In a filing earlier this week in the civil case, Sarah Edmondson et al., versus Keith Raniere et al., defendant Danielle Roberts makes a new claim about lead plaintiff, Sarah Edmondson.
Roberts has repeatedly claimed that Edmondson held a higher rank than her in NXIVM.
She now claims Edmondson held a higher rank in DOS, the secret sorority that branded women.
Therefore, she argues that whatever evil is alleged about DOS and NXIVM, if valid, applies to Edmondson more than her.
Sarah Edmondson warned many whom she recruited into NXIVM to escape from NXIVM.
Yet Edmondson is a plaintiff, and Roberts is a defendant.
Roberts claims that Edmondson recruited slaves for DOS, while Roberts did not.
Roberts certainly had a more notorious role in DOS insofar as she performed most of the brandings, including that of Edmondson.
In turn, Edmondson was responsible for Roberts losing her medical license.
She testified to the branding experience. It is believed she was the only woman who was branded who complained against Roberts.
It was persuasive, and the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct revoked Robert’s license last year.
Some argue that the punishment was extreme for a physician who had no other complaints against her.
Testimony during the hearing showed that Roberts was highly regarded and considered a young doctor of extreme talent and promise everywhere she practiced.
She lost her income and life work and is now selling term life insurance.
However, Edmondson was unrelenting. Based primarily on her testimony, the NYS Board revoked Roberts’ license.
Edmondson Deceived
Lauren Salzman told Edmondson that the brand was to be a symbol of the four elements. However, Salzman knew better as she admitted at the trial of Keith Raniere.
The brand was Raniere’s initials, cleverly disguised by positioning the ‘K’ and the ‘R’ of the brand 90 degrees clockwise.
Roberts knew the brand was Raniere’s initials but has claimed it was not her business to tell Edmondson or others whom she was branding. They were slaves, as she was. It was up to their masters to tell them.
Her failure to disclose this fact was a matter of obedience and loyalty to DOS.
But Edmondson argued that Roberts, as a licensed physician, had a duty to inform her what the brand really was.
It is one thing for a married woman to have a brand with the symbol of the four elements. It is quite another thing to have a brand of another man’s initials on her pubis.
Roberts argued that she was not acting as a physician when she branded Edmondson and others.
Roberts refers to Edmondson’s description of the branding as false.
The New York Times wrote: Sarah Edmondson, one of the participants, said she had been told she would get a small tattoo as part of the initiation. But she was not prepared for what came next.
Each woman was told to undress and lie on a massage table, while three others restrained her legs and shoulders. According to one of them, their “master,” a top Nxivm official named Lauren Salzman, instructed them to say: “Master, please brand me, it would be an honor.”
A female doctor [Roberts] proceeded to use a cauterizing device to sear a two-inch-square symbol below each woman’s hip, a procedure that took 20 to 30 minutes. For hours, muffled screams and the smell of burning tissue filled the room.
“I wept the whole time,” Ms. Edmondson recalled. “I disassociated out of my body.”
Sarah Edmondson’s book about her experiences in NXIVM
As part of the evidence in the license revocation hearing, the Department of Justice provided a video of Roberts branding Edmondson to the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct.
Frank Report reviewed a copy of the video:
The branding of Edmondson lasts about 15 minutes. The actual time the cautery pen touched skin was about 2 minutes, broken up into seven painful strokes of a pen about 1000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Edmondson is naked and is held down by four naked women as a dressed Roberts applies the brand.
Salzman, also dressed, looks on.
When the pen touches the skin, Edmondson breathes deeply. She is not crying. At times, she jokes and describes what she is experiencing as an honor.
At the end of the ceremony, she gets up and is still naked when she thanks Roberts and embraces Salzman.
She did not know then that the DOS symbol was the initials of Raniere. But, as Salzman admitted, part of the recruitment process was to deny Raniere had any participation in DOS.
Civil Suit
Roberts again uses the Edmondson defense in her most recent filing in the NXIVM civil suit. However, this time it is the double Edmondson defense:
She claims Edmondson had a higher rank in DOS as well as NXIVM.
Roberts writes, “My rank in DOS was inferior to that of Sarah Edmonson’s as evidenced by her ‘harboring of slaves,’ and my lack of doing so or building the [DOS] organization, and [my role] was FAR inferior to hers in ‘NXVIM’ (or ESP).
“So, if this were some criminally intended conspiracy, Ms. Edmonson, with her 11-year collaboration as a Green Sash Ranking, Board Member Appointment, and DOS ‘slave-ship’ downline, should be being prosecuted far more aggressively than I.
“If [DOS] is not some sex-trafficking slave ring, then these charges should have never existed in the first place. Which is it?
“Despite these obvious facts, the Plaintiffs continue to try to paint me into this phantom family photo.”
