The 11th victim to speak at the sentencing of Keith Raniere came as a bit of a surprise to followers of the Nxivm story.
A woman identified as Jane Doe, a Mexican woman with dark hair and blue eyes, came forward to tell a brand new story about Raniere.
And yet it was not new at all. In essence, she told of how Raniere had begun a relationship with her, evidently leading her to believe that it was a monogamous one and that he promised her motherhood. It was a story that many women have told about Raniere.
She also tells how Clare Bronfman, Loreta Garza, Nancy Salzman, Lauren Salzman, Daniela Padilla, all of whom had sexual relations with Raniere, worked on getting her into a close relationship with him. It is also interesting that Jane was told that Raniere was the head of DOS, a fact that other women claim they did not know when they were recruited.
Jane broke away over the branding [It is not clear to me whether she was branded or not] and risked the release of her collateral by quitting DOS.
Her story, though a bitter and sad one, does not seem to reveal crimes Raniere actually committed but narrates instead a tale that shows that Raniere was kind of a cad to her, misleading her and not really caring about her in the same way he led her to care about him. But let us allow Jane Doe to tell her own story. No one can do it better and, quite frankly, her ending is rather exquisite.
Prior victim/speakers
THE COURT: The next victim statement is from Jane Doe.
JANE DOE: Good morning, Your Honor.
THE COURT: Hello, you may proceed.
JANE DOE: I am very grateful to have the opportunity to be heard. I was enrolled in Executive Success Programs in 2007 to join an Organization for the Development of Human Potential, and I was led to believe this was the ultimate humanitarian community. I met Keith Raniere during my first time in V Week. I came to V Week for nine years in a row.
In 2009, the World Ethical Foundation Consortium took place in downtown Albany. And I flew from Mexico to experience a truly outstanding event where international figures spoke through their expertise about different world difficulties and we spent days trying to figure out possible solutions to these issues, like the violence in Mexico, or how to empower women, to mention a couple.
Literally, we would end up around 3 in the morning working up ideas to make this world a better place to live. And the cherry on top, His Holiness the Dalai Lama had flown all the way to Albany to give tribute to Keith’s ethical teachings. It was just a bliss.
For ten years, I was a coach teaching ETHOS classes twice a week, coming to Albany for all the second-level trainings available. I took Family Values, Anatomy of Mind and Body, Breaches, Mobius, Characterization, Human Pain, Ascension, Jness 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 —
THE COURT: Excuse me. You have to go much more slowly.
JANE DOE: I’m sorry.
THE COURT: Please slow down.
JANE DOE: Thank you. For ten years, I was a coach teaching ETHOS classes twice a week, coming to Albany for all the second-level trainings available. I took Family Values, Anatomy of Mind and Body, Breaches, Mobius, Characterization, Human Pain, Ascension, Jness 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. I paid for 11, but I didn’t come anymore. Society of Protectors 1 and 2; Ethicist 1, 2 and 3; The Source, and I became a source trainer; The Knife of Aristotle and I was an analyst for almost two years; Platform 3, 4, later known as Reverence. I trained myself to perform EMs, taking the EM tech training many times. Actually, some of these trainings I took even five times. I came to Coach Summits, supported, personally and economically, projects like In La’Kech in Mexico, which was an organization designed to end violence in my country. Along with more coaches, we trained a six-month ETHOS program designed specifically for IBERO University in Mexico City.
The reason why I mention all this is because I want to make clear the level of commitment that I had. By the way, I never received a dollar for my work, just the number of what I was going to receive. But that money never reached my pocket.
In retrospect, I can see a pattern of close people to Keith like Loreta Garza telling me that Keith wanted to train me personally to become an enrollee for philanthropists to sponsor his projects, or Clare Bronfman wanting me to come to Fiji for a training, or to Albany for a few months to take Keith’s trainings, which eventually I ended up doing.
In December 2012, right after Ascension training was over, Nancy Salzman approached me saying that Keith wanted to meet with me the next day, to which I said I couldn’t because I had a booked flight. Just a few hours later, Lauren Salzman called me saying that it was truly an honor that Keith wanted to spend time with me, that people flew from all over the world to see him. And I knew this was true; His Holiness the Dalai Lama was a perfect example.
So I stayed, and we became closer. I felt very privileged.
In V Week 2015, Keith asked me to stay for a few days after Coach Summit was over. I did, and we began an intimate relationship. After that, he would text me hearts and I love you, and I would gladly correspond. I was deeply in love very fast. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I felt special and honored. He was incredibly sweet and kind. He told me that what he wanted the most for me was to take away my suffering and my ignorance so I could be as joyous as possible. He asked me to be discreet about our relationship, which I understood and upheld. I had no clue by then, he had other relationships.
