole thing.
RANIERE: “It’s pretty clear that your Tourette’s is gone and sleep studies and things like that would indicate that, you know, how of course the question is, how much do we participate in that… because there’s a percentage of people I think you said it’s fifty percent is a round figure, that where the Tourette’s subsides and goes away and maybe it was your time and that was, and that’s a very real real possibility… You’ve brought it [the results] to scientists where they say your results are too good… I see our results as promising. I see that in the worst case we have an interesting way of selecting people who are going to within a very short time period overcome their Tourette’s, whether it’s from us or not.”
Nowhere does Raniere claim the “tech” is a cure. He doesn’t even assert that the techniques of NXIVM are necessarily the cause of the change.
Glazer is overstepping on a bridge too far and might even fall into sh-t creek sans paddle.
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Tourette’s Study was “Unlawful”?
Glazer writes in his complaint that “Nancy Salzman, along with Raniere, also designed … unlawful (and severely traumatizing) medical experiments … including the “Tourette’s Study.”… all without voluntary informed consent or professional oversight.”
Really? Unlawful?
First off, it was a talk therapy study, not a medical experiment.
Let’s talk about “unlawful.” Glazer says it is unlawful. Who has decided that the Tourette’s study was unlawful? What adjudicating body? None whatsoever. He is making a conclusory allegation of law.
Everyone who participated in the study gave consent forms. The Ethical Science Foundation (ESF) was the one providing funding for the Tourette’s Study.
Below is the consent form for ESF that Carysa Long, one of the participants in the study who was featured in the film by name, signed:
Note that Glazer writes that Jane Doe 21, one of the Tourette’s study participants, “was instructed to participate in a sleep study at a local hospital in Buffalo, conducted under the Defendants’ direction.”
Instructed? They were offered the opportunity to be in the study and the sleep study was something they agreed to in their consent form.
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Tourette’s Study was “Traumatizing”?
Glazer writes that the Tourette’s study was “severely traumatizing.”
If Jane Doe 21 and Jane Doe 22, who appear on screen as Isabella Constantino and Carysa Long in the film, believe their claims of trauma and abuse, it is sad that they are ungrateful.
Before the carping critics descend on me for mentioning the women’s names, remember that they were in a film and signed release forms where they consented to the use of their name in the film in perpetuity. They were not forced or coerced. They did not adopt Jane Doe status in the film. They wanted to lose their tics and overcome their Tourette’s and that’s why they did it. And guess what? It worked. The participants experienced a dramatic reduction in their tics.
By the way, they did not pay a dime for this service. It was free.
This film was presented at film festivals around the world, and anyone who saw it or cares to learn, knows who they are. I’m not going to do kindergarten stuff with you people. Their names are known and public. They starred in a movie that showed they lost their Tourette’s.
Here are excerpts of Isabella and Carysa, before and after the NXIVM talk therapy, from the documentary:
If we look at the stories of Isabella and Carysa, they bear a characteristic resemblance to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
In the film My Tourette’s, we see them losing their Tourette’s and being grateful for it, whether it was NXIVM’s therapy or not that caused the change.
Then these two women meet the mercenary-minded prince of exaggeration Neil Glazer and are told that all they have to do is change their story from “I was helped by NXIVM” to “I was abused, hurt, manipulated, directed, put a ball-and-chain around my brain and made to do all kinds of unseemly things” and they’ll get money. All they have to do is say, “Bronfman$ made me do it.”
If I had Tourette’s and I got rid of it, I’d be like Marc Elliot and thank those who helped me, and certainly not try to sue them for money.
When Isabella left the talk therapy, this odious, horrible, repulsive, repugnant, manipulative, terrible experience, she no longer felt comfortable saying she had Tourette’s. She wasn’t ticking much at all anymore. For years, Isabella suffered from ticking. She couldn’t be in normal company. Her parents must have been deeply aggrieved by this. Her friends were cognizant of the fact that she ticked all the time. She had involuntary movements. Her words came out awkward and distorted. Then she ran into NXIVM and she had a dramatic decrease in her tics and OCD. It could have been a coincidence, or maybe, just maybe, like the other eleven, the therapy helped.
Sure, it’s possible that NXIVM had some uncanny ability to pick people who were severely affected by Tourette’s who were about to lose it anyway, but I would put money on the fact that this therapy helped, and it should not be lost to the world because of greedy attorneys.
