Nxivm cult leader Keith Raniere has been sentenced to life in prison
Keith Raniere, the 60-year-old cofounder and leader of the alleged sex cult Nxivm, has been sentenced to 120 years in prison.
In 2019, Raniere was found guilty on charges of sex trafficking of children, conspiracy, and conspiracy to commit forced labor.
He was arrested in 2018 in Mexico, where he sought refuge from the US after multiple members who left Nxivm pressed charges against him and spoke with The New York Times in a damning exposé of the group.
In a recent NBC News interview, his first public appearance since his 2018 arrest, Raniere called his charges "a horrible injustice" and said he would continue to fight for his innocence.
During his sentencing, victims giving impact statements called Raniere a "monster," "parasite," and "terrorist" who psychologically and physically manipulated followers.
One victim, who went only by the name Camila, said Raniere forced a sexual relationship on her when she was 15 and that it lasted until she was 27, court documents obtained by Insider showed.
"He manipulated me for what he wanted," Camila said in court on Tuesday. "I became unreachable to my parents, my brother, my friends until I had nobody to worry about me. He knew the things that mattered most to me and what I feared and used that against me."
How Raniere built a cult covered up as a self-help group
Nxivm was billed as a self-help multilevel marketing company, inviting people to spend thousands of dollars on courses.
Raniere founded the group in 1998, alongside the nurse and hypnotist Nancy Salzman. He had his followers refer to him as "Vanguard" and to Salzman as "Prefect."
Followers were told he was a scientist, which he was not, and that he had created a unique self-help method that would help anyone achieve their personal and professional aspirations.
In reality, Raniere had rebranded real psychological methods used in therapy and abused them to elicit private information from his followers that he later wielded as blackmail, former members alleged.
Women were branded with his initials
He also created a secret sorority for women within Nxivm called DOS (Latin for "Dominus Obsequious Sororium," which translates to "master over slave women"), where women were branded with his initials and some were manipulated into being Raniere's sex slaves, according to 2015 court filings, CBS reported.
Former Nxivm members who left the group said Raniere's supposed self-help methods were used to groom certain women in DOS.
Others, like India Oxenberg and Sarah Edmondson, have spoken out to accuse Raniere of mistreatment against them.
Some members who've stayed loyal to Raniere are now facing long prison sentences
There are some members of DOS, like the actress Allison Mack and Salzman's daughter Lauren Salzman, who remain loyal to Raniere.
Seagram's heiress Clare Bronfman, who was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison on September 30 for identity fraud and racketeering, provided Raniere with an estimated $2 million to bombard members who left Nxivm with lawsuits.
Mack, Nancy Salzman, and Lauren Salzman also pleaded guilty to crimes including racketeering in 2018, but their sentencings were postponed because of the pandemic. Those sentencings are being rescheduled and are expected to happen in 2020.
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- Read more:
- The 3 main personality traits of cult leaders, according to a cult-recovery therapist
- 3 reasons why people join cults, according to a cult-recovery therapist
- How a married couple who escaped NXIVM is rebuilding their relationship from scratch after leaving the cult
- Seagram's heiress Clare Bronfman has been sentenced to almost 7 years in prison for her involvement in the NXIVM cult
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