The Vow: Season 2, Episode 2 “Rapport”

Last episode Keith was arrested and we learned all of his co-defendants have pled guilty. All of them.

Clifton, New York

We are at home with Nancy. She is wearing an ankle monitor. In a resentful tone, she tells us she has been told it is a privilege she is not in jail and is allowed contact with her daughters. Looking genuinely incredulous, Nancy asks us to imagine what it’s like to believe you are involved in a good thing only to find out people think it’s the devil’s work. Intro.

When we come back, Nancy tells us she believes Keith chose her because of her background. Back in the day, she worked with people who had chronic pain and/or illness. This was inspired by her mother who suffered from debilitating pain throughout Nancy’s childhood. She became a nurse and through her explorations on the subject of pain management, Nancy discovered the mind/body connection. She taught people self-hypnosis and learned Neuro-linguistic Programming. I said this in a recap from last season, but NLP is considered to be a pseudoscience. If a person feels they got help with something using this method, it’s no skin off my nose. At the very least though, NLP deserves a bit of a side-eye.

Nancy says NLP was “very, very successful” helping the people she worked with. It’s just that, in a couple of years, those same people would come back suffering with a new problem that was “amazingly similar” to the one they had before. I get the impression she had branched out from pain management and was working with people on a variety of issues. Anyway, because of this, Nancy began to focus on finding a way to help people solve their problems permanently.

Then Keith came into the picture. Back when he was still running his first company, Consumer’s Byline, he wanted Nancy to come and train his employees in NLP. She turned him down due to a lack of confidence in herself. Ten years later, she was an empty-nester, divorced and alone. That’s when she decided she was ready to meet him. Omigod. She could not have chosen a worse time. Let’s get real, is there any good time to meet Keith? No. But she is saying during a period in her life when she felt vulnerable (I think it’s fair to say) and in transition, she decided to introduce herself to sociopath-con-artist-extraordinaire, Keith Raniere. What could go wrong?

Nancy found Keith very impressive. She can’t even explain what it’s like to meet someone like him. She felt he had an exceptional understanding of psychodynamics and “he worked with it.” She gives an example by talking about rapport. Rapport, she explains, is when a person feels connected with someone in such a way that it creates trust. By “mirroring” a person’s behavior, vibe, body language, volume of voice and so on, that sense of connection can be created in people. As a result, on a subconscious level, the person being “mirrored” feels (has been manipulated into feeling) trust. Nancy says Keith was a master at it. Oh, I bet he was.

Keith told Nancy he had an idea for a model for behavior change. He wanted to use NLP as the foundation of this model and build on it. They drew “charts of perception” and she found the discussion fascinating. As with anyone he wants to establish dominance over, Keith spent hours with Nancy during their initial meeting. For several weekends after, Nancy and Keith would talk. We hear little snippets of audio clips of some of the conversations Keith and Nancy have had. You can hear how seriously she took him, how much she deferred to him as the authority and expert.

Sometimes, after talking with Keith, Nancy felt like the ground was unsteady. She came to realize as a result of these conversations, her perspective had shifted. She felt so much more positive since meeting him. I’ve seen this episode a few times now and I still get a feeling of anxiety listening to her. My body is like, danger, danger, danger…

It’s her tone of voice. She conveys very well the sense of wonder she was feeling. She was so in awe of him. We know Keith is a sociopathic predator. She didn’t. And she just handed herself over, because he had already manipulated her into trusting him.

See, this is the problem. Predators always have the advantage, because they know what they are. Normal human beings don’t go around feeling wary about potentially meeting a sociopath. (Unless you’re using a dating app or something, but that’s another story.) Unless your spidey senses start tingling, how would you know what you’re getting into? So, the people with normal emotions, without that criminal mindset, are always caught off guard. That said, I tip my hat to anyone who maintains a healthy degree of skepticism through life. Because from what we hear in this episode, Nancy did not.

Nancy felt if she could learn how to help people, in such a short amount of time, the way Keith did? “I would do anything.” Keith agreed to mentor her as long as she committed to him for life. (Red flag, Nancy?) The only circumstances in which Keith would want to end their relationship would be if he ever thought she was using “the curriculum” in an unethical manner. Oh, the irony! Keith is one ballsy motherfucker. I’ll give him that.

