This is Part 9 of our study of Lauren Salzman, as we try to ascertain to what extent a member of a cult, a high ranking member, can be a victim or a perpetrator or a combination of varying degrees of both.
Part 1: How Lauren Salzman Described Her Branding Session
Part 3: Lauren Salzman Describes Collateral She Got From Her Slaves, After Lying to Them About DOS
Part 5 Lauren Salzman and Her Slaves Got Bare-Ass Paddling
Part 6: Lauren Salzman Manages Her Slaves – With Cruelty and Insanity
Part 8: More Insanity: Lauren Salzman Touches Man at Volleyball; Keith Says ‘No Avatar Baby’
In Part 9, we examine how Lauren tried to “help” a gay woman, Siobhan Hotaling, a longtime Nxivm member, cure her “ethical breach.”
Her breach was not wanting Keith Raniere’s sperm when she wanted to have a baby with her wife, Christine.
Assistant US Attorney Moira Penza is examining Lauren, who is a witness for the prosecution in the trial of Keith Alan Raniere.
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Q Are you familiar with a woman named Siobhan?
A Yes, I am.
Q Who was Siobhan?
A Siobhan was a proctor in ESP NXIVM, and a friend of ours.
Q And can you describe if proctor is a rank in the —
A Proctors are rank, yeah. The proctors like run throughout the educational programs. And their first – like Level 1 where you can have a business with a person at that level of rank. They’re like the managers.
Q Are you aware of Siobhan’s sexual orientation?
A Siobhan identifies as gay, yeah.
Q Was she married?
A She was married and then divorced and now remarried.
Q And her first marriage, was that to a woman?
A Yes.
Q Was Siobhan’s wife involved in NXIVM?
A No.
Q At some point, did you become aware that Siobhan and her wife wanted to have children?
A I did, yes.
Q And to your knowledge, did she and her wife take steps to accomplish that?
A They did, yes. They went through fertility treatment, with an anonymous donor.
Q Did there come a time where the defendant [Keith Raniere] spoke to you about Siobhan’s decision to have children with an anonymous donor?
A Yes.
Q What did he tell you?
A He [Raniere] told me that Loreta [Garza] remembered that Siobhan at one time had asked him to be the donor. And that when Loreta reminded her about this, Siobhan went and victimized herself to her wife, like she was being pressured against her will to do this, and that that had changed Christine’s, her wife’s perception or beliefs and perceptions about Keith. And, basically, that she [Siobhan] had thrown him under the bus to her wife, and this was damaging.
Q So let’s take that slowly. What did the defendant consider to be Siobhan’s breach?
A That she had victimized herself and spoke badly about him to her wife concerning Keith possibly being the [sperm] donor.
Q Can you just break that down a little bit and explain it. So what did she [Siobhan] do to victimize herself, in the defendant’s view, as he explained it to you?
A That she felt forced [to use Keith as sperm donor] and then spoke about him like he was forcing her to do it, and made her wife think that she had been forced and felt. And then Christine viewed Keith badly because of this.
Q Forced to do what?
A To have Keith be the [sperm] donor of their child.
Q Did the defendant tell you what would have healed Siobhan’s breach?
A Yes. That Siobhan would legitimately come and ask him to be the donor. But then he said that he didn’t intend to have the child with Siobhan. He wasn’t going to have a child with Siobhan, but just that she had to legitimately ask.
But to me, that didn’t relate to the breach of throwing him under the bus to Christine. And if he hadn’t wanted to be the donor, then why would it have been important to remind Siobhan about this in the first place?
Q Did the defendant make a comment about Siobhan and her choice not to have him as the donor for her children?
A Yes, that he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t want to have him as the donor. And like why she would choose an anonymous donor over him, who she knew and had a prior relationship with.
And also that his children would have 50 percent off of the children’s educational program that he created. And so that seemed to him a good thing.
{Ed. Note: Ah Keith, what a great father. He was going to give his own kids 50 percent off. Rainbow Cultural Garden’s full cost was $10,000 per month.]
Q What was the educational program he created?
A Rainbow. Rainbow Cultural Gardens. It’s a multicultural – multilingual educational program that was expensive. So he said his children would have 50 percent off of that.
Q Were you asked to speak to Siobhan in any way regarding this?
A Yes.
Q What were you asked to do?
A To help Siobhan resolve this breach.