Not only did Isabella feel she benefited at the time, she also publicly promoted the study and the film on Facebook. Here are some of her posts.
Here is one of them from October 7, 2017:
ISABELLA: “To all my friends and those of you out there reading this post – As many of you know, over the past couple of years I have been involved with a medical study that has helped me overcome my Tourette syndrome which I had struggled with for about 14 years. I have also been off meds for two years after taking meds every day for 10 years. This has been incredibly life changing for both myself and my family…”
How does Glazer think he can overcome this statement in front of a jury? It is nonsensical. You can’t rewrite history. This woman was relieved of Tourette’s. You can’t rewrite history just because NXIVM has been made into the bogey man.
Here are some others that you can read for yourself:
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The Medical Board Ruling Against Porter
Glazer includes the NYS Department of Health ruling against Brandon Porter. He writes that “On April 24, 2018, the State of New York Department of Health, State Board for Professional Medical Conduct filed a Statement of Charges against Porter and subsequently conducted a yearlong investigation of Porter’s work at NXIVM. The Board issued its findings in an opinion issued on August 16, 2019…. Porter performed human subject research on ten subjects diagnosed with Tourette’s Syndrome. Once again, he used EEG, GSR and a video recorder, this time to measure tic responses before and after EM sessions with Nancy Salzman. The claimed purpose of this exercise was to look for improvement after the EM session.”
In my opinion, the OPMC is a highly biased group that were likely told the desired conclusion and then to justify it. But that is just my opinion. All I know is that people had Tourette’s and then people lost their Tourette’s and instead of Porter being named as a man who helped these people overcome the symptoms of a painful syndrome, he was vilified, chastised, and stripped of his medical license.
But didn’t they lock Galileo up because he dared to say the world was round?
It seems savages will always be savages, and Glazers will always be mercenaries and they’ll say anything and harm anyone for money.
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“My Tourette’s”, a Propaganda Film, really?
Glazer includes a whole section entitled, “Clare Bronfman’s NXIVM Propaganda Film – “My Tourette’s.”
He writes, “Although the film was intended as pro-NXIVM propaganda, it was also utilized to advance Defendants’ interests in developing bogus cures for medical ailments.”
It is audacious, brazen, bizarre and, to quote one of the defendants in the lawsuit, “Glazer-esque” to call this a propaganda film. It extols a new paradigm: the possibility that people could lose their tics through a non-invasive method.
If that is propaganda, let us have more of this kind of propaganda. To call it Clare Bronfman’s propaganda is, to quote that same defendant, a clear “greed-grab for Bronfman money.”
Clare didn’t call it “Clare Bronfman’s My Tourette’s.” She is only mentioned in film credits as a producer. She produced the film, after all.
Was this film NXIVM propaganda? What’s the difference between propaganda and the promotion of something good? The difference is that it’s propaganda if you’re promoting something bad. It’s marketing if you’re promoting something good. This is not propaganda, because it is good and it is obvious that it’s good.
Why don’t you watch the film with an open mind?
You know what I think will happen at trial? They’re going to have Carysa and Isabella testify that they were manipulated. Then, they’re going to show this film.
Even Glazer, as audacious as he is, will not likely encourage them to fake having tics to their pre-study level, and the jury will see the way they were before in the film and the way they are on the witness stand and say, “These were helped, not hurt, by NXIVM.”
I do not believe they will withstand cross-examination, no matter how hard Glazer prompts them to rewrite the narrative.
I’ve talked with people with who knew all of the participants and here’s a quote from one of them: “They got a life, a home, a family back. Tears of joy were raining down their faces. People witnessed it in this community.”
These people asked for bread and Keith Raniere gave them, in a sense, the bread of life. He helped them out of the mercy in his heart, and the genius of his brain.
Now, I believe that Glazer, in his opportunistic greed, has persuaded these two women – and again I tell you to look at the difference in their before and after videos have – that they should repay Raniere in stones.
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And Now, For Some Glazer “Word Salad”
I’m going to introduce you to perhaps the most obtuse, insane, contradictory, self-defeating, whatever the legal equivalent term is for word salad.
Here is: “But for their reliance on Defendants’ intentionally false misrepresentations that the “tech” was based in sound science, empirically proved, Plaintiffs would not have agreed to increasingly immerse themselves in Defendants’ system. But for Defendants’ elaborate ruse by which they convinced students that they suffered from non- existent maladies and disorders caused by psychic “disintegrations,” which students were told also were root causes of, exacerbating or impeding the healing of ailments students did recognize (including Tourette’s Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and even cancer), and that Defendants’ Rational Inquiry “tech” was the only way to wholeness and wellness.”