We cut to journalist for the New York Post, Emily Saul, in her apartment. She wonders who might be testifying in court against Keith. Maybe Lauren Salzman. Maybe Allison Mack. Probably Mark Vincente. She has sympathy for Mark because she thinks, as Keith’s closest male friend, it must have been tough to have his whole world fall down around him.

We cut to Mark who says he is indeed, testifying against Keith. He says he is terrified to face him again after two years. We then hear audio from 2017, the day after Mark had officially resigned from Nxivm. He is talking to Nxivm members Nippy Ames and a man named Eduardo. He warns them he has some serious shit to tell them and to please keep it confidential or he is fucked. “There are landmines ahead,” Mark warns them.

Eduardo

Eduardo is seated at a table giving an interview to the filmmakers. He tells us Mark told him about DOS and the branding. Mark then asked him to join the mission to take down Nxivm. After talking with Sarah and expressing sympathy for what happened to her, Eduardo chose to go to Albany and investigate the situation on his own, first. What he found was a sorority of women—women who were his friends, who he had great respect for and trusted—that told him they were a part of a good thing.

Eduardo tells us Keith and Nancy, but especially Nancy, helped him tremendously in his life. He credits Nancy for helping him and his wife, who were trying to get pregnant at the time, work through some marriage issues. Getting choked up, Eduardo says being a father is the best thing that has ever happened to him. And without Keith and Nancy, he would not be the loving husband and father he is today. “…there are thousands of people that would tell you similar stories,” he says. With the arrests and everything else happening, it feels like the world has turned upside down.

Eduardo is sympathetic and comes across as sincere. His perspective certainly adds to the complexity of the Nxivm situation. How simple it would have been for people to see clearly if it had been all bad, right?

Back to Nancy. She describes Keith as “very kind” at the beginning of their relationship. “He gave me everything I wanted.” He gave her a company and the tools she needed to do the work she loved. They started small, but grew quickly. “We opened up centers all over the world,” Nancy says, “[and] I wanted to affect as many people as I could.” So, sleeping only a few hours a night, she got to work. We see plenty of clips of Nancy teaching, teaching, teaching. This differs from the usual footage we have seen of Keith talking, talking, talking. It’s apparent from the clips that Nancy had a lot of passion, a genuine enthusiasm when she was working with people.

Nancy even got a write up in Oprah magazine after she coached the magazine’s art director. Not really surprising, to be honest. Oprah used to love new-agey self-help shit. She was into The Secret (laws of attraction) and stuff like that.

Keith’s goal was to reach “the highest level of every human endeavor.” We see a clip of actress Bonnie Piesse at a “Star Wars” red carpet event and Carlos Emiliano Salinas, son of former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, on television. We see a clip of Keith and Nancy meeting with the Dalai Lama.

Nancy really believed it was possible with ESP, to solve any problem that existed in the world. Any problem at all. I read in Sarah Berman’s book “Don’t Call It a Cult,” Nancy believed she and Keith could have prevented 9/11 if they had met sooner. I have no words for that, honestly. Anyway, she finds it “horrendous” people perceive Nxivm as just a scam and a sex cult.

Night Before Trial

We cut to Keith’s lawyer Marc Agnifilo. He admits it is a “highly sexual case” and he is worried jurors may be close-minded and judgemental. Marc expresses anxiety about the trial as he feels he has Keith’s life in his hands.

Listening to Marc in this segment is like listening to an athlete mentally pump himself up before a game, albeit in a drier way. It is true Keith’s life is in the hands of his lawyers, but it’s interesting to me to see the various ways lawyers create emotional investment in their cases. A certain degree of passion is needed to be effective in court, I would think.

Mark Vicente (on a podcast, I think) had speculated whether Agnifilo fell under Keith’s spell for a bit. I seriously doubt it. This was a performance and he was selling his client to the viewers. I think Agnifilo’s real interest was in the murky area between coercion and choice from the legal perspective. He had said he thought the case was winnable, because of the issue of what is consent. He must have looked forward to arguing this in court. Falling under the spell of a sociopath who was stuck in a jail cell seems unlikely. Not to mention listening to Keith droning on like he was some kind of enlightened philosopher must have been boring as fuck. But lawyers are paid by the hour, so, it was Keith’s dime. Well, Clare Bronfman’s dime, but same thing, really.

