Sarah Edmondson is a former member and whistleblower of Nxivm, a cult disguised as a self-help organization run by Keith Raniere, a convicted sex offender. Edmondson was part of the group for 12 years and cofounded the organization's center in Vancouver, Canada.
Edmondson talks to Business Insider about the cult's initiation procedure, finances, and rules of membership. She also discusses how members were recruited and warning signs to look out for.
Edmondson was a central character in HBO's documentary on Nxivm, "The Vow," and is now a podcaster and broadcaster. She is the author of "Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped Nxivm, the Cult That Bound My Life" and runs the "A Little Bit Culty" podcast with her husband, Nippy, who is also a former member of Nxivm.
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.
Find out more:
https://www.sarahedmondson.com/book
https://alittlebitculty.com/
Edmondson talks to Business Insider about the cult's initiation procedure, finances, and rules of membership. She also discusses how members were recruited and warning signs to look out for.
Edmondson was a central character in HBO's documentary on Nxivm, "The Vow," and is now a podcaster and broadcaster. She is the author of "Scarred: The True Story of How I Escaped Nxivm, the Cult That Bound My Life" and runs the "A Little Bit Culty" podcast with her husband, Nippy, who is also a former member of Nxivm.
If you are a survivor of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-4673) or visit its website to receive confidential support.
Find out more:
https://www.sarahedmondson.com/book
https://alittlebitculty.com/
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00My name is Sarah Edmondson. I spent 12 years inside NXIVM,
00:03one of America's most notorious cults. This is how crime works.
00:10It's hard to know what I would have done with my life if I'd spent my 30s building a legitimate
00:16company and not working for a narcissistic conman, sociopath, sex addict who was pretending
00:24to help people with their goals. Other people might look at my experience and say I would
00:27never fall for that. I would never fall for NXIVM and that's so obvious. But anyone can
00:31fall for something. I first heard about NXIVM when I was 26. I had been an actress. I'd been
00:42living in Vancouver and I was feeling like my career wasn't as meaningful and purposeful as
00:46I was hoping. At the time, I saw people around me doing wonderfully and succeeding and I was
00:51not in the place that I thought I would be by my mid-20s. My boyfriend at the time was
00:55a filmmaker and his film had been accepted into a film festival where I met the director of a film
01:01called What the Bleep Do We Know, Mark Vicente. He said, well, if you like my film, you'll love
01:06this workshop that I just took. And he introduced me to this program, NXIVM. NXIVM is the umbrella
01:14for a number of different organizations. Executive Success Program was one of them.
01:18There were lots of very intelligent, strong, successful people in their field who joined NXIVM.
01:25Heads of state, entrepreneurs, actors, but everybody has what we call situational
01:30vulnerabilities. The program was a mixture of personal and professional development.
01:35It was more the promise of the community and doing something more meaningful and purposeful.
01:41I was a big personal growth junkie. My parents are both therapists. So I was totally open to
01:46this concept of personal development and growth. And I've been raised with the idea that you can
01:51make a difference and you can leave the world better. And this seemed like the way to do it.
01:56What we thought we were doing in NXIVM was looking at those belief systems so that we could evolve
02:02and become the people that we want to be. It was very easy for me to preach about it. I say preach
02:08now because I feel like looking back, I was very evangelical about it. I found the path. I found
02:13the way. And the results of the work on me were palpable. I started to book more. I had a lead
02:20role in a film that was at the Toronto Film Festival. So people around me thought the
02:26proof was in the pudding. Unfortunately, I saw many red flags. I just had no idea what I was looking at.
02:36I was introduced to Keith Raniere as the most ethical, humanitarian, and one of the top three
02:42problem solvers in the world when I met him. I thought he'd created this curriculum that was
02:47groundbreaking and was going to change the personal development space. And he had invented
02:52nothing short of a miracle. That's what I thought. After every class, we'd say,
02:56thank you, Vanguard, like bowing to somebody in the room that's not even there. So by the time
03:01anyone met him, they'd already have an immense amount of respect for him. I thought that if this
03:05man created this curriculum that changed my life, was in front of me, I'd be honored to meet him.
