The Vow: Season 1, Episode 8 “The Wound”

Last episode we met Toni Natalie and Catherine compiled the evidence for the A.G. of Albany.

We open with video footage of Keith as a toddler. We hear him tell a story of a little boy who, while on a playground, was hit by a little girl with a bucket. When the boy tried to hit her back, he was punished. It probably really happened and Keith has been seething about it ever since.

We then see from footage Keith is telling this story at a Society of Protectors forum. He continues that it’s normally the dad or a brother who holds the little boy back from retaliating against the little girl on the playground. “And that first time that happens to us, it is injust [sic].”

He continues. Because little kids don’t have the capacity for reason at such a young age, a situation like that leaves what he calls “a wound.” For women, the wound is different. Ugh, here we go. Do tell, Professor Projection. For women, Keith says, our wound comes from being protected and put in a glass box. But then we women grow up and come up against the reality of no longer being so sheltered and it’s a shock. “The wound is she has been overprotected.” Oh, exactly, Keith. lol For men their wound is very direct. And for their whole lives, they have been living with the sadness, the hurt, the ache of having to live being treated unfairly. Keith feels it is very necessary to come to grips with this “wound”, because if not, it can be “the foundation” of anger and hate towards women. I’m not buying this at all, but okay. Intro.

We open with Catherine leaving the A.G. She’s relieved and happy as she calls Frank and tells him it looks like the FBI will be investigating. The focus will be on DOS and they want to speak to witnesses right away.

We cut to footage of Keith at his house in Albany talking about brainwashing. People who fear that sort of thing happening in his program shouldn’t join. Pam (ironically) nods when Keith says people that worry about things like that would be better off with a therapist or something. If someone has a heart attack while in a Walmart do they blame Walmart for the heart attack? How is that related to something deliberate like brain washing and coercion? It’s not, but Keith thinks he’s slick. He has an answer for everything. Their house is a fucking pigsty by the way.

We cut to Bonnie going through her computer files to gather evidence for the FBI. She says the more she looks over everything the more she realizes Keith’s programs were not a tool for growth, but a weapon.

We hear Keith in voice over as we see footage of him taking a walk. The camera films him front on as he strolls along, tossing his hair. We hear him say he sees himself more as a scientist, though he admits, “I don’t have a lot of high level credentials.” Try none. Keith has no high level credentials. He thinks of himself as “a good scientific thinker. I’m an interesting person. I’m a controversial person. But most importantly, I’m an unconventional person.”

Jness

“This is all a big experiment that we’re doing,”says Nancy in some footage from a Jness forum. Jness was the woman’s group that Keith started, Bonnie tells us. We cut to footage of Keith leading the enrollment meeting for the group. Pam—looking very ill as she had cancer by this time—and Allison listen intently as Keith says he is running this forum when he has no idea what it’s like to be a woman. He asks if someone is willing to step up and take the lead? Or do they all just want to hang back?

I hate him, but I can’t deny in this clip he has an energy that is effective. It’s not over the top in that fresh-out-of-managerial school way that seems forced. He is just very comfortable being in front of a group and playing the role of someone who is leading by example. The vibe he gives off is, “I work hard. Are you willing to?” I’m not saying he is actually doing anything, but he acts the part of the hardworking leader well. Anyway, Allison blathers on about how women do best when they work together blah blah blah.

In voice over, Bonnie tells us Allison became the defacto leader for Jness which is why she never became too involved with the group. Bonnie didn’t like Allison that much. She felt pretty alone in that, because Allison was popular within Nxivm and had a pretty devoted fan club of women. We see plenty of clips of Allison where we can see what Bonnie is saying is true. Allison seems to be quite adored. Bonnie really didn’t like it when Allison would tell the younger women to count calories and lose weight. It seemed Allison was getting rewarded and promoted within the company which confused Bonnie. Keith offered to run a mediation for the two women to ease tension.

We hear recorded conversation from the meeting. Keith asks Bonnie why Allison would need to “armor up with a fan club.” Bonnie goes straight in. “Probably a fear of being nothing? Or a fear of like, just something scary in there.” “My turn,” Allison quickly says. “I feel like Bonnie doesn’t like me. I feel like she’s never liked me,” she says on the edge of tears. “So, there’s this inner war of wanting to be loved and accepted and embraced by her, but then also feeling like… competition, competition, competition.” Yeah, Bonnie strikes me as the kind of person who doesn’t really hide it if she doesn’t like you. Nothing overt or mean, but you’d know.

