I interviewed two former Nxivm proctors recently who said that Kristin Kreuk stopped actively working as a coach for Nxivm in 2013. This is in addition to three other Nxivm insiders I spoke with previously who said the same thing.
However, the proctors added new information about the secretive Kreuk.
They said that while she stopped coaching in 2013, even sending a letter notifying Nancy Salzman that she was unable to volunteer time to coach because of career commitments, Kreuk did not leave Nxivm altogether until late 2015 or early 2016.
She became inactive as a coach in 2013 due to acting obligations and her breakup with another Nxivm leader, actor Mark Hildreth, the proctors said. But, they insist that Kreuk remained a member of Nxivm until years later.
When Kreuk told fellow Nxivm colleagues she was going to be inactive [as a coach] she did not have anything critical to say about Nxivm. Despite this, Salzman reportedly believed Kreuk was opting out of her public role in Nxivm because of bad press Nxivm leader Keith Alan Raniere was getting.
[He had been revealed as a pedophile in a Feb. 2012 Albany Times Union expose Kruek was mentioned in an article in the series. She was also named as a likely defendant in a lawsuit against NXIVM. She was also named in John Tighe’s articles of the Necker Island summit that discussed NXIVM crimes and who was responsible.]
However, Kreuk reportedly derived benefits from Nxivm [including exploration of meaning or EM therapy and support] until late 2015, and possibly into 2016, according to the two Nxivm proctors I spoke with. This might account for Kreuk encouraging Mark Busse and possibly others to take Nxivm intensives in May 2015.
This also supports a contention that Kreuk got out of Nxivm by slow degrees. Almost like the opposite of the slow boiling frog. The water slowly cooled and she hopped out quietly.
Timeline
Kreuk appears to have left coaching Nxivm intensives in 2013, in a quasi-private manner.
In or around 2016, she actually left.
In 2018, after Raniere’s arrest, she made her first public statement that she was out and downplayed her role as a coach and the duration of her membership in Nxivm.
Hard to Say Why Kreuk Got Out Slowly
She may have been genuinely convinced she got some good out of Nxivm and its teachers.
She might have tried to slip away because she was worried about her career and the damage that might be done if it were known she was in Nxivm after the pedophile revelations in 2012.
She may have also been afraid of Raniere. He might have had something on her that could have been used against her. I am not suggesting collateral [[blackmail worthy material deliberately gathered by Raniere or his slaves] per se.
Raniere was good at gathering information about people. In one of her exploration of meaning therapy sessions she might have revealed damaging information about herself to Nancy Salzman who would have certainly shared this information with Raniere.
Kreuk might have feared he might damage her in some way, putting her in a ‘damned if I leave and damned if I stay’ scenario that required her to delicately escape.
I was told that her boyfriend Hildreth tried to get Kreuk to invest her life savings in Raniere-guided schemes but that fortunately Kreuk’s father stood in the way and prevented it.
If she had invested with Raniere, based on his previous track record, Kreuk would have likely wound up broke.
It is possible Kreuk was conflicted. There seemed to be good in Nxivm, She admitted it helped her overcome shyness. There were good people in Nxivm. They became her friends, her coaches and trainers, and she coached others and helped train students in the Nxivm tech.
Kreuk was a Coach of Coaches
Kreuk was also a high ranking member of Nxivm, who rose to the level of Yellow Sash with Two Stripes, which made her qualified to teach and train students and even coach beginner coaches.
An awakening of Nxivm’s dark side may have been a slow one for her.
It may not have happened until that fateful day when Raniere was arrested, on March 26, 2018. Three days later she made her first public statement on Twitter.
People like Barbara Bouchey and others say there was a lot of good in the teachings of Nxivm. Keith Raniere, they concluded, may have been rotten at the core, but the teachings he created [or, as some stay stole] had genuinely positive benefits to them.
if you parse Kruek’s carefully-worded 2018 Twitter statement, she is clearly trying to preserve her career and not be tainted by the scandal of Nxivm. She felt she had to say something lest the media assume, based on previous publicity about her membership, she was still in Nxivm.
Who can blame her for trying to save her hard won acting career, especially if she joined Nxivm with good intentions?
Her coaching and recruiting of students was certainly not with the purpose of tricking them into joining a cult. She likely believed in the value of Nxivm to help people with their life problems.
She sought to help others.
She Appears to Realize She Was Wrong About Nxivm
Kreuk is no doubt a very good actress. She convincingly plays a brave woman who fights a pedophile and big corporations risking her whole career – on her Canadian TV show Burden of Truth.
She has no burden to fight Nxivm.
One things is certain, Kreuk got out of Nxivm safely and managed to preserve her money and career.
She may not be brave but neither did she self-destruct like some of the others, including her Smallville costar Allison Mack.
She looked out for herself and saved herself.
Is she wrong to do so?
Most others, imbued with self preservation tendencies [often destroyed by Nxivm] would have done the same thing.
We tend to judge Kreuk more harshly because she virtue signals a lot about brave women and plays a brave woman on TV. But she is an actress. Not a heroine in real life.
She quietly removed herself before the explosion of DOS and related scandals. Give her credit for brains even if she does not have courage to stand up to fight Nxivm.
Heroes we have already: Mark Vicente, Sarah Edmondson, Anthony Ames, Kristin Keeffe, Barbara Bouchey, Toni Zarattini, Joe O’Hara, Susan Dones, the Nxivm 9, Bonnie Piesse, Catherine Oxenberg, Rick Ross, Jim Odato, John Tighe and others. They were the heroes who fought Nxivm and put their names on the line.
Kreuk is not a hero. But she dodged the damage that others received.
She might have helped fight the beast when the battle was ongoing. But that was not in her best interest. It angered some when she virtue signaled against Harvey Wienstein.
It is true that Kreuk was used to recruit people into Nxivm and that she was a major part of Nxivm and its growth. And she was one of the few who got out unscathed. Her career continues to grow and she is unfazed at the enormous difference between the character she plays on TV and the real life. person
She may not be brave but she is smart.
Give her credit for that.
MK10ART’s fascinating painting of Nancy Salzman and her influence on Kristin Kreuk.