I defy you and go back and re-read that paragraph. If you can make heads or tails or a sense of it, I will proclaim you as one of the top three bullshit detectors in the world, with a bullshit detection rarity of 1 in 425 million or thereabouts.
In fact, I sincerely believe that if anybody could make sense of it, if they didn’t have Tourette’s, they would get Tourette’s by the time they figured out what he was talking about it. It is nonsense.
On behalf of Glazer, I am submitting his paragraph to the Bulwer Lyton Contest and I’m confident I’ll win.
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A Dash of Bronfmani$ation™
No Glazer donut is complete without some Bronfmani$ation™.
Glazer writes, “Raniere assumed a duty of care to Jane Doe 20, Jane Doe 21 and Jane Doe 22 when he directed Porter and Nancy Salzman to use ESP curriculum and EMs to treat Jane Doe 20, 21 and 22’s OCD and Tourette’s Syndrome, and directed Clare Bronfman and Sara Bronfman to fund ESF and finance the treatment.”
Here are the facts:
- In 2007, as a result of civil litigation, Sara and Clare Bronfman took control of a charitable entity called The Ethical Foundation (TEF).
- Shortly thereafter, Clare took control of TEF and renamed it The Ethical Science Foundation.
- At the same time, Sara created her own foundation called The Ethical Humanitarian Foundation.
- Thereafter, Sara Bronfman had no knowledge or involvement with The Ethical Science Foundation, nor did she provide funding, a fact that Neil Glazer almost certainly knows and is definitely known by some of the plaintiffs in this case.
All one needs to do is look at the freely available public 990 form tax statements from The Ethical Science Foundation and The Ethical Humanitarian Foundation.
These show Sara’s complete lack of involvement and funding of ESF.
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Debunking the OCD Claim
Glazer writes, “Defendant Nancy Salzman was aware that Jane Doe 20 suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (“OCD”) and told her that Defendants’ system could cure her OCD, and that if Raniere approved, she would be eligible for this treatment, administered by Nancy Salzman and Porter. Raniere subsequently approved this treatment… As a result of Defendants’ scheme, criminal acts, and misrepresentations and omissions, Jane Doe 20 was emotionally and financially harmed.”
There is one woman whose public endorsement of the NXIVM tools rebuts Jane Doe 20’s claims, and that is Margot Levitan.
Let’s see what Margot, someone who was in the same study as Jane Doe 20, said about her experience with ESP/NXIVM.
On September 13, 2016, Margot announces to Facebook: “Hi all in fb land. I’ve had a few people message me asking if I’m ok after choosing to stay in Albs & not return to Van in the meantime. I’m currently working on my OCD/anxiety & growing up a bit. I will be posting a video soon :). Thanks for the love :). [kissing emoji]”
Then on October 20, 2016, about a month later, Margot writes, “This picture encapsulates how I am feeling. Whether in Albs or North Vancouver I am different. I feel so calm & able to see how some of the previous patterns I had are gone. Coming back to find my room cluttered & chaotic & remembering how I was before I left Vancouver. So scattered, so anxious, so unsure & my surroundings are an example of this. It feels so good to not feel overwhelmed or like I need to jump from thing to thing. I can organize my life now & focus on what I want.”
Another FB post from Levitan.
It sounds to me like her work in Albany with NXIVM helped her with some of her OCD patterns.
Then on November 23, 2016, this former sufferer of OCD writes in support of ESP/NXIVM: “My favourite part of ESP! When my fears fall away & I don’t know how they left. See ya later: dogs, peanuts, packing, getting lost, being physically close to men, Mexican food, asking directly for things, being with people & not talking :)”
I don’t know what Jane Doe 20’s experience was like, but if it was anything like that of Margot’s, Glazer will have a tough time convincing the jury that a woman helped is a woman hurt.
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Conclusion
So, as you can see, the claims about Tourette’s or that NXIVM was said to have “cured” Tourette’s by attorney exaggerator extraordinaire Neil Glazer are utterly, completely, thoroughly, and most sincerely, the donut hole and not the donut at all.
Suneel. You didn’t take brevity classes did you? And, you’re going to drag yourself into the civil lawsuit. Who is going to fund your attorneys?