General

Was Allison Mack Making Plea for Help With Blog Posts?

07/28/2019·

Frank Parlato

It might be fair to say that Allison Mack needed help.

Long before she was arrested, and shortly after Frank Report broke the news that Keith Raniere and Allison Mack were in a group called DOS that branded women and blackmailed them, Allison Mack began posting on her no-longer-operational blog [www.allisonmack.com] various messages that seemed to be a cry for help.

Her blog is down now, though some pages of it still exist on Internet Archive [or Wayback Machine.]

I published the first story on DOS on June 5, 2017 [four months before the New York Times story]. That story was entitled “Part 1: Branded Slaves and Master Raniere; Sources: Human branding part of Raniere-inspired women’s group”

In the story, I wrote that “Allison Mack is making her mark as the leader of a secret society of women who follow the teachings of Keith Raniere. Entry into the group requires members to be branded with a hot iron on their pubic region… Mack offers membership to the select group which is referred to as DS {DOS] …

“The branding ceremony – the existence of which has never before been published – is held in strict secrecy … women [are] blindfolded and taken to the secret place where the ceremony is held… Dr. Roberts performs the branding… Videos are taken of the naked woman and kept as a record of the initiation and are considered part of the collateral a woman pledges to Mr. Raniere.

“Before a woman is accepted for initiation, a woman must first provide ‘collateral’ in the form of nude photographs, or audio and video records of admissions of activities which she would otherwise wish to remain secret. These records and photographs are held by Mr. Raniere or his agents as collateral.

“… collateral is said to provide assurances to Mr. Raniere that those who have pledged their slavery to him and Miss Mack … will be less likely to flee as others have done in the past….”

The immediate result of my story was an explosion at Nxivm. Hundreds of members – who were unaware of the DOS branding – quit in disgust. I continued to write several stories daily. This prompted some of the DOS slaves – seeing that I had published the stories – to cancel their scheduled branding.

Others felt emboldened to quit DOS and escaped.

Within days, Allison Mack seemed to refer to branding in her blogs and tweets. [Remember this is more than 10 months before she was arrested. I was the only one writing about her and the branding].

Allison Mack’s Blog

June 13, 2017

Cold sweats. Constantly. The anxiety of being caught makes my heart thrum like a hummingbird. Someday, I will be discovered. I will be found out!

I peak (sic) through the crack in the door of the closet I have shoved myself. It’s stuffy and I can barely breath (sic)…. Why am I so nervous?

Because I am a fugitive on the run from intimacy and the fear of showing those pit stains and blood….

Mack Tweet

So look at the failures, lean into them and find the lesson deep within the pain.

June 17 Blog

… We run in the opposite direction of any feeling of discomfort or physical feeling of threat, and yet – emotional pain has never killed anyone … Brace yourself for the pain. Grin joyfully, and bring it on.

June 24

I went for a long walk today and heard them being pushed into one another. The leaves were talking. It felt like the whole street was whispering secrets.

June 25

Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve….

June 28

… More often than not I am spinning in my head consumed with thoughts about what are others are thinking of me… The noise in my head is so loud that I can’t hear anything other than the feedback bouncing off the inside of my skull. … that voice in my head now seems irrelevant.

Allison Mack from a film.

Allison Mack with her slave master Keith Raniere.

Allison Mack in 2017 appeared anorexic. Was that really a happy smile?

Is it possible that Allison Mack’s life was saved by her exposure and arrest? If not for that, she might still be starving herself, being sleep deprived and branding women, giving up her whole life for the criminal Keith Raniere.

As it is, she will likely get a prison sentence of five years more or less, which means she can be free of Raniere and the consequences of being his slave by the time she is slightly over 40.

That gives her greater freedom than being a life-long slave to Raniere. A shot at a new life.

One day, Allison may look back and be thankful that I exposed her and that she was ultimately arrested.

Comments (24)

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Max07/28/2019

I think we can pretty much all agree that she is better off away from Raniere. Even if she doesn't realize it yet, she will eventually…

Paul07/28/2019

I think she was a troubled and lost person when she arrived at NXIVM's door. She seemed to have a weak sense, of self and not much trust in her own perceptions. Keith Raniere would have recognised that immediately. And in that moment her downfall began. He created a new sense of self for her, with lots of new certainties. He created a False Self for her to adopt and work with. It felt good to her. She felt powerful for the first time ever. But pity those who seek power over others. That road leads to ruin. And there she is. I hope that in her prison time, she can find her real self again.

AnonyMaker07/29/2019

That seems like a pretty insightful take on it. There have to be reasons that she stayed on for years and became Raniere's henchwoman, when others around her left or at least didn't go so far as she did.

Scott Johnson07/29/2019

Somebody had to be Raniere's “star” student.