We cut to lead prosecutor, Moira Penza, who tells us this case is the most important one she has ever worked on. I believe her. I doubt she had to pump herself up at all. Moira believes Keith is very dangerous in part because of the great number of people he has victimized. She describes what Keith has done in Nxivm as “the psychological torture of women in a systemic fashion.” She wants to expose the very dark things that, for decades, have been going on within the organization.

The Trial, Day 1

Press press press in front of the court. Emily heading into court. We see Bonnie and Mark, waiting to appear in court, watching the news about the trial on TV. We see EXSPian and whistleblower, Nippy Ames. We see Nxivm loyalist Eduardo with a friend. Moira and her team. Marc and his team.

Since no cameras were allowed in court we will look at court sketches and video clips while listening to recreated audio.

Opening statement for the prosecution: A con-man. Leader of a criminal organization. Predator of women.

Opening statement for the defense: Helped high profile people. Well-intended. A bit of a slut. That’s not against the law.

First witness is a woman named Sylvie. She was in Nxivm for 13 years, joining in 2006. We hear her court testimony in voice-over. She was an equestrian, as was Clare Bronfman, which is how they met. Clare encouraged Sylvie to try out ESP which she was willing to do in an effort to win favor with Clare. Why Sylvie wanted to win favor we are not told.

Right away Sylvie was struck by the passionate reverence for Keith amongst the ESP members. There was a portrait of Keith and one of Nancy, hung on a wall, Kim Jong-Un style. Everyone bowed and thanked them as if they were in the room. She was given the “Twelve-Point Mission Statement” which everyone read out loud as a group. One line says, “There are no ultimate victims; therefore, I will not choose to be a victim.”

It’s important to emphasize one of the main tenets of ESP is the whole “being at cause” jazz. Being at cause means you take responsibility for all circumstances in your life, including your feelings about those circumstances. You are not a victim, ever. And any feelings you have about any given situation are only a matter of the perspective you choose.

It is a paradox that manages to present itself as empowerment. Here is one scenario: if someone does you wrong, the responsibility is on you as to whether you want to perceive yourself as a victim. It is you, not the wrong-doer, that is responsible for any distress you may be feeling. Feelings are a result of perspective, right? You can choose it, right? Conveniently, this also provides an out for anyone in Nxivm that engages in criminal and/or predatory behavior. In its simplest form, it implies there is no such thing as crime, only the perception of crime. Therefore, crime does not exist. Keith probably kept it mostly within the context of ESPians and their normal lives rather than say, getting mugged in a dark alley, but that’s the gist.

We cut to Vero from episode one who explains that ESPians were committed to not perceiving themselves as victims, because it was a central component to being a successful person.

We cut to Moira who tells us a recurring theme amongst the former members was this fear they were ultimately responsible for the shitty things that went down. They weren’t really victims, they were just choosing to see themselves that way.

Then we cut to video of Nancy, leading a small group. She is reading to them about the screaming of abuse being abuse itself. We heard that shit from Keith in an episode from last season. I guess he had his rant written down so Nancy could teach the concept formally. I gotta include it verbatim because it’s fucking stupid:

“Most people scream abuse and they have no idea of the morality of what they’re talking about. A lot of times the screaming of abuse is abuse in itself. Because they have no idea what they’re talking about, there’s some inconvenient thing happening and they wish it were different and they yell abuse. It is not necessarily abuse, so they abuse abuse.”

“It’s very powerful,” Nancy says. Sitting next to Nancy is Karen Unterreiner who has this look on her face like, “I can’t take another day of this horseshit.”

We cut back to Sylvie’s testimony. She explains her understanding of being at cause meant “that anything that happened to you is your own fault and if you call it abuse, then you’re just trying to get out of the responsibility that it was your fault, somehow.” She goes on to say Keith felt women were especially guilty of wanting to be victims. Shocker. Sylvie came to feel like she couldn’t trust herself.

A fellow ESPian, someone Sylvie trusted, approached her about joining DOS. It was the usual process. “Collateral” material first, details about DOS after. Sylvie didn’t feel she had the option to not join once she handed over the collateral/blackmail stuff, because she’s right. She didn’t.

