In episode 4 we learned Catherine Oxenberg’s daughter India was a member of DOS. “Jane Doe” told us of her experience being in the secret group. Keith began setting his trap for Allison Mack.
Albany, New York 2007
We open with Mark Vicente filming Nxivm’s “Legal Liaison” Kristin Keeffe. She is saying Nxivm is a wonderful idealistic movement so for critics to come after them is destructive and heinous. Kristin is determined to go after the people she feels have gone after Keith. She wants people to know, “Don’t fuck with those NXIVM people.” She boasts that NXIVM attorneys are saying, “Man, you guys will scorch the Earth.” She’s a bit gleeful for someone in “a wonderful idealistic movement,” but what do I know. Intro.
Vancouver 2017
Sarah got a call from the financial crimes unit of the Vancouver police. Nxivm is trying to get Sarah arrested on charges of fraud, mischief and theft. She knew it was coming.
Sarah calls a man named Jim who is still in ESP. He is one of the leaders of SOP and Sarah considered him a friend. She tells him she feels ostracized and so alone. She asks him what the word is on his side of the fence (so to speak). Jim tells her from his perspective “when you make a promise to do something, you do it. I had heard you had broken a promise.” Now he doesn’t know if he can trust her. Sarah tries to explain that promise or no, holding on to someone’s “collateral” when they want it back is blackmail. The illegality is with the people of Nxivm, not anything she has done. But Jim can’t hear it. A promise is a promise and is everything in Nxivm land. Anything she says falls on deaf ears.
We cut to Nippy who tells us he’s not angry at Jim and his other friends that are still in. He gets it. But he is struggling to come to terms with losing these friends who are no longer a part of his life. Nippy tells us Jim was as close as a brother. He gets choked up talking about how much Jim had helped him grow as a person through his compassion and honesty. Jim sounds like a good guy. Problem is, he’s a true believer who thinks Keith is the one with all that goodness.
Los Angeles 2017
The legal dogs have been released Mark has been told. We cut to him talking on the phone with Kristin Keeffe. Mark tells us in voice over about Kristin. She was Nxivm’s legal liaison, working with all of the lawyers on all of the many lawsuits Nxivm filed against people. She was “very close to Keith” but then she suddenly disappeared. Mark found out later she ran away from the group after she had a baby with Keith.
We then cut to footage of a weird scene (year unknown) between Kristin and Keith at the house they shared in Albany. Keith is just rambling as he always does. Watching this you just want to tape his mouth shut. While he goes on and on, Kristin is typing on her computer. “I’m trying to read? Can you stop?” she asks him nicely, but with a little edge of irritation. “I can stop,” says Keith, through a clenched smile. He touches her arm so she will look at him (but she doesn’t, lol) and says, “and you know what else? I will stop… sorta.” He is just seething. It’s pretty funny.
“I had been pretending everything was fine but he was starting to catch on,” Kristin tells Mark in present day. So she ran. But once she hears through the grapevine someone else has left Nxivm, she likes to contact them. Through a burner phone though, because one thing she had to do was basically go off the grid for her own protection.
Mark tells us Kristin wants to help and has her call Sarah who wants to know how she can prevent being dragged through the courts. Kristin informs her Clare has hundreds of millions of dollars at her disposal. Nxivm has deep pockets.
Clare Bronfman
She is the financier of Nxivm. Now she is in prison, but at the time of filming she was not yet arrested. Thanks to an enormous fortune she (and her sister Sara) inherited from their father, they paid for the legal team Keith used as a weapon against people he felt had betrayed him. Or against critics that saw Keith for what he is. I can’t stand the Bronfman sisters. Very unlikable women. I don’t know why, beyond the obvious working for the wrong side aspect. I feel as though I would find them unlikable, regardless. Anyway, through the years Mark watched Clare climb the ranks and become more powerful within the organization.
Kristin recommends Sarah, Catherine and everyone else call victim services of law enforcement and let them know about the kind of shit that has been going down. Especially with a focus on DOS. They do, but unfortunately law enforcement isn’t sure what the crimes are, even though investigators agree it’s fucked up. Mark thinks the next step is to get the press involved.