AnonyMaker07/29/2019

She might also have been picked because she had a sort of permanent girlish look, which would have appealed to Raniere. But there had to have been more about her, that suited her for the role. It also didn't help that she didn't seem to have any good, solid influences outside of NXIVM and Raniere's inner circle. I keep wondering what is up with her family, and if maybe they're involved in something sort of culty themselves and so couldn't provide her with a healthy anchor in her life.

Paul07/28/2019

I think it highly likely that she'll come to realise you did a good thing for her, Frank.

Shivani3307/28/2019

This is anxiety that Allison expresses. Consistently, her anxiousness has tended to shift from topic to topic, according to what she is trying to ponder. The elements composing her anxiousness and her personal neediness show, in other words, regardless of whatever her subject is. (And usually, her subject is herself.) I perceive from her cited blog entries that she knows that she is caught up in wrongdoing and that it is causing her tremendous inner conflict, but most particularly huge worries about the possibility of being caught for those wrongdoings. “…the whole street whispering secrets.” You bet your ass it was and for very good reasons. Those whispering leaves and streets represent her conscience trying hard to get her to pay attention, whereas what Allison was doing was letting her conscience go down for the count. I went through a battle with my conscience once that deteriorated to the point where I woke up often with dry heaves. I had been afraid to work to solve the conflict. It had to be faced though. Allison is far from alone here. She was too trapped to be able to solve it for herself. She was living in a chaos of intense peer pressure, hunger and groupthink, beneath a foul, foul individual…and his batch of dizzy, attached fanatics. She speaks of “fear of intimacy” as part of what distresses her. Just pile on the new age manure! Parroting words and concepts without concentration, without investigation, without understanding is an old and popular game. If she knew herself more “intimately”, she would never, ever have been attracted to the Raniere-based life that she chose. She would have been more at home with her own core. Maybe now she is. Certainly, she was helped to get semi-out of this catastrophe by its having been exposed. She was not helped out of it by any inner, personal change to do with her own comprehension. It is obvious that she was under inner and outer pressure to keep the cult's sickness and all of its criminality secretive. Allison doesn't seem to be a secretive person, though. She seemed to want to share this Raniere crap with the whole world. The secretiveness itself could have partly sparked her anxiety. Secretiveness shows that there is some motivation to keep things hidden. Allison wanted to be proud. Allison wanted to be admired. Allison wanted to be able to want to be noticed, but how could she manage that with these circumstances?

Fool Me Not07/28/2019

Yes, she does look anorexic. No, she does not look happy. How sad. Truly, sad.

Scott Johnson07/28/2019

This story illustrates how much compartmentalization is present with NXIVM. Most were not aware of the cauterizing, most were not aware of Raniere's sexcapades, etc.

Fool me Not07/29/2019

Scott, I maintain the Hitler analogy: 1. Hitler had the Messianic complex. Ditto Reniere 2. All NAZI operations were compartmentalized. Ditto nxivm The list goes on and on. Brainwashing. Savior. Godlike. Medical experiments. Destruction of those who question. Concealing the true intent. I can keep going.

Scott Johnson07/29/2019

I agree. Raniere was accusing others of being various reincarnated Nazis (which I consider totally nuts by the way), but he never said who he was. Hitler was already assigned to somebody, I believe it was the elder Salzman.

Dianne Lipson07/28/2019

“… We run in the opposite direction of any feeling of discomfort or physical feeling of threat, and yet – emotional pain has never killed anyone … Brace yourself for the pain. Grin joyfully, and bring it on.” This sounds like an expression of Keith's sick doctrine that we can only know the depth of love through pain. The last sentence is especially masochistic. Whether or not the writing in Allison's blog was a cry for help, the fact is that you did Allison and all the other women in NXIVM a huge favor by exposing DOS. Hopefully, Allison, Nicky Clyne, even Clare Bronfman will understand this some day.

DV07/28/2019

Yep. People who cheat others out of love with some sick abuse or manipulation of it don’t deserve it.

Heidi Hutchinson07/28/2019

“It is possible that Allison Mack’s life was saved by her exposure and arrest?” For me, this resonates as not only a possibility but a certainty…up to this point. Which is why ALL remaining NX members, whose lives and sanity may still be at risk — especially if they are among those continuing to perpetrate or facilitate [yeah, Steve Coffee, Dennis Burke and Jeff Apple, too, I’m talking to you] crime and corruption on behalf of NXIVM, the Bronfman’s and/or Salinas/Betancourt Crime cartel — would be better off turning themselves in and making a full, honest confession to all they know. Ally’s words here are honest and breathtaking and heart-breaking and gut-wrenching; they are so very similar to the writings of my sister, Gina Hutchinson during her youngest years as Keith Raniere’s “consort” while his student and, again, what she wrote in months leading up to her death, after she returned from India and, as the evidence shows, spent the last of her inheritance from our Mother on NXIVM courses, EM’s, new size “0” and “2” clothes fitting her frame after following the NXIVM diet, having jacuzzi sex with Keith and, possibly, other starved-skinny thusly enlightened, early slaves. It’s time to STOP BELIEVING in these lies or be stopped from harming yourself and others through and due to the instillment of them in you. Crime will not pay you long, either, if money is your motive. Only the truth will set you free!