We continue to hear the recorded conversation, which seems to have become focused on Allison sharing her feelings of inadequacy when she compares herself to Bonnie and other women. As we listen to the audio, we cut to footage of Allison walking in the woods with tears streaming down her face. What was the purpose of recording this footage? Why is she crying? I don’t know. She’s an actress. They can be very raw. In present day, Bonnie tells us women like Allison, were using Jness as a way to recruit more women to join DOS.

We cut to Mark and Bonnie organizing the stuff they want to bring to the FBI. Mark wants the investigators to understand DOS is a reflection of a pattern within Nxivm. We see various cuts of footage where Keith says what Mark describes as “pretty shocking stuff.” His misogyny was always right out in the open, but it was dismissed as Keith being “experimental.”

In one shot Keith and a small group of women are gathered around a table. He is asked how do men and women determine their allies? Keith answers this question by going on a rant about women in general. Women are not allies, Keith tells them. “It’s like thinking a child is your ally,” he says. Women are “inherently” lacking in intelligence, reliability, trustworthiness and loyalty. The women listen intently and take notes.

The way he speaks when he says stuff like this is important. The tone of voice is calm and matter-of-fact. Like, “Hey, that’s just how it is, ladies. Nothing personal.” I’ve watched this scene many times now and it didn’t even occur to me that not once did he say anything positive about how men feel about women or relate to them. He can, with such a casual air, take people down these spirals of negativity and act like he’s doing them a favor.

Mark goes on to explain what they were trying to accomplish in Jness, but I am too lazy to understand it really. Women were being “pushed” to have something something. Anyway, many women in the group did feel their lives were better for having the support of this women’s group. Mark said he started to wish that men had something similar within Nxivm.

SOP

Keith came up with the “Society for Protectors” or SOP. In an intro SOP video, Keith explains the role of men in society. We hold the doors, we carry the bags, he says. Don’t lie, Keith. You haven’t carried a bag for a woman in your life. And we all hold doors. Well, Keith probably doesn’t. He goes on. Men are the ones who go to war and are taught to leave the ship last. “We are the doers. The providers. We’re the protectors.” You can always hear the undertone of resentment when he talks about what men are “taught.” “Unfortunately,” Keith says, “the world is getting more and more comfortable.” As a result men are “literally just boys in adult male bodies.” SOP are the ones that can rise to the occasion and stand for something important.

SOP Founders Weekend, 2012.

Applause for Keith as he appears before the group. Keith says masculinity, power and aggression are not bad things. In fact, “they are some of the wonderful benefits of being in a male body.” Keith says men can subjugate emotions and comfort to serve a purpose.

We then cut to Mark who tells us “readiness drills” were designed by Keith as a means to train the men. But these same concepts of readiness drills, subjugating comfort and emotions to serve a higher purpose were later used in DOS. We see footage where Keith says “Some day that call’s gonna come at 4:00 in the morning and are you ready?” I’m sure Keith will tell them what the hell they need to be ready for. Any day now.

We cut to a “SOP drill” early in the morning of a very cold day. Everybody is going to go running. This is the part of ESPian culture that makes me laugh. It just seems like everybody just wanted to believe they were elite. Or at least the North American pop culture take on what that was. Morning runs, low body fat and navel gazing. I’m teasing, but that’s how it comes across to me sometimes.

We cut back to Keith who says “the only way you know you have character is when every fiber of your body, you’re screaming from pain, and yet you stay. Our commitment is our power.” Mark tells us there were punishments and penances if you fucked up. An example is planking for three minutes or something like that. It was about a code of conduct. SOP was designed to protect the world from evil. “But everything was designed to protect him,” Mark tells us.

We then cut to a forum where Keith talks about the male sex drive. You can guess what he has to say about that. “The primitive parts of us are hungry, fuckie beasties.” I’m irked already. “I wanna fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.” He just goes on and on in this vein. The best experience for men, Keith says, is when a man can do “whatever he wants and a woman likes it. That’s acceptance.” Mark found this kind of sex focused talk shallow and wondered when they could get to the deeper stuff. Keith told him it was necessary to clear out the “base issues” that get repressed before they could get to the “higher aspirations.”

Here’s the setup: “When the curriculum angers you, it means that there is a fear underneath,” Keith says in voice over. What a simple and effective way to absolve himself from criticism and accountability. Any issues you have with what he teaches is merely indicative of a problem you need to work on.

We cut to Vancouver. Sarah is playing with her son who says he wants to be a dinosaur. Sarah tells him she’s his dinosaur Mommy, but it’s “Mummy,” because Sarah is Canadian. A sweet scene. A nice break from Keith’s crap.

