There were two women at the sentencing of Allison Mack to speak against her, as victims of Mack.
One was Jessica Joan, who appeared in person and the other was Tabitha Chapman, who appeared on video.
Tabitha spoke for perhaps 10 minutes and since recording devices are not permitted in the antiquated federal court systems – a perhaps convenient way to prevent the public from knowing all the nuances of a public trial – and since the stenographer did not transcribe the video, the exact words of her statement may not be published unless Tabitha does it herself.
She is not shy about discussing her role in NXIVM and unafraid to reveal her true name – first and last. She appeared in the docuseries “Seduced” and on the Albany Times Union podcast “NXIVM on Trial”.
Tabitha Chapman was a coach at NXIVM and on the day of Mack’s sentencing, June 30, 2021, she tweeted, “I feel like I am waiting for the dice to stop spinning to know Allison Mack’s sentencing today. ‘Come on! Come on! Come on!'”
On her video, played at the sentencing, Chapman said that Mack contacted her about doing web-design work and running her personal website – and that Mack insisted she take NXIVM courses if she wanted to work for her. She ended up moving to Albany and working without pay in exchange for NXIVM courses.
Chapman spoke harshly about Mack saying she verbally and emotionally abused her, criticizing her for her weight and publicly humiliating her.
During an earlier appearance on Dr. Oz, Chapman said, “I was originally food-restricted because Keith had everyone convinced that the fastest way to work your issues was to work your relationship with food.” She told Dr. Oz that she ate between 500 and 900 calories daily as Raniere suggested.
During her sentencing video, Chapman said, “Once I moved to Albany, I was subjected to cruelty beyond my imagination” adding that Mack became a “bully,” who “told me that I would ruin my children if I did not fix the defects in my personality.”
Perhaps the strangest thing Chapman said was that Mack told her that being raped came with a choice either to suffer through it or try to experience joy.
Chapman expressed sympathy for Mack and her victims saying, “I am heartbroken for you and I am heartbroken for all of the women who trusted you and were harmed” and wished Mack a “swift recovery.”
About an hour after her video, Mack was sentenced.
After sentencing, Chapman tweeted, “Three years. Loaded feelings.”
Tabitha Chapman
According to the Seduced Documentary website:
“Tabby Chapman is a Marriage and Family Therapist trainee and a Professional Clinical Counselor trainee, through Life Source Affordable Counseling Services.
“Tabby is also the founder of The Freedom Train Project, an advocacy program for people wishing to leave cults or coercive relationships.”
On the same website she has two blog posts:
Overcoming the Silence: How Speaking Out Made Me A Better Person
She writes, “All over the world, when the docuseries SEDUCED: Inside the NXIVM Cult, airs, Twitter becomes a sea of people who would “NEVER join a cult” and would “NEVER fall for any type of coercive control.”…Those nights bring a new influx of “I can’t believe they fell for any of that” or “There’s no way in hell I would ever wear a sash.”…
There was a time when I was so ashamed I vowed to myself that I would never speak of my experiences. I had incredibly low self-esteem as a result of participating in NXIVM. … My partner disagreed and pressed for me to one day write a book. … I was able to work with a cult deprogrammer, Roseanne Henry, who helped me see how interwoven the trauma from the organization became in my life. Nearly every aspect of my day-to-day existence had been affected by the teachings of Keith Raniere and company…..
Chapman then tells how she got involved with Seduced and decided to tell her story:
To relieve pressure and pain when someone heard my story so that they could say “me too, I’m not alone.” I connected with the crew of Seduced in a way that I never could connect with any other person in NXIVM or JNESS … They provided a top therapist with a specialty in cult recovery, so that I could have as much mental health support as possible…
The filming aspect was a whole journey in and of itself. I was “on set” at least four different times, filming so many complex layers about what recovery looks like, for me and for the other women in the series. Ultimately, many of these scenes were not in the documentary, as the overall storyline changed after India joined… We filmed a tense conversation with someone whom I had enrolled. We filmed a group meeting with the renowned sociologist Janja Lalich, who has become a trusted person in my life…
From that, and from the support from my partner, I reached for my goals and finally felt a sense of purpose in life. Now, I’m nearly graduated as a Marriage and Family Therapist, determined to be a beacon for others just as this project was a beacon to me.