We cut to Vero. She explains to us the mindset she had, at least initially, about joining DOS. She felt proud to be a part of it and she felt it was a choice she made. But it was a choice that created a lack of choice, because of the blackmail/collateral. So there was no way to turn back, no matter what was going on in the group. “It’s a trick,” she says.

Back to Sylvie. She tells the court she was given an assignment, seduce Keith. If you watched the doc series “Seduced” you’ll know how this goes down, because it was pretty much the same. Step 1: Send Keith flirty texts. Step 2: Send Keith nude photos that get increasingly more explicit…

We cut to Keith being asked about the difference between vulnerability and fear. Remember the Sports Barn from last season? In this clip, everyone has taken a break from playing volleyball so they can gather at Keith’s feet and listen to him run his mouth. He is so infatuated with himself in this scene, I swear to God.

Rather than answer the question in a direct fashion, Keith talks paradoxically. There is a common theme through so much of what he lectures to his followers. That you shouldn’t listen to your gut, especially when it comes to fear, because it’ll steer you wrong. And the only way you can evolve and grow as a person is by overriding it, because then you’ll conquer it. So, in other words, fear is good. It’s an indicator you’re doing something right. And that’s basically what his answer is to the question of what is vulnerability vs. fear. Override your gut.

As usual with Keith, he takes something that has some elements of truth, depending on the situation—feeling the fear and doing it anyway—and distorts it.

Back to Sylvie. Step 3: Meet Keith at his house for sex. Needless to say, this was not what Sylvie signed up for, but now it was too late to back out.

Marc Agnifilo questions Sylvie on the stand. He asks her about the texts she had sent Keith. Flirty texts, texts saying she wants to see him or that she dreamt about him. She explains she was following the instructions of her Master when she sent texts like this. Marc asks, so you were lying? Sylvie says she was trying to be “the best slave I could be so that things would work out for me.” She concedes maybe it wasn’t the best way to handle the situation, but it’s what she did.

EXSPian Nippy Ames talks to the filmmakers outside of the courthouse. He admires Sylvie’s bravery, but feels the matter of coercion and how it works in DOS didn’t come through during her testimony. EXSPian and ex-girlfriend of Keith’s, Barbra Bouchey is interviewed by a reporter and she expresses the same opinion. “Score one for Keith’s attorney,” Barbra says.

Nippy, having lunch, Facetimes with his wife Sarah Edmonson. Eduardo and other loyalists were present when Sylvie was on the stand, Nippy tells her, but rather than listen to her testimony, they chose to walk out. Sarah can’t believe it. She doesn’t understand why the loyalists are refusing to listen even though these are people that were trusted friends.

“Fuck me. I’m going to call Eduardo right now,” Sarah says. Nippy tells her not to bother. He thinks at this point, if people don’t see the con, it’s a willful blindness. I like how proactive Sarah is with the phone. I practically have a nervous breakdown calling the plumber. Sarah will call anybody, tension or no.

We cut to Mark Vincente and his wife, Bonnie Peisse. Mark is getting ready to testify. He says he is “terrified.” We cut to Bonnie sitting on a park bench smoking nervously. She’s very scared about what will happen if Keith gets off. She knows he will be hell-bent on revenge and will come after her and the other whistleblowers. She chose not be present when Mark testifies as she feels her presence will only stress him out more given how panicky she gets.

Mark on the stand. He is asked what Keith’s role was at Nxivm. “Keith was the philosophical founder. The driving ethical, moral and humanitarian force behind the entire company.” Mark has a way with the word, I must say.

We cut to Mark after he has testified. The prosecutor had asked him to point out Keith in the courtroom. Mark tells us how fucked up it was to look over at Keith at the defense table. “The way he looked at me when I pointed at him was like, I’m here for you. I’m still on your side. I still love you.” That just made Mark more determined to stay strong on the stand. But later, he admits, a thought came into his head. Maybe Keith is right and he really is a good guy? It didn’t sway him; he just found it kind of horrifying something like that would enter his head at all.