Sarah is packing for Nippy and herself. Nippy is headed to LA to visit with Mark and Sarah is headed to New York to talk with the FBI. She tells us she is nervous. “It’s like looking back on an old relationship and reliving every painful component of it.”

Sarah is going to submit her phone calls with Lauren. We hear a recorded conversation between them. Sarah tells Lauren she has to focus on fixing her marriage. Lauren says DOS wasn’t about Nippy; Sarah was trying to gain something for herself. Lauren points out that their marriage is having a bit of a rough patch. DOS was for Sarah to “build some self-esteem.”

Sarah tells us she has nude photos of someone in her computer and she wonders if she should hand them in to the FBI as evidence? She reads a blurb from an email from Lauren where it’s filled with the sexist trope about how women can “get out of anything” if they want to, because we always have “wiggle room.” Lauren goes on to say women are weak princesses who have no character. It’s horrible to hear this stuff. Over and over the women were being taught to have contempt for themselves.

Jness Tracks: Co-ed Jness

It was around 2012, Sarah tells us, when Jness opened up to include men in the group. It was pitched as an opportunity for men and women to understand each other better and to figure out why they don’t get along. In voice over, Keith starts talking about the Stanford prison experiment. The roles the students played as prisoners and guards were mutually reinforcing and after six days the experiment had to be stopped because it became so abusive. Keith says it serves as a metaphor for the way men and women relate to each other. I mean, from your perspective Keith. For people with souls, not so much.

Nippy explains the goal was to talk about the dysfunctional behaviors of both sexes so that as a group they could move beyond that to a healthier way of relating to each other. But this is Keith so everything is reduced to the most basic ugly stereotypes. Women can’t control their emotions; they do what they “feel” versus rather than what is right. And men are brutish machines.

In one clip, Keith asks the audience if it’s okay if he says things that are “inflammatory.” “I have to get in the right frame of mind for this,” Keith says, as he makes a big show of it. Because nothing he is going to say is actually indicative of Keith’s mindset. Oh, no. Never. “Do you understand why we hate you? Do you understand why your obnoxious [sic] bothers? Why all your little whining and complaining… and all this garbage you do… and it’s just all a bunch of crap. Male perspective.” Uh-huh. Keith says he’s not saying all of that is true, it’s just what men think is true. He continues, “You’re outrageously entitled, you’re spoiled, and no, you don’t earn shit. Do you get it? So, when you go and put on those tears, there is a part of us that absolutely. Hates. You.”

Omigod, he just goes on and on. Women are to blame for all of men’s miseries and are adult babies thwarting men at every turn. The tone of voice he uses is not an angry one. That is what Keith is really good at. Keeping up this bullshit gentle non-threatening facade while so much of what he preaches is just vile. Keith goes on, talking about when men are little boys, just wanting mommy’s love and this and that. If men take women’s power away and hold them as prisoners women hold men as prisoners too, using sex as a way to control them.

Sarah tells us the women in the group honestly thought these lectures were a way to become more aware of the things women do that weren’t constructive. We cut to Bonnie who says the further everyone went into the curriculum the more misogynistic it got all in the name of empowerment. In voice over we hear Allison say to Keith that after visiting Syria she realized how fortunate North Americans are they can talk as openly as they do about things. Keith has an opinion about that, too, of course. “In North America, we’re providing even more of a princess fantasy. But, we still want to fuck you the same way,” he says with a nasty undertone. Allison thanks all the men “for being so honest.”

We hear a recorded lecture where Keith calls Sarah a cock tease for “smiling too much.” When he says things like this he asks the men in the audience if he is right and from the sound of it, there tends to be at least some agreement. Affirmed by the men in the group, Keith says to Sarah, “I’m just pointing it out.” Sarah tells us because good intent was assumed from Keith, stuff like this was taken as an opportunity for growth.

We cut to Allison talking about her many many years being wracked with insecurity and confusion covered up with ego and pride. Now she feels so much more hopeful. Sarah tells us Allison put her career on hold to move to Albany. Keith was going to help her grow as a person. Initially she came across as confident when she joined Nxivm, because her many years of being a successful actress made her feel self-assured. But Keith made it a point to “break” anyone he saw as having too much pride or arrogance.

We then see footage of Allison paying tribute to Keith at V-week. In voice over, Keith describes pride as a cover up “for an inner deficiency of lovability.” Say what now? He goes on to say a prideful person believes that of themselves even if it’s not true. That makes more sense. It’s not terribly insightful though. Who doesn’t know that pride can be a cover up for insecurity? Sarah tells us once Keith “broke” a person they became much “more susceptible to being molded.” No doubt. Poor Allison. She just opened her brain and invited Keith right in.