03:09I was meeting the Dalai Lama or something. I was very reverent of him. And I was. At the same time,
03:18I was underwhelmed by his appearance. He had this scraggly Jesus hair and was very unassuming,
03:24very normal nerd vibe. He was definitely sheltered. He'd come out every now and then.
03:33It would be this hush and the rush in a space where, oh, Keith is coming. Vanguard's coming.
03:39He was charismatic in that he was very good at holding space for a room. He was very articulate,
03:46although he did use a lot of what I now know as word salad, where he would pontificate and
03:52share truth of the world that would resonate very deeply and then go off on other tangents that
03:57I'd miss and think, did I miss that? I didn't quite understand that. But everyone else is
04:02smiling and nodding. So I think, oh, yeah, I'm going to smile and nod too because I
04:06must have missed that one. And that was definitely part of his mystique,
04:10is this highbrow intelligence. He always wanted to keep up and understand and learn and glean from
04:15him. I thought he was celibate when I met him and was introduced to him. And the way that people
04:21spoke about him is that he was a renunciate. So he had no personal possessions. He didn't own
04:26anything. He didn't own a car. He didn't own his home because he's so evolved. He's a spiritual
04:31leader. He's a monk. He doesn't need possessions. He doesn't need sex. He's a renunciate, celibate,
04:36evolved man. I found out many years later that he was actually a con man, a sociopath,
04:42a narcissist, sex addict. That was a front for Keith to have a pipeline of basically fresh women
04:49for his sexual gratification. I never got too close to him. There was always something that
04:55I just didn't feel good around him. But I thought that was my limitation at the time.
05:01The name NXIVM, we were told at the time it was a made up word that he created that was like a
05:06merging of Greek and Latin or something to do with like a gathering space. But later we found
05:11out that NXIVM was from the root nexum, which had to do with debt bondage and slavery.
05:22I'd say the main tenets of all of the companies within NXIVM was one, personal responsibility.
05:28In other words, I cause everything in my life. Again, really helpful to own your life and your
05:35effects. But the downside of that is that if I say, you know, hey, I don't like this thing that
05:40happened to me, it can always be flipped back in your face. And then the abuser won't take
05:46responsibility. The packaging of NXIVM at the time was called executive success programs.
05:52ESP itself was the idea that you could evolve yourself and your limiting beliefs and become
05:59the person that you want to be with this tool set that apparently only this group had. And it was
06:05cutting edge technology in the space, in personal development. This first training was actually
06:11five days and it was just over $2,000 at the time. We're looking at belief systems. We're also
06:17learning basic life skills, time management, good communication, learning how to build your
06:23self-esteem, understanding how to interact in business dealings, scripting for asking for what
06:30you want in a way that is direct and honest and integrous. So there's a mixture of both business
06:35and professional. The setup for most of the executive success trainings and the different
06:40programs under NXIVM was what was called inductive learning or what we thought was inductive learning.
06:45Nobody was just talking at us. The setup was normally we'd be in a small circle. We'd be
06:50answering questions about different topics. And then there'd be a video on the screen and Nancy
06:55Selzman, Keith Ranieri's right-hand woman, she would be explaining the concepts and then we would
07:00go, oh, I see. That's what it is. And then there'd be another round of discussion and then the
07:05breakout group and then a debrief. Sometimes there were forums. Keith would do a forum where he would
07:10answer questions. In the initial signing of the application, there was a lot of pressure,
07:15a lot of what we call scarcity mentality, like this is your only opportunity and this might
07:20not come back your way again. And I had a bit of FOMO and I didn't want to miss out. So that
07:25pressure that I felt to sign up right at the beginning was the very first red flag.
07:30The head trainers very systematically and succinctly shared that we are here. I committed
07:37to my growth. I paid money to grow and that any growth would be uncomfortable, which is true.
07:43So they said, if you feel uncomfortable and you have the urge to bolt, we ask that you
07:47stay in the room and talk to one of the coaches and not leave. In one of the early trainings,
07:52there was a game called rating and ranking where we had to, in a circle before we even
07:57answered the questions, put everybody in categories of most to least. I think it was attractive,
08:03honest, intelligent. I had many, many instances when I wanted to leave,
08:09but I also knew that I couldn't get my money back. And I wanted to please Mark and show him that I
08:15was strong enough to get through this. It can take as little as three days to
08:20indoctrinate somebody into a new belief system if they're open and there's enough repetition,
08:26which is what happened. I think that if anyone were to spend, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day
08:33with a therapist for five days, you'd work through a lot of stuff personally. And so I did. I looked
08:40at different aspects of my life and what was working and not working. It's almost like I
08:44cleared away the cobwebs or, you know, lifted up a veil. And when I left, I could see clearly.
