Alleged sex cult leader was a 'con man,' prosecutor says

The lead prosecution witness Tuesday in the federal trial of alleged sex-cult guru Keith Raniere recounted a gripping journey of indoctrination into his Albany-based NXIVM group that began at age 18, fed off her anorexia and obsession with being an elite athlete, and climaxed with an order to “seduce” Raniere.

“Sylvie,” a slim blond former British equestrian whose last name was kept secret, said she was recruited into the group by Seagram’s heiress Claire Bronfman, and described a decade of psychological manipulation that culminated in 2015, when she joined a “master-slave” subgroup that demanded nude pictures and a letter to her family saying she was a prostitute to hold over her as “collateral.”

She told Brooklyn federal court jurors she was unenthusiastic when ordered by her master, another woman, to come on to Raniere — known in the group as “Vanguard” — but she complied for months with his demands for naked photos that went “lower and lower” to her private parts, until her father saw them on a shared account. When she tried to stop, she was told to get Raniere’s permission, so she asked.

“He said I could stop sending the photos,” Sylvie testified, “and the next thing would be in person.”

That cliffhanger ended testimony on the first day of trial of Raniere, 58, who prosecutors said posed as the head of a successful self-help and multilevel marketing business, but was in fact a “con man” who used that to exploit members, especially women.

“The defendant said he was a mentor, but he was a predator,” prosecutor Tanya Hajjar told the jury in her opening statement. “… He sold himself as the smartest, most ethical man in the world. He compared himself to Einstein, he compared himself to Gandhi. But all he wanted was sex, power and control.”

Raniere faces up to life in prison on charges of conspiracy, racketeering, sex trafficking, extortion and forced labor. Hajjar said the trial will include testimony about ritual brandings in the master-slave group, and how Raniere had sex with three Mexican sisters — one of them 15 — and then years later tied another recruit to a table and forced her into a sex act with the girl he had sex with as a minor.

“This was organized crime and Keith Raniere was the crime boss,” Hajjar said.

Raniere, looking like a short, aging preppie with dark-rimmed glasses and an open-collar shirt with a crew-neck sweater, watched silently as his lawyer argued that women freely sought happiness through a movement that exposed their vulnerabilities, and reveled in being branded with his initials as “badass.”

“This is something these people signed up for,” defense lawyer Mark Agnifilo said. “They are there to make their lives better, and they have signed on to this…. What about saying I don’t want to do this? Or I do want to do that. It’s one of the major themes of this case.”

He also urged jurors to “crawl inside [Raniere’s] skin and walk around in it” to understand that his intentions were teaching, and not crime, and invoked Winston Churchill’s speech rallying the British people after the disaster at Dunkirk at the end of his opening.

“I will defend my island home in this courtroom,” he said. “And my island home is that man’s good faith.”

Sylvie, the first witness, said she grew up in a professionally successful British family and came to the United States to pursue her dream of becoming a professional equestrian through a job at a horse farm owned by Bronfman — a skilled rider and a leader in Raniere’s group who pleaded guilty to identity theft and harboring an "illegal alien."

She said her first encounter with NXIVM was a five-day class that began with instruction in various rituals — including a nondisclosure agreement, recitation of mantras like “There are no ultimate victims. Therefore I will choose not to be a victim,” and group “huddles” in which members chanted “Thank you, Vanguard.”

She was unimpressed at first and turned off by both the group and Raniere, but said she was drawn in by a class about “suppressives” — people who tried to tear down those around them — fearing that she might be one.

“I became very motivated because I was afraid I might be a bad person,” she testified.

In time, she testified, Raniere and Bronfman began supervising every aspect of her life. They nicknamed her “”Sylvie Bot,” she said, telling her she had been “indoctrinated” by her family into pursuing a conventional life and needed them to fully realize her possibilities.

Women at NXIVM were obsessed with food and diets, she said, and when childhood anorexia resurfaced, NXIVM’s leaders and “coaches” demanded daily weight checks. Raniere claimed to be an expert at everything: first taking over her riding workouts, then establishing a demanding regimen to make her a competitive runner and refusing to let up when she developed a back abscess.

At one point, she said, she had a job in London for Goldman Sachs, with a circle of friends and success in a British running group. But Raniere and Bronfman pulled her back to NXIVM. She cried as she described supplying pictures of “my vagina” to Raniere.

“My understanding was I had to do what my master said, and I didn’t have a choice,” she testified.

After testimony, Agnifilo called on U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis to declare a mistrial, arguing that allowing women like Sylvie to testify without giving their last names was tantamount to telling jurors that they were “victims” and Raniere must be guilty of a crime. Garaufis asked prosecutors to consider alternatives.

Testimony resumes Wednesday.