Ugh. We see a video of Keith and Allison talking. Keith is telling her love comes from sacrifice and pain. Sure, love can be joyful and happy, Keith says, “but we know it through our pain. And if you have a fear of pain, you have a fear of knowing your own love.” Sarah says Allison went “straight in and never came back.”

We cut to Mark, Bonnie and Catherine meeting in an underground garage to update each other. One of the filmmakers jokes they are like Woodward and Bernstein. “We’re deep-throating it,” jokes Catherine. She is a bit black humored. I like it. Catherine informs them she really thinks Allison is going to be arrested for sex trafficking.

Sarah is flying out to New York to talk to the FBI. She feels as a once high ranking member of Nxivm, as well as a member of DOS, she has a unique insight to how things were run. Sarah says she sees Lauren as a victim of Keith, but also someone who has done awful things.

Nippy is driving to the airport, heading out to meet Mark in LA. He says he failed to call out Keith for his shit. He got played. Nippy feels complicit. Once in LA, he and Mark go for a walk where they talk about SOP. Mark says at the time it made him feel purposeful. Nippy says he feels embarrassed he was a part of it. Mark says Keith used their reputations to shore himself up. In reality, he’s got nothing. “He was a judo champion at age 11,” Nippy says derisively. “I bought it though,” says Mark. He sums up Keith’s talents, “He can roll around on the floor pretending to do Judo. And he can hit a volleyball. And he can head-fuck you.” Yep. That’s pretty much it.

We cut to footage of Keith in a Jness Lesson Planning meeting. He is saying “abuse is a made-up human construct… the screaming of abuse is abuse in itself.” It only counts as abuse if Keith is the one being screamed at, I’m sure. The “notion of victim” must be gotten rid of, Keith says, though he acknowledges “there are things that are terribly wrongful.” I fucking hate that he always says wrongful instead of just saying wrong. He is so irritating. Wrongful is more wishy-washy than wrong. It’s the diet version. Wrongesque. There’s really nothing that is actually wrong in Keith’s world. Not really. Because according to him, only the individual decides if they are a victim. It’s their choice.

SOP Complete

Mark tells us Keith decided to open up SOP to women. This group would be called SOP Complete. The purpose was for women to know what it was like for little boys growing up. So, Jness Tracks was for women to understand how they piss men off. Now, SOP Complete was for women to understand even more from the male perspective. Awesome. We see video of Keith asking the women in the group “how bad they want [SOP Complete] to be.” They hoot and holler and say they want it “rough.” Bonnie says the women knew it was going to be a “rough run,” but they all thought it would ultimately be something helpful to understand men more.

We see video footage of women being instructed by Mark to do a wall sit. Those do suck. Sarah tells us Keith told them men get their pride broken playing sports whereas women don’t experience that which makes them prideful and princessy. Keith has never heard of women’s gymnastics, basketball, soccer and all the other sports for women, apparently. The women were agreeing to submit to the men being in charge. “Not unlike the Stanford Prison Experiment,” says Sarah, “Let’s put people in these roles and see where it will go.”

In footage we see Keith tell the group when men look at women they see a bunch of little kindergartners. Then for some odd reason, he has a woman come up and stand next to him. He abruptly yells in her face. When she doesn’t flinch—you can tell he’s thrown off—he quickly says, “She’s pretty good!” He has her do the same to him and then mocks her for not being scary enough. It’s just pointless and idiotic.

We watch footage of women in a SOP forum having to do various physical exercises as we hear Sarah say in voice over that the women in the group didn’t want to be princessy; they wanted to be strong and disciplined.

Keith lectures when boys are little if they are small they get picked on. If they tell, they get picked on even more. Aha, here is the root of all of Keith’s pathology! We cut back to a SOP meeting where a man says, “So remember, this is to help.” Bonnie tells us the men were allowed to dole out punishment for basically anything at all. We see footage of one man asking some other guys if it’s okay to “fault” a woman if she calls him out for something. “Yes,” replies one man, “she shouldn’t be making you feel bad.” They crack up.

In more footage we see the women are referred to by the numbers they are wearing on their shirts instead of their names. “Fault number 47 and 41 for negging me,” says one man. It becomes obvious the meetings are becoming increasingly abusive. Much like, as Sarah said, the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Keith says women have to learn to yield like men always do. “Little boys have to yield to adults and to women and to all little girls,” he says. Keith is such a bitter bitch. I love that women are separate from adults in Keith’s mind. He’s consistent at least. We see more footage of the men in the SOP meetings faulting the women left and right for stupid things. It’s relentless. Bonnie says while some men really got off on the power trip, for others, it was very uncomfortable and hard for them.