08:50I understood myself better. I understood other people better. So one of the things that we were
08:55quite proud of at the time in NXIVM is that we believed that the personal development or
09:01even the therapy world was not measurable. There's no way to tell, are you growing? Are
09:06you successful? So we thought that we had this martial arts system of growth and development
09:11and that when you join NXIVM, you'd get a sash, just like you get a belt in karate.
09:16I got to green sash, something I was very proud of at the time, because I believe there were
09:20somewhere between 12 and 14 when I left out of the whole company. I was part of a circle of friends,
09:25mostly actors, a little women's group that I actually helped coordinate. And I just came
09:30back to that group and I said, I found the answers. I found the thing that we've all been looking for
09:34to take our careers to the next level and work through all the stuff in our personal lives that
09:39are stopping us from being optimal. I felt like I had the map to success, a secret handbook that
09:46nobody else had. At that point, I'd sunk thousands of dollars in, and that number crept up over the
09:57years to way over $100,000. People paid anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 for trainings. And I don't
10:05know what the most anyone's ever spent, but hundreds of thousands of dollars on curriculum.
10:10And really where NXIVM managed to expand is they tapped into certain echelons,
10:16specifically the political elite in Mexico who were very well off. People paid to take trainings,
10:23and then that payment would go to the people running the trainings, the people producing
10:27the trainings, but the bulk of it went to the organization itself. And depending on where you
10:33were in that hierarchy, you'd get none of the money or a lot of the money. And of course, that
10:38was always met with the feedback from the upper ranks saying, well, you just need to work through
10:43your issues so you can get to the next level, which would be where you get paid. I was one of
10:47the people that did get to that level, and then they would use people like me as poster. Like,
10:52I was really a poster child for those other people. Like, look, if Sarah can do it, then anyone can do
10:57it. So the headquarters for NXIVM, the mothership, was in Albany, New York. Mark and I opened the
11:02first Canadian center in Vancouver in 2009. There were centers in Mexico City, Monterey,
11:09Guadalajara, Leon. I used a lot of my own personal money to keep it going because the percentage that
11:16the company gave you to run the center wasn't nearly enough to even pay rent. And it's a similar
11:20structure to what I see in a lot of organizations, especially MLMs, multi-level marketing, which is
11:26built on this idea of what I call, it's actually a chapter in my book, the illusion of hope.
11:31I always felt frustrated with the growth of the company. There was always things that
11:35didn't make sense. Like, why don't we have a new website? I had an opportunity to bring
11:40the curriculum into Lululemon. Lululemon was using Landmark as their curriculum at the time.
11:46They wanted a new curriculum. I had heard that, and I got a meeting with Nancy and the people
11:50that were choosing which curriculum to use. And they were like, great, let's do this. And basically,
11:56Keith said, well, you have to come to Albany and take a 16-day training. And they were like,
12:00can you come to Vancouver or Lululemon? If I didn't know any better, he was sabotaging things.
12:07This is an opportunity to bring Nexium, ESP, executive success programs to Lululemon. Why
12:12wouldn't we do that? And I found out later, it's because he knew that it was under scrutiny by
12:17such a high-level company. They would see through the facade that he was a charlatan.
