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NXIVM’s vexing effect on believers

New York Post, USA
Oct. 1, 2007
Jeane MacIntosh
www.nypost.com
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ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 19531 • Posted: Monday October 1, 2007  

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October 1, 2007 — His followers bow in his presence and call him “Vanguard.”

His detractors square off with him in court and call him a manipulative “brainwasher” who wrecks lives with his “extremely dangerous,” “cult-like” group.

Keith Raniere, leader of an Albany-based organization called NXIVM (pronounced nex-e-um), has built a lucrative empire with his Executive Success Programs.

NXIVM, run by Raniere, 47, and President Nancy Salzman, a 52-year-old registered nurse, claims to pull in at least $4 million a year. Big-name devotees like Seagram heiresses Clare and Sara Bronfman back Raniere - and “The Family,” as insiders call the group - despite his checkered past.

In the 1990s, the Brooklyn-born Raniere, son of New York adman and fund-raiser James Raniere, shuttered a multimillion-dollar marketing firm after authorities in several states alleged that it was an illegal pyramid scheme.

Today, devotees shell out as much as $7,500 to attend NXIVM’s 16-day motivational seminars, called “intensives,” where they are coached using Raniere’s patented behavior-modification “technology.”

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Members, or “ESPians,” also bow to Salzman, called “Prefect,” and refer to nonbelievers to as “parasites” or “suppressives.”

Some who have left have turned against NXIVM and divulged its “secret” policies - only to find themselves mired in years of litigation with Raniere and Salzman.

In published accounts, ex-members and mental-health professionals call NXIVM a “cult-like” group that uses sensory deprivation, “brainwashing” and other mind-bending tactics - sometimes to the point of psychological breakdowns.



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