Q And what did you do in response to that?
A Met with Siobhan and tried to help her resolve the breach. But I didn’t really believe that what resolved the breach was her going to Keith and asking him legitimately to be the donor. So, I tried to help Siobhan look at why she would victimize herself and speak badly of others.
Lauren Salzman
Q In your discussions with Siobhan, did Siobhan say she wanted to have the defendant be the donor of the sperm for a child?
A No, she said she did not want him to be the donor of the child.
Q Did you suggest to Siobhan that she and her wife should offer to have the defendant’s child?
A I don’t believe so. I — no.
Q Why not?
A Because I thought it was ridiculous, and it didn’t even seem to relate to really what the breach was.
Q Did Siobhan become aware she had committed an ethical breach against the defendant?
A Yes.
Q How?
A She was given feedback about it, at least by me and Pam [Cafritz], and I’m not sure if others….. I believe she discussed it with Loreta, too….
Q What does it mean to give feedback in this context?
A To alert her that her actions and behavior had caused some damage that she ideally would care about and want to correct.
Q What happened to Siobhan in terms of her employment?
A Well, she didn’t — I mean, she never resolved the issue with Keith to his satisfaction and wasn’t eligible to participate in, I think, new business opportunities that she likely would have if she had.
Q And when you say “eligible to participate in business opportunities,” do you mean because she had committed this breach with the defendant?
A Yes, and didn’t resolve it.
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Siobhan
So here is something new. Lauren actually thinking that something Keith wanted her to do – to get Siobhan to go to Keith and ask him to donate his sperm – was “ridiculous.”
Keith could actually be wrong, according to Lauren.
This shows Lauren could at times think for herself.
Nevertheless, she went to Siobhan and counseled her about talking ill about Keith.
She, in a sense, failed. She did not help Siobhan succeed in curing her breach, which would have been for her to go to Keith and ask for his sperm. [I think it is ironic for Lauren desperately wanted Keith’s sperm to have an avatar baby with. So this is doubly cruel on the part of Keith]
By her failure, it caused Siobhan to lose certain Nixvm business opportunities. She was held back.
Lauren’s alleged honesty, a quality she rarely seems to ever express, seems to have come out here. Or was it something else?
Lauren may have not wanted Siobhan to heal her breach. Or more likely, Lauren did not want Siobhan asking for Keith’s sperm since she wanted that for herself. She wanted to have the avatar baby. Lauren may have doubted that Keith would have actually said no. She might have suspected he was only telling her that he would say no because he knew she wanted to have a child with him.
Lauren knew what a liar Keith was. She might have deliberately not tried to do as Keith instructed because of her own desire to have Keith’s sperm for herself.
Note also that Pam got into the act. Even with that demon supporting the notion that Siobhan should beg for Keith’s sperm, it did not work.
That is probably because Siobhan did not want Keith to be the father of her child. She did not know and was not told that he would refuse to give her his sperm. She wanted to have her own family and not be under the monster’s control.
Still, Siobhan did not leave Keith. She stayed in Nxivm and may still be a member of Nxivm.
She was loyal after he was arrested. She worked under Allison Mack for years. In fact, Allison advanced above her in rank quite possibly because Siobhan was held back by her ethical breach.
Siobhan with Allison Mack and Sarah Edmondson
She should have begged for his sperm? This all sounds mad. Adults being punished and sent to correct one another – for a breach of not wanting a monster’s sperm.
They are all completely insane.
And what can one say of the turd Raniere, the most insane of all?
He did not want to have a child with Siobhan, he said. He probably heard Siobhan was contemplating having a child.
His insanity made him insist that Siobhan ask him for sperm – it was a great insult that she had chosen the sperm of an anonymous donor – so damaging to the mission that she didn’t – even though he admitted he was not going to give it to her anyway.
I also love the part where he is explaining to Lauren how foolish Siobhan is for not wanting him to be the father because, after all, that would mean she would get half off of the cost of Rainbow.
While most good fathers pay for the education of their children, the ethicist Keith was going to force Siobhan to put her child in his creepy Rainbow program and make her pay what would amount to most of her income to pay for it.
She would have to deny her child many other things to pay even half price [$5,000 per month].
That Lauren would participate in this madness does not speak well for her. That Siobhan would stay with this asshole doesn’t say much about her.
These are all extraordinarily sick individuals.