We cut back to Mark on the stand. He shares with the court an example of a ESP principle containing (more) paradoxical logic Keith had created for his followers. “Speaking with honor.” If a person spoke dishonorably, it was due to pride and you would be labeled “suppressive.” And while one could get away with critiquing others, it was considered dishonorable to critique Keith at all. If you said anything critical about Keith, it was an indication of you being suppressive. We cut to Moira Penza who explains a suppressive person was someone who actively sought to destroy all the good Nxivm was bringing into the world. If you had dared speak of the abuses done by Keith, for example, it would only have been an indicator you were abusive. “There was a trap that was built in,” Mark says.

Metropolitan Detention Center. Brooklyn, New York

We hear audio of Keith talking about his reaction to seeing Mark on the stand. “It was very sad,” Keith says, using his sad voice. “It felt like death, but not… um… it’s like wanting to reach out and say don’t do this… please don’t lie.” Keith says because Mark believes he is evil he will do whatever it takes–lie, cheat, wage a hate campaign–to destroy him. “He believes he has to stop me,” says Keith. His tone is one of pity. Like, poor confused Mark.

Clifton Park, New York

We are back with Nancy. She is looking at pictures of Mark. “I really loved Mark and I felt like we were really friends,” she says. It was very painful when Mark left Nxivm. He and Sarah, she says, “were so destructive.” Sarah, for example, canceled the memberships of the enrollees at her center in Vancouver and gave them refunds. “That was our money. She didn’t have a right to do that,” Nancy says, indignantly.

Nancy plays a phone message Sarah left her during this time. In the phone call Sarah says she is angry and hurt Nancy hasn’t reached out to her. Sarah tells her it’s because Nancy “doesn’t have the fucking balls” to call and ask what’s going on. “I’m not being destructive,” Sarah says. Rather, she is stepping away from a situation she found “fucking traumatic.” She ends the message by saying, “Wake the fuck up.” See what I mean about Sarah and the phone? Proactive.

“Would you respond to a message like that?” Nancy asks. She feels angrier towards Sarah than towards Keith, she tells us, though she admits it’s not terribly rational to feel that way. “I think Keith is just the way he is,” she says with a bit of a shrug. And though everyone assumes she knew all that was going down in Nxivm, she didn’t really.

Nancy says it was at her birthday party in 2017, that she was first told about DOS. That is also where Nippy, if you recall from last season, confronted Lauren Salzman in the parking lot regarding the branding. Nancy describes Nippy as having had “some kind of tantrum.” Oh, that Nippy. Always throwing tantrums when his wife gets branded and shit. We hear audio from the confrontation Nippy had secretly recorded on his cell phone. “What the fuck is going on here?!” Nippy asks Lauren, regarding the branding and the blackmail.

Nancy tells us she called Keith and asked him what was going on. Keith told her nothing was going on. Nancy told him it was clear everyone from the party that night knew something was going on. So, Keith sent Lauren to talk to her mom. Lauren described DOS as “like a sorority,” started by some women and denied Keith had anything to do with it all. When Nancy talked with Keith later, he continued to deny any involvement.

Nancy was very angry at the women for being “thoughtless.” They hadn’t thought about how what they were doing would affect Nxivm and everything, that for 20 years, she had worked for. We are starting to understand why Nancy chose to stick her head in the sand when it came to Keith. Her entire life’s work was wrapped up in Nxivm. That was not something she would have been able to walk away from easily, needless to say. Later, Keith stood up in front of the whole organization and denied any involvement with DOS. “And I still believed him,” she says.

We cut to video of Keith talking to the members at the “Nxivm Emergency Meeting” we saw in the last episode. Sounding exasperated, he denies denies denies “the sorority” has anything to do with Nxivm at all. And furthermore, much of what is being said about it isn’t even true.

There were bad things going on, Nancy tells us, but not everyone who is being blamed for the bad things actually did anything wrong. What she was doing was separate from DOS. DOS was Keith’s thing. Nancy doesn’t think it’s right that, as a result, her company has been destroyed.

“I spent 20 years of my life trying to make the world a better place and this is where I ended up… Actually, I spent 40 years trying to make the world a better place, because I started before I knew Keith Raniere.” She tells us that 17,000 people had positive results from their experience with ESP. “Where are they?! Why aren’t they standing up for us?!” End.

Next episode: “Stimulus and Response”