Just a month after, during the last day of Jness 7, Daniela Padilla, who was the person that had EMed me for years, and therefore was aware of my strengths and weaknesses in a very deep way, approached me and invited me to what was Keith’s ultimate creation and input for humanity, the purpose of all his previous work. This circle was just for a few truly committed women. But in order to know more about this, I needed to give collateral, to state that I would keep a secrecy vow about what I was going to find out, and that this collateral, which had to be sexual in content, only made me stronger.
Just both of them [Raniere and Padilla] were going to see it [the collateral, the naked pictures] and I was in a relationship with him, so I did. And so she explained to me that this circle worked with a master-slave dynamic with the purpose of getting rid of our female pride through obedience, that it was a lifetime vow and a commitment to my personal growth and ethics. It was edgy. But I was so in love, and Keith’s techniques have always been edgy, so I made this uncomfortable feeling my personal issue, as I had always been led to believe in ESP.
Later that same month, during the Society of Protectors training, Keith asked me if I wanted to have a child with him. He told me I was the perfect woman to bear his child because I had no attachments of motherhood with my personal value, which I knew was true, and so my fantasy of becoming a mother strongly began. He also asked me to keep this affair private, which I did. I always knew he was the grand master of this women’s vow, it was never hidden from me.
The ultimate knowledge never came. Only the request for more and more collateral, and the ever-growing uncomfortableness of absolute obedience. Daniela Padilla told me that the next time I was in Albany, I was going to be tattooed, just like every woman in this circle, a small tattoo that symbolized four elements.
I told Daniela I didn’t have tattoos and I didn’t want one.
Her answer was “It’s not a question.”
Before I came to Albany and get what I now know to be a branding with Keith’s initials, Daniela Padilla used my collateral to thwart me, I had been blackmailed. This was the worst night of my life.
My choices were to stay in DOS, uphold my commitment to The Vow and obey someone that had just blackmailed me and, therefore, I couldn’t trust anymore, leave DOS having my collateral released and causing irreversible damage to people I love and admire the most and absolutely lose my life the way I had built it, or just end my life.
There was no choice I had that wasn’t a horrifying nightmare. So, the next day, I quit DOS. My collateral wasn’t released, but the fear of knowing at any given moment it would was truly hell on Earth. My professional career is public, which made it even worse. And although I believed it was the right decision to leave, I was so scared, I didn’t want to piss anyone off, because I didn’t want my collateral out. From this point on, a silent feeling of shame and guilt began growing.
I still truly believed Keith was noble and innocent from Daniela’s dark intent. I just couldn’t see the truth. It was so well hidden, it was impossible for me to see. For months, he tried to convince me to come back to DOS, but I didn’t, which meant that Daniela could release my collateral to make me uphold my word. He said he didn’t believe she would release it, but The Vow was all about upholding one’s word, and the consequence of leaving was having your collateral released.
I felt I was living in a minefield. It was daily terrorism. Eventually, I left the Stripe Path, too. A few months after, I was invited to a radio show to talk about the differences between women and men. And as soon as it was over, I received phone calls from two Mexican senior proctors telling me that Nancy Salzman was in Mexico City and she needed to talk to me, so I came to see her. She said that it was only because she knew that I was special to Keith that she hadn’t called her lawyers on me, that I had just breached my contract speaking about ESP tech, and that it was illegal.
I never mentioned either ESP or Keith or anyone in the interview. But she said that if I wanted, she could train me personally to become a spokesperson for the company. I declined the offer because it felt like a trap. It wasn’t until the New York Times article broke about the branding that I realized slowly the whole entire truth. By that time, I was having panic attacks during the night, a lack of meaning of my life, and trust issues that still haunt me.
I am speaking today because if no one had ever spoken out, I would have stayed silent for the rest of my life, in a dark place with the fear of any given day having my collateral out. I was used and manipulated for ten years, ten years that I just can’t recover. My innocence and my strong will to better things in the world were used against me.
Keith used the highest virtues of humanity as weapons against ourselves.
I’d like to address Keith directly now. From a spiritual level, I feel so much compassion for you. It must be so dark and lonely, and I feel truly sorry for you. From human to human, you abused me tremendously. You played with my motherhood, my love, my passion, and my desire to do good, and with my loyalty to my highest values. You are an abuser and you deserve to be in prison.
If you had it your way, I would have been your prisoner forever.
You used to tell me that freedom and slavery are irrelevant as one gains a sense of self beyond one’s decisions and that both are actually the same. That is why to reach higher levels of awareness, of living awareness, has always required absolute obedience, that even total devotion to a stranger or false guru, if done completely without pride, leads to enlightenment, and the antidote for pride is humiliation.
The most productive humiliation is obtained through obedience and it leads to true freedom.
Well, now you have that opportunity in your hands, and it seems there is no choice left for you.
Thank you for giving me this time to speak.