12:23So he could only have it grow so much. He just wanted it to grow so much that he could have a
12:27certain amount of money and a certain number of fresh young women at his disposal. I see now that
12:34it was 100% a pyramid scheme, in that it was a pyramid. There's somebody at the top and people
12:41below them. And the scheme was the lie. The lie is, join this curriculum, and you'll reach your
12:47success, reach your goals, have everything you ever wanted. But it was, again, the illusion of
12:52hope dangled as a carrot to lure people in. We don't know for sure, but somewhere between 17,000
13:03to 20,000 people went through Nexium. I don't have an exact number of how many people came
13:07through the Vancouver Center, but at any given time, our membership was 100 to 200. It was all
13:14word of mouth. It was all direct connections. We didn't advertise at all. How I was trained to spot
13:20people that I want to bring in is to go to a workshop or to go to an event and look for
13:25bright lights, people who were leaders, people who were already shining and wanting to do big
13:31things in the world, and bring them into our little group. People were used in different ways,
13:36including the Dalai Lama. We used to say the Dalai Lama endorsed Keith's book. I will say that anyone
13:42is susceptible at the right place at the right time. Other people might look at my experience
13:47and say, I would never fall for that. I would never fall for Nexium, and that's so obvious. It's very
13:50obvious to me now. And that's fine. Maybe you never would. But everyone is susceptible to a con
13:56or to be lied to or brought into something that is a lie. And it's just really about the right
14:03place at the right time and the right trusted person. I got married to Nipi Ames, and we had
14:13our baby in 2014. I've been there for nine years, and all of a sudden, you know, I'm a mother, and my
14:21values priority shifted. My internal commitment was starting to fall apart. The years leading up
14:28to that, it was falling apart, but I was still so attached, and I really wanted to make this work
14:32that I couldn't see it. In the same way a lot of people greatly revered and put Keith on a pedestal,
14:38I probably did that more with his second in command, Nancy, and Nancy's daughter, Lauren.
14:43Lauren was the head of education. She was only a year older than me, so I really resonated
14:47with her and see myself in her in terms of I wanted to be like her. She was a head trainer.
14:52She was very intelligent. I loved when she trained a curriculum because I knew that my friends,
14:57if they saw her on stage, would be like, this is it. I want to do this because she was so relatable
15:02and so funny and stylish. So she's somebody who I really connected with probably the most
15:09in the whole program. I was invited into this badass boot camp for women by Lauren Salzman,
15:17who's somebody who I loved and respected. She was the godparents of my child at the time,
15:22Doss, which is what they called it, Dominus Obsequious, which I still didn't, I didn't
15:27know at the time what it meant. Now we know it means something about master over slave women,
15:32so just like with NXIVM, we thought it was this beautiful personal and professional
15:37development community, and it was actually a front for Keith to have a harem of women that
15:43he was coercing and controlling, but what we were told it was was this group of women,
15:48like a sorority, who were going to hold each other accountable to their highest goals and their ideals,
15:53and so when she invited me to this thing that would take my growth to the next level,
15:58and I had already committed to doing whatever it took to go to the next level,
16:02it was an easy yes. And then there was another element of it that was sort of exciting.
16:07Nobody knew about it. It was secret. There was a secret girls club. I knew that other women were
16:11in it, but nobody knew who was in it, and it was sort of hush, hush, hush. That part was fun,
16:16but I also knew that I was going to get a tattoo and be a part of this like,
16:20you know, get an initiation and meet my sisters eventually. When I was first invited,
16:24I felt very uncomfortable, and of course the response was, well, that's how you should feel.
16:29You want everything to be on the line so that you do what you say you're going to do and be
16:33committed to your goals. I had to give collateral, which is the NXIVM word for blackmail, so it was
16:40something that I was putting down as my word for secrecy. This had already been introduced
16:46in NXIVM years before, so that was kind of normal for me. I had known that other women had given
16:51much more damaging collateral, including like sexual videos and very personal confessions,
16:58some of them true, some of them untrue, and now we know it's also like
17:03a lot of what they collected was for Keith's pleasure. So I had to give her a letter of
17:09confessions of bad things I did when I was in my 20s, and then she took a picture of it and
17:14sent it to someone. I assumed it was a woman, and I was told it wasn't bad enough, and I had to do
17:18another one. And that was the collateral that she held for me to then hear what this group was.
17:24She was going to be my master, and I'd be her slave. In my mind, I live in Vancouver. She lives
17:29in Albany. I'm not really going to be her slave. This is a game. But ultimately, I was taking a
17:34vow of obedience to her. I had to be on call. All of us had to have our phones on all the time. We
17:41had to be available to respond to our masters at any moment, even when we were sleeping.
17:46You couldn't be unavailable unless you were in an elevator or in the ocean or something like that.
17:53Even when you were in the air, you were supposed to try to get Wi-Fi and let people know if you
17:56couldn't. It's so crazy. We had to respond within a certain time frame, and we found out once
18:03because we failed a drill, and we were told that someone could get locked up if we failed again.