Mark contacts the New York Times and is put in touch with journalist Barry Meier. Mark tells Barry they need a reputable news source to write about Nxivm. Mark also directs him to other publications that have already written about the organization through the years. Like Forbes magazine, that published an article about Keith in 2003.
We hear an old recorded conversation between Mark and Keith where Mark expresses concern about the bad stuff about Keith in the press. Of course Keith manages to flip it. Instead of anyone being wise to steer clear because of his bad reputation, Keith says people who would do so lack critical thinking skills and are weak. After all, captains of industry and adult children of first families are in Nxivm.
In 2007, Mark was tasked with making a film that would exonerate Keith and restore his reputation. So, he, Kristin Keeffe and some other people started making this pro-Keith/anti-cult film.
We see footage where Kristin says she can’t let Keith and Nancy “go down in history as schmucks,” which makes me laugh. Kristin thinks they are intellectual and humanitarian giants. She is determined to “make justice happen” for Keith. Justice replies, “Oh, it will. Don’t worry.”
Mark tells us everyone worked on this film for years, but the bad press was relentless. Everyone ran out of strategies to deal with it so, the film never got finished.
Edgar, Clare (again) and Sara Bronfman
In Keith’s view, his bad press was the result of journalists being funded by corrupt rich people. Rich people like Edgar Bronfman, multi-billionaire father of Clare and Sara. Keith thought Edgar was corrupt, of course, because Edgar didn’t like him. Edgar was interviewed for the Forbes article linked above and went on record saying he thought Nxivm was a cult. Keith believes it was Edgar’s money that got the article to be written in the first place.
Forbes would have been interested in Nxivm, because Edgar’s daughters were involved in Nxivm and Forbes will always care about what’s going on with billionaires and their inheritors. I’m sure Edgar pulled some strings to get the article going, but it would have been of interest regardless.
An interesting detail is that in 2010, seven years after the Forbes article was originally published, Vanity Fair wrote an article about the Bronfman sisters’ involvement with Nxivm, too. By then they—or rather Keith—had blown through 150 million dollars of their inheritance money.
We get a audio blurb about how the wretched sisters got involved with Nxivm and how it changed their lives. Both women claim they became more successful and happier as a result of the ESP tech.
Keith said people like Edgar Bronfman found him threatening, because his parental influence was diminished. Well, that and because Keith was running a cult, perhaps. The Forbes article was the beginning of Keith’s bad press, I believe. Keith considered it Clare’s fault, because the article came out after some argument she had had with her father about ESP and Keith. That was her “breach.” So she had (has) a responsibility to fix it. I read or heard somewhere, I can’t recall where, possibly from another Nxivm documentary, Clare harassed her father, as he lay on his deathbed, to repudiate the things he had said about Keith in the Forbes article.
We cut to Catherine who is on her way to pick up her mother, Elizabeth, from the airport. She tells us in voice over she struggled with the idea of going to the press, but she understands the impact this article could have. She talks about the affect this cult has on people and how it separates family members from each other, sometimes for good.
Driving home, Catherine tells her mother she is worried India will be stigmatized once her involvement in NXIVM comes out in the press. That might create a schism between them. Elizabeth disagrees. This is about a mother who loves her daughter. Elizabeth, by the way, is kind of fabulous. Stylish.
Albany 2009
Ugh, the Bronfman sisters again. We hear a radio interview from 2009 with Sara. She is talking up Keith and how much ESP has changed her life. She is also spreading the word the Dalai Lama is coming to Albany to meet Keith. Nxivm is a goal setting program, Sara explains. So, she set a goal to meet the Dalai Lama and she worked to make it happen. Meaning, she greased the right palms.
Mark Vicente tells us in present day the whole point was for the Dalai Lama to vindicate Keith. But, the event got cancelled. Precisely because of Keith’s shitty reputation. Sara, Keith, Nancy and Mark flew to Dharamsala, India to convince the Dalai Lama to change his mind and to please come.
We see footage of the meeting, because Mark filmed it. His Holiness tells Keith his organization is controversial. There is more, but mostly, this is an awkward uncomfortable meeting where every one denies what is being said about Keith.
