By Shivani
I keep wondering if Kristin Snyder thought that the Nxivm Intensive at the Westmark Hotel was a setting that she could TRUST as a safe space to tell the group, and its leaders, what she was going through. She was unlikely to have encountered – or to have begun to face much of – the Nxivm deceptiveness yet.
What happened to her personally or privately with Keith Raniere would have caused her so much conflict, confusion, so much worry. What to do? Especially if you think over Kristin’s personal background, how she lived, who she loved and how she had been raised, just imagine what she was experiencing, all of her trust betrayed.
Kristin Snyder cam from a devout Catholic family. L-R Robert, Kristin, Kim, Seated Jonnie Snyder.
Yet Raniere and his group pretended to be promoting “righteous action.” A united front of superior ways and means was held up and sold as if it were a grand panacea of real growth.
This had to have been intensely hard on Kristin, to confide in a group, one she had been taking “human growth potential” courses from and whose members seemed to know what they were selling. The entryway was really into a group dynamic of destructiveness, completely unacknowledged. Yet all were caught up in it. No one was doing any honest work on themselves at all.
In fact, the more delusional a person was about Raniere being supreme, the more Raniere could use that person. The more entrenched an acolyte was in his pathology, the more power he let the sucker have. He didn’t need to lock any idiot who believed in him behind closed doors or to keep battening down his hatches, once someone had surrendered to him. He could control those people. They had said “Yes, Master” and were permanently captured. They could catch more subjugates, even as he kept his repulsive “supremacy” running the show. He had his army.
The group was selling its own hidden evils as goodness. The group was practicing group insanity and upholding their own surrenders to a pervert who enjoyed making them all back his madness. The very second he decided to target anyone, the group followed suit.
These groupies let him be about having him get sex from minors. They were happy to engage in sex-trafficking for him. They were happy to litigate for their benefit and for Raniere’s. They hid and moved money for him. No criminality, no humiliation could be too much. It was for their Vanguard; it was for themselves, both as a group and individually. He was their God. This was their chosen path.
The Vanguard’s photo was hung on walls for worship in the homes of those he controlled.
One of Kristin’s Alaska-situated, Westmark Hotel intensive leaders knew the drill and was still smarting from learning Raniere’s scheme.
Esther Chiappone Carlson.
Yet Esther, knowing Raniere was the man who deceived her, that she had broken up her own family to be with, and then found out that Raniere was a lying manwhore, still supported the entire movement.
She was more than prepared to sacrifice Kristin Snyder. She was not going to allow any truth to come out and shake her own false convictions. She consulted with the grotesque Prefect, Nancy Salzman, about how to handle Kristin, and then she did what she was told.
Obviously, the whole intensive staff was obedient only to Raniere, to Salzman.
Esther Chiappone Carlson knew Keith Raniere had lied to her, and yet she was willing to lie for Raniere.
Esther refused to examine her OWN mistakes. She was instead, highly invested in backing up the lies, the deceptiveness. She had joined the power rangers of Nxivm.
Esther helped organize the group efforts to gaslight Kristin, for many hours, for more than one group session, and to get rid of Kristin, now a troublemaker. An inconvenience, like a horsefly buzzing around too much, potentially ruining Esther’s/their nice image.
Kristin might have even thought that, by telling the group that Raniere had gotten intimate with her and that she was sure that she was pregnant, they would see her truthfulness and act upon it to help her. She might have hoped that she could even help the group, by revealing something that they deserved to know.
How could Kristin know that the people surrounding Raniere were every bit as unsafe as their leader? He had tricked her, emotionally, mentally and sexually with his scam. She was among people who believed in him and who were all invested in covering for him, for themselves.
Kristin Snyder
Maybe Kristin was deeply upset, but probably she thought she could be helped. Why would she ever dream that she was going to find only group suppression, group leaders’ lies and that she was really putting herself in danger, forced to try to stand alone, to be told that she was not okay but the GROUP was to be lauded as fine and noble?
She would not be allowed to dismantle their God or their godliness.
Have anyone of you ever had to stand alone against such odds? Could you? Have you ever been sexually abused and tried to cope with its consequences, only to find that you had confided in a pit of vipers? Just try to put yourself into Kristin’s shoes, during all of these circumstances. It must have been dreadful for her.