18:10As soon as I'd committed to this thing, I had a pit in my stomach and felt like it was off
18:14and was trying to figure out how to get out of it from the beginning. There were a number of
18:18things that made me realize, this is not a women's group. This is for Keith.
18:29Ultimately, what woke me up is attending this ceremony, which is still to this day
18:35triggering to talk about, to walk people through. I flashback often to the moment of it and wonder
18:41how I got through it. It was unbelievably painful. Even when I gave birth, I had epidurals.
18:46Before the epidural, it was excruciating pain, but nothing was as painful as this.
18:51Imagine a brand that basically sliced the skin open slowly and created this design.
18:57What I now know is designed on purpose to create a trauma bond with my sisters and have us feel
19:03like we're part of the special thing and that we wouldn't tell anybody also because there's a level
19:08of embarrassment and shame. One of the reasons why cults like this go on to exist is because
19:13if people have the luxury of waking up and getting out, they don't want to tell anybody
19:17because they participated and it's embarrassing. That night when I was still indoctrinated and
19:23believing I was doing something in that world, it was I was doing something, this is part of the
19:29NXIVM rhetoric, painful to prove my commitment and to develop character. I would prove my strength
19:38and my worth to myself and then I could do anything. I felt that way. I actually felt really
19:42proud of myself. Once I was fully in, then it was revealed that I would have to hand over new
19:48collateral every month. Now, this was a lifetime commitment I was making. I'm thinking to myself,
19:53I've got to do this every month. I've got to get more and more collateralized, more and more
19:57opportunity for it to be blackmailed for the rest of my life. What I found out shortly after
20:01leaving is that that's basically what Keith was doing with women from even before he started NXIVM.
20:07He would bind them into some sort of obligatory relationship where he would have something over
20:13them. DOS was the first time it became systematized. So once I was fully collateralized,
20:20I was told that I had to give collateral every month and that I also had to recruit my own slaves,
20:25something that I didn't really want to do because I wasn't in myself. I was fully in NXIVM,
20:30but this was like, I don't even know what this is. Like on one side of my brain, I'm thinking,
20:34how am I going to get out of here? This is crazy. People think we're a cult. This is insane. And
20:39then the other part of me going, well, you're a green sash and you committed to this and the
20:43other women here are lower rank and you got to suck it up and be strong and be a leader to them
20:48because you committed. And my relationship with Lauren became very strained at this time because
20:53it was very much a similar dynamic of an abusive relationship, which now I know is what Keith was
20:59doing to her. And it wasn't actually the night of the branding that woke me up and snapped me out
21:03of it. It was weeks later when I realized that the symbol on my body, that symbol, when you look in
21:10the mirror, you turn your head to the side, was Keith's initials. I was trying to figure out how
21:15to get out because I didn't want to give collateral for the rest of my life, nor recruit a bunch of
21:20slaves into something that I didn't fully believe in yet. And meanwhile, a lot of things were
21:26happening that were huge red flags and specifically two of his closest friends from the beginning,
21:31Pam Kafritz and Barb Jeske, the purple sashes, the two purple sashes, the highest rank other than
21:37Nancy and Keith, died of cancer. The funerals were very strange because they were very
21:47showy and more like a wedding than a funeral. And I could have put my finger on it at the time,
21:54but I was very uncomfortable, especially when Pam died, because also he presented her as like his
22:00life partner. And at the same time, Mark Vicente, who had brought me in, was my business partner and
22:06helped me open the center. He was leaving. He wouldn't tell me why he was leaving unless I
22:12signed an NDA. Under that NDA, he told me what he knew, which was not the whole picture because he
22:18didn't know about the branding. But what he did know is that women were part of a secret group
22:22and they were getting assignments. Some of the women had the assignment to go seduce Keith and
22:27that sex was involved. I knew about the branding because I'd been branded and I somehow felt safe
22:32under his NDA to tell him what I knew. And together, the first time we had a fully honest
22:37conversation about everything that we had seen and experienced. And with that, we were able to
22:42piece together what we actually now know is the true nature of DOS, which is like a black male
22:45pyramid scheme with sex. And I believe that's what Keith's plan was for me.
