Frank Report witnessed the dancers outside the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center on Friday night. Present were Nicki Clyne, Michele Hatchette, Eduardo Asunsolo, Suneel Chakravorty, Dr. Danielle Roberts, and other supporters of Keith Alan Raniere, who is presently in a cell tucked in the back of MDC.
Front of MDC
I went around the back and waved at Raniere, whose cell is on the fourth floor. I could not tell if he could see me.
Back of MDC where Keith Raniere is housed.
To get back there, one has to walk along an alleyway behind the MDC which is owned by Amazon. Sometimes Amazon security won’t let the dancers back there.
I went, however, and it was ironic. I saw Raniere from his prison cell in the evening and that morning I had spoken to him – me at NBC studios – and he from prison. It was, in a sense, a kind of farewell to a man who certainly positioned himself to be my mortal enemy.
At NBC studios with Eduardo Asunsolo and Marc Elliot getting ready to speak with Keith Raniere on Marc’s cell phone,
Waiting for a call from Keith Raniere while speaking on Zoom with a Los Angeles producer of Dateline.
Keith’s first call was at 6:35 AM. We spoke for 15 minutes, the maximum allowable time for a prisoner. Then he called back an hour later and we did another 15-minute interview.
Michele and Nicki and behind them Danielle Roberts.
In the evening, the attraction was the dancers – especially it seemed, the women dancers.
Suneel shines a light on prison reform.
Danielle Roberts is an expert dancer and no doubt pleasing to the prisoners.
Eduardo and Nicki Clyne
Eduardo and Suneel asked if I planned to dance. I replied, “I don’t dance but I plan on making other people dance.”
As I walked, I was filmed and interviewed by a documentary filmmaker.
A couple of the dancers spoke with me and expressed their fear and unhappiness about the Frank Report.
One woman said she declined to come out to dance at MDC for fear she would be mentioned in the Frank Report. Others said they lost their jobs because of the Frank Report and were turned down for an apartment for the same reason.
I explained that at the time of battle against Raniere – a man who desired that I, not him, should be inside MDC tonight – his supporters – any of them – were my enemies – for they enabled him. They kept his cult alive.
They were my enemies only because they supported Raniere. A cult leader needs followers and the more he has, the more dangerous he was to me.
I said to them, “Don’t blame me. Blame Raniere. He started the war.”
Toward the end of the dancing, I saw Danielle Roberts. We had an off-the-record conversation.
One could glean what she thinks from a YouTube video she appeared in – where she describes the Frank Report and other DOS-related events – and how they affected her life.
PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO
Roberts: Two days [after the New York Times article appeared on October 17, 2017 ], on the 19th of October 2017, there was another article published [in the NY Times] basically saying a spokesperson for Governor Cuomo is now going to be looking into this matter further, and we are in fact going to, you know, investigate Dr. Robert’s license.
So, now, they’re investigating my license, but if they truly thought that this was a matter of – that I was a threat to the public, or the public welfare, they could have suspended my license. They could have said “We have enough reason to believe that you would hurt people. That you would hurt women, that you would hurt your patients, and we’re going to suspend your license until this matter is taken care of. That’s not what they did.
My agency also said “We can’t continue to work with you, while your license is under investigation”. So, although there were no charges pressed, you know they hadn’t suspended my license, they had taken no actions against my license at all; because of what was in the media, because my license was “under investigation”, my agency would no longer try to place me with other hospitals. I tried to put my resume together to try to find other options, many of the doctors wouldn’t return my calls because of what was in the news.
And shortly after that, as people were leaving Albany and leaving our community, we’ve eventually made the decision to close. To close the company, to close EXO/ESO.
The gossip in here was referring essentially to what was being published… I think people are relying essentially on a blogger with a vendetta [Frank Parlato, Frank Report], to provide factual information.
It’s amazing to me that people don’t really questions his motives, or question why he’s so invested in creating such a horrible, hateful campaign.
These posts and art were done prior to Keith Raniere’s arrest when the battle was at its peak.
And it’s also very odd to me that the level of reporting – you can forget factual, unbiased information, but it’s just pure smut.
I mean, there’s pictures and the language that you’d use in the National Enquire – I mean, not to insult the National Enquire.
I mean, it’s… the caliber of the communication, the fact that people wouldn’t question the motives, they don’t question the information, they don’t think critically about it, they don’t think about the people that are on the other side of it.
And there’s where people – when they pull up my name, Dr. Danielle Roberts, that’s what they see.
