Former slave master Keith Alan Raniere
[Editor’s Note: I originally published much of this material on April 8, 2018 – just days after Keith Alan Raniere was arrested. But as we further study Nxivm and its origins, I thought it would be good to republish this information – especially for our many new readers].
The choice of the cult name Nxivm is mysterious and interesting, and the name bears a striking similarity to an ancient Roman type of “contract.”
Keith Raniere might have had his branding and blackmail scheme in mind long before he executed it.
The name NXIVM appears to correspond with the ancient Roman concept of “Nexum”.
Nexum was a debt contract in the early Roman Republic. The debtor pledged his person, his actual body, as “collateral,” should he default on a loan.
It was, in effect, a mortgage on a person, not on property.
Nexum was accompanied by a symbolic transfer of rights that involved a set of scales, copper weights, and a prescribed vow.
Similar to DOS branding, the nexum contract was entered into with a ceremony with five witnesses. There was also a sixth person – a libripens, a person who held a brass balance.
In the DOS branding, there were the four women who held the branded slave down – the doctor who wielded the branding pen – and the slave master who filmed the event.
Under the nexum contract, a free man became a nexus [bond slave] until he could pay off his debt to the obaeratus [creditor.]
Guru-master Raniere always taught his Nxian slaves that nothing can repay his teachings and this is why he introduced lifelong nexum contracts with his slaves in the form of vows. In fact, the alternate name for DOS is ‘The Vow.”
As a hint of how much Raniere admired ancient Rome – DOS itself is an acronym for the Latin “Dominus Obsequious Sororium” which, roughly translated, means “the submissive females under a dominant male master.”
Back in ancient Rome, there was no single, standard nexum contract that all nexi entered.
There were variations of the nexum contract, and the details of nexum contracts were worked out on a case-by-case basis.
In Nxivm and DOS, each woman [almost all of whom were Nxians] had to come up with her own individual collateral.
Nexi were often beaten and abused by their owners.
Nxians {DOS slaves] were often beaten with paddles and a dungeon was being built to punish disobedient slaves – interrupted by the Frank Report exposing the shocking details of DOS [as confirmed by testimony in the trial of Keith Raniere.]
According to the ancient historian, Livy, nexum was abolished because of the cruelty and lust of a single usurer, Lucius Papirius.
In 326 BC, a young boy named Gaius Publilius, who was a guarantor to his father’s debt, became the nexus of Papirius.
The boy was noted for his youth and beauty, and Papirius desired him sexually. He tried to seduce Publilius with “lewd conversation,” but when the boy failed to respond, Papirius grew impatient and reminded the boy of his position as a bond-slave.
When the boy again refused his forceful advances, Papirius had him stripped and lashed. The wounded boy ran into the street, and an outcry among the people led the consuls to convene the Senate, resulting in the Lex Poetelia Papiria, which forbade holding debtors in bondage for their debt and required instead the debtor’s property be used as collateral.
Eventually, all “indebted” people confined under nexum contracts were released, and nexum as a form of legal contract was ultimately forbidden, with the ancient historian Marcus Terentius Varro dating the abolition of nexum to 313 BC. Poetelius and Livy date the abolition to 326 BC.
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In 2017, the Frank Report, acting on a tip by Catherine Oxenberg, published the first-ever report on Raniere’s DOS branding and collateralizing slave women.
It led to a cratering of the cult – as hundred left and many slaves escaped. Four months later, the New York Times published a story based on earlier Frank Report branding stories and this prompted the FBI to begin an investigation that led to Raniere’s arrest.
In 2018, the FBI found naked photos taken in 2005, of a young girl named Camila Fernandez who was a slave of Raniere and was 15 at the time the photos were taken.
The result was that all of Raniere’s co-defendants immediately cut plea deals rather than stand trial with Raniere – the pedophile.
Raniere stood trial alone, starting in May and was convicted on June 19, 2019. He is awaiting sentencing.
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From the Roman legal point of view, to the lending of money and an ordinary contract, there seems to have been added a damnatio [damnation] by the lender, similar to the old forms of bequest [LEGATUM]: “a thousand asses” and “the scale of the air” as interest and its measurement.
The debt was termed nexumaes. The making of a contract was known as nexi datio, and the debtor was nexum inire
The peculiarity of this form of contract was that the creditor did not need to bring a lawsuit to prove the existence of the debt: the debtor had already confessed his slavery and the bondage was ‘called from the air’ and became nexus am. [linked to the nexi].
As soon as the day fixed for repayment passed, the creditor could arrest him, take him before the praetor, and have him, along with the children in his power.
Raniere updated this method – knowing the US law could not help him enforce his slave contracts – by using collateral – which he threatened to release if the slaves did not obey him and paid their lifelong debt to him.
Raniere seems to have taken this ancient and abolished practice of nexum into the 21st century, modeling his own “debt contract” off of the ancient Roman, Papirius, who was responsible for its abolition.
Like Papirius, Raniere is obsessed with sex, and would use the damaging “collateral” he obtained from his “slaves” (nude pictures, false confessions to crimes and acts of moral turpitude) against his slaves in order to coerce them into sex, and their continued obligations, financial and otherwise, to Raniere.
When coercion failed and a Nxian wanted to leave, or defect, he or she became, to Nxivm, a “fugitive slave.”
In its arrest affidavit, the FBI alleges that Raniere’s partner and chief financial backer, Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman, worked with Raniere to “orchestrate” criminal complaints against a former slave, Sarah Edmondson, who went public and detailed the abuse she endured within the cult.
Sex slaver financier, Clare Bronfman (r), with her legal muscle, Willam F. Savino (l)
An in-depth review of years of Bronfman/Raniere lawsuits and criminal complaints against Nxians [ex-slaves] suggests that the Bronfman/Raniere racketeering enterprise was able, with Bronfman’s millions, to turn the courts into oppressive machines to silence, bankrupt, and destroy the cult’s ex-slaves and others they deemed to be “enemies” of NXIVM.
In this regard, Bronfman used the courts to effectively become instruments of enforcing NXIVM’s own modern twist on the long since abolished fugitive-slave laws.
It is amazing to some, that Bronfman was able to purchase a better plea deal than any of the leaders of Nxivm – despite her being the biggest criminal in the batch – except Raniere.
It is interesting also that the DOJ initially alleged that she used her wealth to silence and attack enemies of Raniere – but somehow she got off with a 21-27 month sentencing guideline plea deal – plus a $6 million forfeiture paid to the Department [Store] of Justice.
Like in the old days of Rome – there is still a two-tier justice system. While Raniere will likely spend his life in prison – Clare Bronfman – unless we can get her charged in the Northern District of NY – who is almost equally guilty as Raniere – will be out of prison most likely in about a year.