22:58All of a sudden, all the things that had ever been said about Keith in the media,
23:02from my friends and family, were all just suddenly glaringly true. And I woke up like that.
23:10It was not a slow thing anymore. It was just instant. The rug got pulled out from under me
23:15and my reality got flipped upside down. Now I'm no longer this recruiter for a personal
23:20development group. I'm like part of this nefarious sex cult. And what are we going to do now?
23:29And that was a very, very scary time because I didn't know who was in it. I didn't know how deep
23:37it was. I didn't know how much collateral people had. All I knew is that I had to get out. And
23:41Mark and Nippy and I and a few others, Mark's wife, Bonnie, we just strategized very quickly
23:48how to get out and how to do it without them coming after us, which of course they did because
23:55there's a playbook. Silence defectors. We ended up having a whole strategy about how to basically
24:02cause a scene so that people would start to understand what was going on, but also step away
24:08in a way that they felt like that we wouldn't be a threat. Because NXIVM didn't go after people
24:12who left. They went after people who left and said negative things. Mark Vicente had set up a meeting
24:18for me at the FBI office and I told him everything I knew and then crickets. I had this image of them
24:25like storming the center and stopping the next round of branding, which was supposed to happen
24:29that week. But yeah, I went to them and they didn't do anything. And so then we decided to go
24:35to the press. And then the New York Times article came out in the fall of 2017.
24:40And that's really when the proverbial hit the fan. I mean, this was probably the most traumatic,
24:46scary time of my life. I wasn't sure if I was going to be followed, if they were going to come
24:52after me. They did. One of the leaders came to Vancouver and tried to get the Vancouver police
24:57to arrest me on a bunch of charges that they basically made up. Fraud, mischief, and theft.
25:04Apparently it was that article that got Moira Penza, my prosecutor hero in New York, to say,
25:13hey, we got to do something about this. And her and her team and the FBI acted very quickly
25:18to extradite Keith, who was hiding in Mexico like a little coward, and deport him and hold a trial
25:25and have an incredible legal stance that was quite obvious who the bad people were and who the good
25:30people were, and put him in jail for 120 years. In that time period where they don't know what I
25:38know, I was trying to let people, as many people, know the truth. I'm still shocked about what was
25:43revealed. When we blew the whistle, there's what we knew. And then there was so much more
25:47revealed at the trial that was just, I don't know, I don't know how to put it. I don't know how to
25:54that was shocking, mind-blowing, incredibly upsetting to know all this was happening while
25:59we were involved. One of my dear friends who's married, who was in DOS and having to
26:06perform in sex acts with Keith, and just really horrific things that just shocked me. I thought I
26:13knew the worst of it, and it was so much more. And specifically with Lauren, what was heartbreaking is
26:19that I found out that he'd been promising her a baby. She was in it for the long term. She missed
26:26out on an opportunity to be a mother because she was waiting for Keith to, you know, grant her that
26:31honor to carry his child, which he was promising to many women. The wake of Keith's destruction is
26:42unimaginable. And there's probably more that we don't even know about. My understanding is that
26:47he was kind of playing the victim, and that he was misunderstood. And he was, I believe his
26:54lawyer was always painting him as, you know, maybe unconventional, but always a good man,
27:00trying to help people, and maybe went too far, but he was never trying to hurt anybody.
27:07Keith is convicted of all seven charges, including sex trafficking conspiracy,
27:12wire fraud conspiracy, forced labor conspiracy, and racketeering conspiracy.
27:17And the jury only took less than four hours to deliberate. It was very clear.
27:29When all of this kind of came to light, and the vow came out, what I didn't realize is that the
27:33vow opened up a world where people in all different religions and cults and abusive
27:39relationships, anything there was coercive control or gaslighting, people watched that
27:44and saw themselves in it and felt that they were no longer alone. And they felt seen.
27:51I had no idea that was going to happen when we did the vow. Like, even when we were filming it,
27:54we just, we were documenting it partly for protection, because we had to show what we
27:59were doing, and we were trying to do the right thing. And I never thought this footage would
28:03become an HBO hit during a pandemic and reach people and all over the world and give them hope
28:11to get out of the situation they were in, in some cases, in some cases, avoid a situation.