You know, they see that, and they see lies and stories about me torturing and holding down women and branding them as a part of a sex cult. I mean, now you’ve stirred up fear in people, they’re not critically thinking they feel scared for their own children, they’re hateful.
I don’t know what they would do to me, you know, they could try to hurt me, they could try to hurt other people, like… It’s just not a responsible use of media or information, at all.
The loss of credibility in my life, with – and not just… not just my professional life. I mean I was speaking publicly, I was building a company, I was working at a hospital, I was doing many things that I really wanted to be doing, and my credibility there has been completely destroyed.
Just more poignant to my own experience is that I don’t think that that credibility could ever be rocked with my closest relationships. You know, my friends, my family, my mother. You know, like, those… those relationships. And what’s happened, the effects on those relationships have been extremely painful. And just very difficult. I mean, this has been going on for 2 years, and my mother still believes that I’m brainwashed. It’s very painful to know that [pause] she’s afraid, every day, for me.
Every day she reads the Frank Report, no matter how many times she’s recognized that there’s a bunch of information on there that’s false. No matter how many times we’ve proven over and over…
But I think from her perspective as a mother who loves, she feels helpless, and I’ve had countless hours of conversations just trying to help share my perspective, my understanding, why I chose what I did, what the real intention was behind all of this. And I think because that seed of doubt was planted – that I was brainwashed, or that somehow the women in DOS or the women in NXIVM can’t think for themselves and they can’t make their own decisions – every conversation that I have with my mother and some other close friends, they already have planted in their minds that I’m not me. That I’m not here. That I’m not the one making my own decisions, I’m not credible, in that sense. And no matter what I say, no matter how logical, no matter how convicted, it can be completely discredited, dispelled, thrown out, because I’ve been brainwashed and I can’t think for myself.
END OF ROBERTS TRANSCRIPT
Could the real problem be the man in the middle and his ill-advised idea of branding women with his initials on their groins?
I have often said if Raniere had chosen to brand women with his initials on women’s buttocks it would have provoked laughter, not hostility.
If it had been anywhere other than their reproductive organs, he would probably not be in prison today.
Of course, I am sorry for the women whose lives were upended by publicity surrounding the Raniere branding scandal, but to blame me is naïve.
I tried my best to discourage him from fighting me. I flew to Albany to meet with Clare Bronfman to see if we could work things out. The devious being instead went to the grand jury and perjured herself about me – that resulted in the near destruction of my life. I had to fight for my life and not stop until she and Raniere were imprisoned and their lives ruined.
And as long as his followers were doing his bidding, keeping him strong, they were fair game. I was not going to go to prison to protect his followers.
I wrote a lot of attack pieces on Raniere, Bronfman, and his followers. As he attacked me by abusing the law, and with his lies and with Bronfman millions, I fought back with the one thing I had – a blog.
I wrote to separate him from his followers and it worked.
Now, that he lost, I am not interested in separating him from his followers. I had to dirty up a few along the way. It couldn’t be helped. Now that the war is over, I am willing to help those on the opposing side, now that their captain, their Vanguard, is where he belongs.
MK10ART’s painting of Keith Alan Raniere in a setting where he may spend the rest of his life
Of course, I will fight for his due process rights. In this, we have common ground. I will also fight for his supporters to get a chance to rebuild their lives – for their Vanguard will not be around for a long, long time.
Sure, Dr. Roberts probably deserves to be able to keep on practicing medicine, But she really should not blame me for her woes.
She should have considered the optics of a physician branding women on their pubic region, while they are naked and held down by other women, without anesthesia.
It was Raniere who led her to her destruction. He should have ordered his First Line slaves in DOS, “use anyone other than Dr. Roberts – for she has a medical license to protect and this might be construed as malpractice. Teach Allison or Nicki or Lauren to do the scarification. You don’t need to be a physician..”
What made the branding worse was that a physician did it and on the pubic region and, what’s worse, women who were branded claimed they did not know the brand was Keith Raniere’s initials.
Had it just been some woman who does scarification for a living, it’s possible this would not have been such a big deal.
Dr. Roberts, blame your Vanguard. Why didn’t the smartest man in the world figure out that you were in a vulnerable place and seek to protect your license?
He got you into this. Still, I will do what I can to help you. I do not think you were evil, I think you were misled by a reckless, selfish monster, who thought only of himself.
Just as he is doing now with his followers, putting some of them at risk to accomplish his one in a billion chance at freedom.
