Alleged sex cult leader insists everything was consensual

Kevin Fasick and Laura Italiano
NY Post
April 13, 2018

He’s accused of having his stable of female “sex slaves” forcibly branded with a flesh-burning cauterizing gun — but on Friday, upstate cult leader Keith Raniere insisted through his lawyers that the gals all agreed to everything.

“We don’t think there is any non-consensual criminal conduct, and we think that will be amply proven at a trial,” Raniere’s high-power Manhattan lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, told reporters outside Brooklyn Federal Court.

Actress Catherine Oxenberg, whose daughter, India, remains enmeshed in the cult, blasted Raniere’s claims of consent outside of court.

“Ultimately, they’re all victims of Keith Raniere,” she told reporters of the members of his Albany-based “Nxivm” cult, pronounced “NEX-ium.”

Asked what she’d like to say to her daughter, she answered, “I love you. Come home.”

Raniere appeared disheveled in tan jail garb as a judge ordered him held without bail on sex trafficking and forced labor charges.

It was his first New York court appearance since he was busted in late March after a six-week manhunt.

He was found living in a $10,000-a-week Mexican villa with his few remaining followers, including actress Allison Mack, who starred as Clark Kent’s pal “Chloe Sullivan” in the Superman-prequel CW series, “Smallville.”

Mack is a high-ranking “slave” and recruiter, according to prosecutors, and is one of Raniere’s two unindicted co-conspirators.

Mack “is understood from numerous sources to be Raniere’s direct slave” and a primary recruiter of new harem members, the feds said in a March 26 search warrant filing.

She’d tell prospective harem members that they were merely joining a “women’s mentorship group,” prosecutors allege.

Prosecutors say Raniere’s cult held sway over its converts through humiliation, threats and violence, including the forcible branding with the Nxivm logo — a combination of Raniere and Mack’s initials.

In arguing successfully Friday that Raniere remain in custody, prosecutors noted he’s been financially supported by Clare Bronfman, an heiress to the Seagram’s liquor fortune.

“She has financed the defendant repeatedly over the years including providing him with millions of dollars and paying for private air travel costing up to approximately $65,000 a flight,” prosecutors said in a March 26 request that he not be freed, due to his easy access to cash and foreign travel.

“He has spent decades pretending to be a renunciate while scamming people out of money and living a secret life of luxury,” the request said.

“The extent of his brazenness is demonstrated by the fact that he identified his adherents as ‘slaves’ and had them branded with his initials,” the request said.

“He doesn’t have a moral compass,” Oxenberg seethed of Raniere outside court.

“He needs to be held accountable for every single woman and child that he’s ever harmed, abused, exploited, and my daughter is one of those,” she told reporters.

“So this is a very personal fight for me,” she said, calling federal prosecutors, “my heroes.”

Known as “The Vanguard” to his followers, Raniere is continuing to spend big.

His new lawyer, Agnifilo, is of-counsel to attorney Ben Brafman; the firm’s current millionaire criminal clients include pervy producer Harvey Weinstein and “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli.

He has also retained Albany-based attorney Paul DerOhannesian, a former prosecutor who has written a double-volume book about sexual assault law.

“No one has ever heard the rest of the story, and the other side of what’s happened,” DerOhannesian told reporters after court Friday.

“Marc and I believe strongly in his innocence and our ability to defend him in this case.”

Meanwhile, Mack, who remained behind at the villa, in Puerto Vallarta, is effectively running the organization, according to former cult spokesman Frank Parlato, now a vocal opponent of the cult.

And prosecutors believe Nxivm has continued to offer seminars since Raniere’s arrest, “though enrollment numbers have been down since the media reports,” according to one recently released document reported in the Times Union.

https://nypost.com/2018/04/13/alleged-sex-cult-leader-insists-everything-was-consensual/