All of the Nxivm individuals were devoted to their group’s lies, pretense. They sold self-help to her. Then she was subjected to abusiveness, maybe even had become pregnant. Then, when she tried to tell her truth, every single member of the organization fucked her over, made her wrong and put her right up against their walls. It seems to have been designed to strategize solely to damage her and even to eliminate her. She was not worth anything to these people. In fact, she had become their ENEMY.
Imagine what their group’s gaslighting would have done to Kristin then, if she opened up out of trust, not to accuse, really. She would be saying, “Look, this is what happened between Raniere and me. What do you think? What do I do now? The guy was not celibate with me; I am pretty sure that I’m pregnant. You are good people who know him better than I do, so I’m asking you to help me.”
And instead, the very opposite occurred, like a huge and shattering slap in her face. Everyone in charge just wanted Kristin to shut up about her “truth.”
Imagine how that would have upset and damaged her, made her feel desperate. And ultimately, these savages removed her from the group entirely. They did not allow her partner, Heidi Clifford, also in the group and ready to help Kristin, to leave with her and to assist her life partner.
They made Kristin look “crazy” instead. Someone was assigned to drive Kristin away in a vehicle from the Westmark Hotel and the group. They all ganged up on Kristin expressly to protect themselves, their profits, their Godman.
Westmark Hotel in Anchorage where the Nxivm intensives were held.
What really happened?
If Kristin were pregnant by this shit heel Raniere, perhaps only a woman can begin to comprehend what Kristin was trying so hard to endure, to handle.
I ask you all, have you ever carried life inside of your womb? Or if you’re a man, have you ever felt protective of your own seed, growing, about to arrive as an infant, your baby? Arriving helpless, innocent, needing you?
Who could Kristin turn to and get any support or guidance?
Raniere had invaded her emotional balance, her inner makeup, had completely devalued her own relationship with her partner, very possibly he impregnated her. Why would she even imagine or want to imagine, as of yet, anything weird or sneaky or dangerous to her well-being, when she had opened up to trust some of them? She was on the periphery of the cult still, not at its dead center.
The Nxivm atmospheres were committed to concealing their ulterior motives and the misery of their sexual habits, each one having been conditioned to stand up for their fictionalized versions. The gift to all of humanity! Their frigging predatory sweat hog was to be SUPREME. Or else.
Contest those jointly-maintained lies, object, present any evidence to the contrary, what will happen to you?
Abruptly the whole bunch is against you. Anyone you might have trusted, perhaps wanted to or had decided to confide in about your own experience, if that didn’t cooperate with all of their lies, suddenly would turn their backs on the “truth-teller.”
Any inconvenient truths were not allowed. No one caught up in this allowed themselves to face the ugliness of the underbelly.
It had to be denied, buried.
Kristin Snyder may have made a fatal mistake – confiding in and trusting the Nxivm leaders.
Of course, it was their duty to uphold Raniere’s demands about his perfection.
Kristin would not have known or understood what was really happening, that Raniere was a gross perv who screwed whoever he wanted to screw. The Nxivm crowd was all devoted to hiding that truth.
Anyone Raniere had messed with sexually who stayed in this group had already made the decision to live with this bullshit. Everyone was pretending something noble was being lived and offered, for sale.
Many Nxivm members knew plenty of the true circumstances around their own interactions with the harem and its leader. These very individuals led Kristin Snyder’s group experiences, both in New York and in Alaska.
The only way out, was out. Kristin did not get the chance to even begin to find her way out, and these Nxivm cult sickos made sure of that.
But none of the liars and members of their very own personal freak show were about to reveal any of it. They were choosing to be representatives of the entire fiction. Raniere was being praised and upheld by people who actually knew, from personal experience, that they were being dishonest to call him celibate.
Kristin had stayed at Esther’s place in New York not long before attending her last Nxivm intensive, partly led by Esther, in Alaska. There would be a prior basis for Kristin to “trust,” based on Kristin’s acquaintanceship with Esther and some of the other Nxivm women or men.
Of course, she wouldn’t have known much, if anything, about how Keith was screwing just about everyone. Kristin might have had no idea, as yet, that there was such an enmeshed group, dedicated to Raniere and to all of their lies about his celibacy.
She might have thought that in Alaska, at that intensive, with her partner also participating in the intensive, that she had a “safe space” to tell what had happened to her and what was still happening to her. She might have even thought that telling the truth would be seen, valued, respected, that she could help everyone by revealing her experience, as well as her current circumstances. That poor young woman was in for a horrible surprise.
And no one has ever seen or heard from her again, since she trusted Nxivm.