Her other blog post is The Lure from Poverty – NXIVM not only for the rich
I grew up in abject poverty… during the 80s… A child comes home from school…and wipes away the roaches from the kitchen table to sit down and devour a snack of crackers and peanut butter, that was provided to them the day before from someone from the government… a child finishes homework, has kool-aid to hide the brown water coming from the faucets, and takes a bath with bubbles from shampoo, maybe, and goes to bed…
It’s a family waiting at the social services agency with hungry children who sometimes had not eaten in several days. Or maybe they had some cheese and cabbage. Children who cannot attend after-school sports or activities either because either their parents don’t have the means or they can’t transport their kids…
That was my early childhood…
As a college graduate in my 20s, I was able to move slightly beyond my childhood with my degree, but I needed something that could fully take me beyond my origins…
When I fell into the NXIVM community, I felt that I had found a solution to my poverty, and that I could do good for the world. What was the solution? Me. And You. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” was the number one quote in NXIVM. In order to be that change, all I had to do was break down everything about me and my personality and learn that everything was a choice, and all events and effects in my life were a direct result of something I did to cause them…
But in order to fully get to that point, or to be ‘unified’ or ‘integrated’ as the saying goes, we had to work through our inner deficiencies. ”You’re disintegrated on that topic,” we were told, “You can take x training to help you with that and get an EM.” When we complained about the cost, they would use manipulation such as “You said you were committed to your personal growth. If you really aren’t committed, then that’s fine, but don’t lie about it.”
This causes a person to have to make a choice between investing in themselves and be committed to their personal growth, or be a whole list of bad traits forever. Did I want to be right about it? Did I want to seem like I’m being controlling? Or should I let the control go and make it work?
I joined NXIVM at the urging of Allison Mack. She offered the opportunity to work for her if I would take the courses. I moved to Vancouver and subsequently to Albany. They began to break down who I was. Initially, I was told that my style of communication was “parasitic.” …I was always looking for attention or using control tactics to cause a person to interact with me. I remember feeling confused because they were great at breaking me down…
In their module called “Communication and being at cause,” they suggested that communicating a concept is the sole responsibility of the person who is communicating. They must know exactly how to deliver the message to the listener so as to get past the listener’s fears and needs and inner deficiencies so that they can hear the message as it was intended…
Over time, … I would… dedicat[e] over half of my income to more classes and EMs. I was trained to spend money on my personal growth as an ‘investment’…My goal was to break out of poverty. I wanted to work through my ‘issues’ and ‘inner deficiencies’ to be able to make lots of money. Seriously, I think my ‘infinity goal state’ as they call it may have actually included a helicopter…
I spent years in NXIVM. Eventually, I left and joined the workforce again…working with an “outside world” company. I found it difficult to maintain the status quo. And, when the news broke out in October 2017 [about DOS], a piece of my will broke as well. What had I done? All of the trauma I had had in my lifetime did not prepare me for the realization that I spent years and so much of my hard-earned money for nothing. I struggled with the idea that I feel I am so broken that I will never amount to anything and never break away from the cycle of poverty in which I grew up.
Some days are better than others, but I have a lot of hope. I dedicate myself to true personal growth in the form of personal therapy sessions, and try to keep myself balanced and always seeking improvement. When something doesn’t work out or I fail at something, I hear “You can never keep a promise to yourself,” and “You aren’t dedicated enough to your personal growth.” With this and other such rhetoric in my head, I keep going.
I’ve had to file bankruptcy because of the debt I got into while I was involved with Nxivm…Recovery is hard. Especially when you are recovering from having your sense of self and the world moved around like a Picasso painting. As beautiful as that mess is, it’s still a work in progress. I’m nearly done with my Master’s degree, which will unlock a promising future.
