By Kevin
Frank, your argument that the existence of collateral makes the article reviews and memorial service transcription a form of forced labor can be applied to any company, school, government agency, or religious organization that makes it’s employees, students, or worshipers volunteer on their own time, for no money, in exchange for staying in the good graces of the higher ups and under threat of punishment if they do not participate.
Nicole appears at Pam Cafritz’s Memorial Service after a night of forced labor, transcribing a video for use at the service.
Do you think those company employees and students in their cheesy neon team t-shirts, do you think they’re really volunteering on a Saturday morning to pick up trash on the side of the road? You don’t think they’re participating because they know that it will hurt their performance review or result in a reprisal of some sort of they stay home?
Almost every company, business and school does this. In the real world, our employment, and the threat of termination, is collateral.
And these things are used to get people to do things off-the-books for no compensation all the time, and no one would care, because we’re not all attractive blonde women with Hollywood and royal pedigrees.
People who have followed this case believe Raniere was convicted for rape, sexual assault, and sex trafficking. Are you telling me that if we read the court transcripts, we’re not going to find any of that, and instead find example after example of someone reviewing an article on Google or transcribing a late friend’s memorial service in an air conditioned office?
Allison Mack with Erika Durance, whom Mack did not induce to do any forced labor.
And Allison is in prison for this? Or is it for asking Nicole to go on a walk with Keith? Something that resulted in a sex act, but which Allison had no prior knowledge of?
Or is it that Allison trafficked India to Keith in exchange for payment for Allison’s work in The Source, even though the e-mail everyone references, as evidence shows, Allison politely asked for payment for her work, and promised to work with Clare Bronfman to streamline the process going forward? The e-mail where sex and other DOS women aren’t mentioned once?
India was Allison Mack’s slave.
Dr. Danielle Roberts branded India, while Mack told her the brand symbolized the four elements. But, by gad, later, she discovered – thanks to the Frank Report – that the symbol was more than the mere four elements. It was the glorious Keith Raniere’s initials. Surprise!
My team at work contributed our weekends for two months in the summer on community service projects for five straight years, for 12 hours a day, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, in the New Mexico heat. All in the name of a community service competition that our Squadron had to win to make our managers happy.
So for myself, that’s 36 hours per weekend (on top of our regular work week), for eight weekends. So that’s 288 hours of work for each summer. Multiplied by five years, that’s 1,440 hours of unpaid, physically demanding work in the outdoors, in borderline 100 degree heat. Multiplied by the number of people in our group, approximately 10, that’s 14,400 hours of unpaid, physically demanding work, off the clock.
Moira Kim Penza is listed in the phone book under attorneys in NYC
Frank, do you have Moira’s number? Do you have Neil Glazer’s number? Do I have a case? Do my teammates have a case? What’s that, you say? We don’t? Oh, that’s right, we aren’t the right kinds of people, so the legal protections afforded to these upper class women won’t be afforded to us. Because we pick and choose who we protect, not based on who needs protection, but on the nature of what’s happening, but on who people are, what they look like, and how much social capital they have.
Would it change things if I told Moira and Neil that four of the team members were attractive women in their 20s and 30s, almost identical to Nicole and India? Except that they didn’t come from money, which might lower their value by a hair.
I can say that my intuition of never allowing my female subordinates to help with volunteer projects has been right on the money. No woman under my supervision will ever volunteer for a Squadron event under my watch. The 16-year-old male intern, yes, but I don’t have to worry about a US attorney making a sex trafficking case out of me asking him to clean the shredder or take out the trash.
This photo above marks the end of Kevin’s remarks. The photo says “The End.”
Going forward, begin my comments. Just in case anybody is confused: FR comments start here, and Kevin’s comments are done. If you want to read Kevin’s comments go above the photo that says “The End.”
By Frank
Keith Raniere is the brilliant man who devised an all-female sorority. It had one man – he – at the head. He held it together by keeping collateral on all the members except him.
FBI Special Agent Michael Lever described collateral in an arrest warrant for Keith Raniere.
Lever wrote:
Collateral consisted of material or information the prospective slave would not want to be revealed because it would ruin her or someone close to her.
Collateral included
sexually explicit photographs
videos made to look candid in which prospective slaves told damning stories (true or untrue) about themselves, close friends and/or family members;
letters making damaging accusations (true or untrue) against friends and family members.
The blackmail element of collateral is what sunk the Wise One.
Keith Raniere, the world’s wisest man.
Kevin has a point. The threat of losing a job and your income is also collateral used to force so-called volunteerism.
The forced labor Nicole had to endure is light. It is not the kind of labor legislators intended to be “forced labor.” The DOJ stretched this out of proportion and made new law.
The better charge should have been blackmail or extortion, not forced labor. But that may have been a state charge. That would have excluded the DOJ from prosecuting labor coerced by collateral.
Being forced to transcribe five hours of a video or reading reports – even written by Profundis Dementus – is not worth two decades in prison.
That does not mean Raniere is innocent. On the contrary, he had his poison pills – collateral- in mind to harm and abuse.
But the law should be evenly applied, not for the sake of the Rascal, but to protect against future misapplication of the law against others using this as a precedent.