28:16I can't even tell you how many people wrote to me saying, I almost like signed up for this thing or
28:21joined this thing. And then I saw the vow and I realized what the red flags were. I wrote the book
28:28just actually as the trial was underway and was finishing the book in the middle of the trial.
28:35It's really my story of getting in and my time in NXIVM and then up until the trial.
28:42The book is called Scarred, Escaping NXIVM, The Cult That Bound My Life.
28:47We started a podcast called A Little Bit Culty, and we look at things that are a little bit culty
28:51and a lot culty and everything in between. Unfortunately, there's thousands of cults.
28:56We don't actually know how many specifically because they keep popping up and they've been
29:01under the radar and they remain under the radar until they're not. Every episode, we're talking
29:06to somebody from a different group or religion or organization or field of expertise, and we've come
29:13to the conclusion that any group can become culty if they're not already. They may start altruistic
29:19and start with the great ideals, but with the right, or in some cases, the wrong person involved
29:23or at the helm, they can take a turn. We've also come to the conclusion that everyone is susceptible.
29:28Nobody is immune. If you think you are immune, you are the most susceptible. Really, truly, the
29:34only actual immunity is from educating yourself. That's what we try to do now. We actually made an
29:39episode specifically for people who have friends and family that are involved in something they
29:43are concerned about to be perhaps a bit culty. The best advice I would say to them is don't
29:49tell them that they're in a cult. Don't put them on the defensive because it actually reinforces
29:53what the group has said to them will happen from people on the outside. You want to give your
29:58friends and family a lifeline to the outside world. You want them to feel safe and not judged
30:03by you. If you can just be present with them and loving with them and try to be genuinely
30:09curious like, oh, tell me about this group and what do you do there? Oh, so you don't
30:14get paid for the work that you do? For example, just ask questions in a way that maybe
30:19the person could start to get back to their critical thinking because often that's been taken
30:24away and you want them to have someone to call if and when they start to have doubts. The first
30:30piece of advice I like to give people is to know that, and this is easier said than done, but that
30:36you're already whole and that you're already complete and you don't need any of those things,
30:40but oftentimes we feel that need. I'd say if you feel like something's being
30:46sold to you based on an assumption of your neediness and they're offering the antidote
30:51to that, they're offering the answers and they're dangling a promise of salvation or
30:57success and it's all there, everything you need is there, that's a huge red flag. Nobody has all
31:02the answers. Do your research. If you type in, is blank a cult? Does anything come up on the
31:07internet? Are there articles from actual legitimate publications saying that this is problematic from
31:13legitimate sources? And what's the company or organization's group response to those allegations?
31:21Oftentimes people will say, oh, they're just jilted lovers or so-and-so went crazy.
31:25That's a huge red flag. Where there's smoke, there's fire. So that's my advice to people
31:30is forget the word cult. Is this toxic? Is it healthy? Can you leave? Can you be yourself?
31:36Do you have your full self in this thing? Are you cutting off parts of yourself to be accepted and
31:41to feel belonging? I didn't do anything for a while because I felt like I needed the brand
31:50as proof. People didn't believe it and I had to show people to say this happened and anyone who
31:56was in NXIVM who was still indoctrinated would look at it and go, well, what's so bad about it?
32:04Or, but didn't you choose it? Didn't you say yes to that? That's when I knew they were gone.
32:11Anyone else out of NXIVM would look at me and go, be horrified. I'm so sorry, Sarah.
32:16How did this happen? So a couple of years ago, I had it completely surgically removed.
32:22I'm really glad that his initials are off my body. What's my biggest regret?
32:28I try not to have regrets because I don't think that's a healthy way to live. I really love my
32:34life now. I love my boys and I wouldn't have had my boys if I had not met Nippy and NXIVM.
32:38Sorry, I'm going to cry again. I mean, I can't help but wonder what my 30s would have been like
32:48had I been a part of a legitimate group, a legitimate company and built something that was
32:54real. But like I said, if I had done that, I wouldn't be a mom to my boys and living in Atlanta
33:02and having this adventure. So I think, I don't want to say everything happens for a reason
33:07because I don't know if it's that exactly. Obviously, I wish that I had not gotten grounded,
33:12but it caused me to wake up and be able to be an advocate for survivors and be on this path of
33:22cult recovery advocacy. So maybe it was somehow meant to be somehow. I don't know.
33:52you