NCGirl07/29/2019

I don’t think these were intentional calls for help, but certainly these posts speak to a state of mind that was anxious, struggling and un-well. I hope she and the women who left DOS and NXIVM are getting help.

Anonymous07/29/2019

A picture of Mack's titties just might keep shadow spanker busy long enough not to write another article no one will read.

shadowstate19507/29/2019

“A picture of Mack’s titties” Are you 13 years old? If that is the state of your mind, you should remain anonymous

shadowstate19507/29/2019

The truth is that Allison Mack is still a part of NXIVM and might very well still be on the NXIVM diet. Look at Mack's description of herself on her Twitter page. Allison MackVerified account @allisonmack story-teller, question-asker, music-lover, theatre-goer, movie-obsessor, shakespeare-studier, globe-trotter, food-inhaler, woman of 34 and counting… https://twitter.com/allisonmack?lang=en Food-inhaler? How much nutrition do you receive inhaling food? None. Now read this comment from someone on the FrankReport who had interactions with Allison Mack in April. “Stef Mayhem July 25, 2019 at 2:46 pm I had a 3-day interaction with her in Manhattan post her plea of guilty in court. She came in weepy and then flashed a smile. Second day asked me if I needed help with the dishes. The third day, she started off with “Hey girl” she’s a monster!” https://frankreport.com/2019/07/24/allison-mack-the-gruesome-details-of-a-sex-slave-master-part-i/ Stef Mayhem is described as a “barista.” Mack goes into a restaurant in April after her guilty plea and starts doing the dishes. Presumably she does not eat anything but she inhales the fumes from the food and coffee. If this account is correct Allison Mack is either still on the NXIVM diet or she as in the restaurant for a covert rendezvous with one of her NXIVM friends.

Scott Johnson07/29/2019

Mr. Shadow, just wanted you to know that Mack is still occupying your brain, that is quite the stretch, even for you. It takes a lot of food to keep those cankles puffed out.

Fool Me Not07/29/2019

Excellent reporting, as always.

Jane07/29/2019

Ah, if she is in jail until she is 40, that probably means the difference between being a mother and never being a mother in many cases although, of course, she may not want babies.

shadowstate195807/29/2019

In a Hollywood Reporter story about Ms. Mack published last year she is quoted as saying she did not want children because she is too messed up. she used the F word to describe her mental state. That said, any woman who would sacrifice their children for any reason is not fit to be a mother.

Actaeon07/29/2019

It might be more fair to say that Mack deserves her upcoming prison sentence. Her 'despairing' blog entries struck me at the time, as they still do, as the whining of a privileged upper middle class (i.e., rich) Southern California woman, living inside her own head, obsessed with her own personal fulfillment, her place in the world, her spiritual essence, the state of her chakra, obsessing over whether or not she's obsessing too much, the whole shit storm of self-indulgence. Which she seems to think everyone else should be interested in. She may sound crazy but that's just California crazy. She's mildly neurotic at best. “Cold sweats… the anxiety of being found out…” She has made the humdrum realization that her public persona is not her 'real' self. So what. Freud's ego, superego, and id. This is not news. Everybody with a modicum of self-awareness knows that we present an image of ourselves to the world that is not the same as our inner self, whatever the hell that is. Mack makes a big deal of this in her blog, but it is uninteresting. Yeah, I don't scratch my balls in public 'cause I don't want people to know I'm a pig. Everybody's like that. So what. “I run from intimacy… ” Join the club, Mack. Everybody is afraid of intimacy. Everybody finds life confusing at times. Everybody has trouble focusing, gets distracted. Most of us have short attention spans, that's why more of us watch TV and fewer of us learn Ancient Greek to read Homer's Iliad in the original. There's nothing here indicating her blog is a cry for help. Or that she suffers from any diagnosable mental condition. It certainly doesn't explain or excuse her criminal behavior. She's not “damaged”. This is ordinary everyday stuff. Sure, she dresses it up a bit, waxes poetical about the blowing leaves speaking to her and the feedback bouncing around in her head and similar crap; it's embarrassingly self-indulgent. Mack is a competent professional actress. She knows how to play a part. She's a bullshit artist and she spent the last decade schilling for Nxivm and DOS. Her blog was largely aimed at doing just that. She was using it to reel in the suckers; don't be one of those.