Mark tells us he can argue he wasn’t one of the assholes, but he showed up for the groups anyway. He says he talked to Keith about it. We hear a recorded phone call where Mark tells Keith some of the women and men are feeling bad and a bit sad. Keith scolds him (including any of the other men who feel bad, too) for not doing what is required to help people. Keith tells Mark it’s weak and immature they aren’t willing to do what is being asked of them.

Mark explains one of the ways Keith was able to get his followers to participate in these experiments was by acting as if he didn’t want things to go wrong. He would tell them to not get lost in their roles, but then he would insist they play the roles to the hilt. He used the Stanford Prison Experiment as one example of what could go wrong and what not to do, but then he would have the same set up. Sarah thinks in situations like SOP Complete, it was a chance for Keith to see just how much power he had over people and who he could manipulate.

We see Keith tell the women that Level 10 of a SOP Complete forum would be something they couldn’t handle. For example, he says if a woman wears a tight shirt that shows off her breasts or whatever “all the guys will grab them.” Nobody listening to him objects to the insanity of this. “That’s a 10?” asks one woman. “That’s what happens to little boys,” says Keith. I have no idea if young boys like to grab each other’s tits as Keith says. But even if they do, we all know it would not carry the same sexual element as it would for boys doing it to girls. He’s just gross. We see one woman in a meeting say she realizes now the young men who bullied her in high school were having the same hard time she was. Wonderful. What growth to identify with one’s abusers. Ugh.

Back in LA, Mark and Bonnie go to Catherine’s house. They greet her white fluffy dog Fuji. He’s really cute. Catherine tells the filmmakers of the time she spent the night at Bonnie and Mark’s house in Albany. She saw a large dog bed next to Bonnie and Mark’s bed. She was confused, because she wasn’t aware they had a dog. Bonnie starts to crack up. “Who the fuck is sleeping on the floor?” Catherine wondered at the time. “It was my penance,” says Bonnie.

Catherine and Bonnie continue to discuss the situation with Bonnie saying she was probably proud of herself for being so disciplined. Bonnie had spoken out against Mark and she felt she deserved the punishment. Catherine is cracking up at the absurdity of it as Bonnie explains the thinking behind it all. “I will remember not to become a part of this community,” jokes Catherine. Bonnie’s face becomes sad when she says she thought at the time “there was something wrong with me, because I didn’t like penance.”

Mark asks Bonnie if she’s okay and she admits she is starting to feel emotional. Getting upset, Mark says, “It’s so easy to shame you know? We’re not at the point where we can make fun of these things.” Mark has a lot of anger towards himself for thinking (at one time anyway) that it was okay for his wife to do that. “We didn’t join a cult. Nobody joins a cult,” says Mark emphatically. “They join a good thing and then realize they were fucked.” It was a slow boil, for sure.

This scene caused some controversy in certain pockets of the internet. Some people misrepresented it as Mark being the one that made Bonnie sleep on the floor, which is not how it went down from what I heard them say. And some internet commentators said Mark getting upset at Catherine for laughing about it was proof that he feels super guilty about things he has done, but has continued to conceal. He probably did feel guilty. He was feeling a lot of things, I imagine.

We cut back to Keith leading a forum and he is yelling at the women in the audience. He’s yammering about women’s selfishness and that women can never be as good as men “because we won’t let you.” We then hear recorded conversation where Allison is crying as Keith dissects her and tells her what she is. “Do you feel like you’re a bad person?” he asks her. She says yes and there has to be something wrong inside of her—“Something different,” Keith cuts her off to say. “Good people do bad things all the time. I do bad things all the time.” Indeed you do, Keith. He blathers on, but I won’t bother.

NYC. Hotel room. Sarah is showing us her brand as she applies some cream to it. She’s joking around, pretending she is doing an ad for scar cream. “Would you like to get rid of your sex cult brand scar? This is how.” She and the filmmakers laugh. Later that night Sarah tells us she met with the FBI all day and gave them everything she knows about everything that went on.

We see Mark and Bonnie driving as Mark tells us in voice over he and Bonnie are really struggling. Mark is trying hard to find some dignity in all of the damage and shame. Bonnie drops him off at FBI headquarters in LA. She tells him to not hold anything back. End.

Outro music is “Medicine” by Daughter

Next recap: The finale of the season, episode 9 “The Fall.”