At the conclusion of the meeting, it looks like Keith and company have made some headway in changing the Dalai Lama’s mind about whether the bad press was deserved. After the meeting, Keith says to Sara and Nancy he wishes he could “apply [his] skill” in regards to the situation between China and Tibet, “but [His Holiness] doesn’t want that right now.” Aw, that Keith. So humble and ready to share his gifts. He then says that His Holiness didn’t like his hair. Combing it might have helped, Keith.
Mark tells us the bad press just kept on coming. Including accusations in a 2012 Times Union article Keith had been involved with underage girls. Mark admits he found the article disturbing. He was still a “fervent believer,” but he did have a talk with Keith because of this. “He had answers for everything,” Mark says.
Cut to Mark talking on the phone again with Barry Meier of the NYT. Barry has been doing some investigating and says even if only half of what he has read is true about Keith and Nxivm, it’s shocking. Mark warns him about the litigation machine Keith has and says he wants to remain anonymous.
Phone call between Kristin, Sarah, Nippy and Mark. Mark says Barry needs as many people going on the record as possible. Sarah’s terrified of her collateral being released. Nippy says that he doesn’t want any of this to be the backdrop of his son’s childhood.
We cut to Sarah talking to Kristin on the phone. Sounding fed up and tired, she asks Kristin if Lauren had sex with Keith. “Omigod, yes!” says Kristin, “Lauren’s been with Keith for seventeen, eighteen years.” Sarah is shocked. Kristin goes on to say that’s why Lauren has never had a boyfriend. And for many years Keith promised he would have a baby with her. “Look at what’s going on with these women,” says Kristin.
Kristin pressures Sarah to go public and she makes a good point. Sarah has evidence literally on her body. Or “Class one data” as Nxivm would call it, Sarah tells us. She and Nippy decide they will go public as they think it’s the right thing to do.
We see Mark and Bonnie being photographed by a NYT photographer as Mark tells us in voice over Barry told him he needed Mark to go public, too. People not going on the record is why this shit keeps happening, Barry told him. Mark says, “I was like, Fuck you. That’s so true,” which makes me laugh. Both Bonnie and Mark felt like they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they didn’t.
Since people are coming forward the EXSPians are hearing more stories about shit that went on that they weren’t aware of. Sex stuff filmed for Keith’s pleasure, paddlings by Keith, assignments to seduce Keith… Catherine now knows that India has been both slave and master. She thinks she won’t be able to get India out until the whole organization is brought down. She’s really depending on the NYT article to do that, but the date of its publication is unknown.
Catherine then hears the bad news the story won’t be released any time soon. She is desperate and has no idea what she can do. “Somebody tell us–give us an option,” she says.
We cut to an interview with Barry by the filmmakers. He expresses compassion for the ex-members he talked to and believes we are all vulnerable to being victims of a con. We all have intense vulnerability as human beings and vulnerability is exploitable. He also says the greatest fear people had about coming forward with their stories was fear of retaliation.
Barry wrote a really interesting article about all things Nxivm after the release of both this doc series and Seduced. It is not a long read, but a good one:
“For instance, Vicente and Edmondson insisted during our first talks that Nxivm wasn’t a cult but a self-improvement group that had somehow gone off the rails. And Vicente, a filmmaker who shot much of the footage chronicling Raniere’s reign that animates “The Vow,” told me that he still wanted to promote a movie he had made that glorified Raniere’s activities in Mexico. I told him I thought he was nuts.”
To me that speaks to how much Sarah and Mark were still struggling to reconcile the reality of what Nxivm really was with whatever positive experiences they had within the organization.
We end the episode with Barry making reference to “this other group of women” who had left Nxivm and had been harassed into the ground with lawsuits from Keith. One of the women is Barbra Bouchey who closes us out. She tells us she was the first “signifiant person in the entire organization to ever leave.” Keith really went after her to make an example out of her to the community. “Buckle your seat belt and get ready. Cause they’re comin’ for you,” she drama-queens. End.
The outro song, once again, doesn’t really fit the mood of the ending even if the lyrics work, “You Better Be Careful” by the Golliwogs.
Next recap: Episode 6, “Honesty & Disclosure” – The NYT article is published and Sarah makes the front page. We hear Barbra Bouchey’s story of her 9 years in Nxivm.
Recapulet 
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