Two comments from a woman who had a relationship with Keith Alan Raniere years ago gives, as one commenter said, “a first hand account of a monster’s image… evil at its deepest level!” It is worth publishing as a single post for those who may have missed it in the comments section.,
The former girlfriend’s comments appear in response to the story Lauren Salzman Lied for Raniere and Killed Her Conscience With the Excuse That ‘He Knew Better Than Me’.
By Too Many Familiarities
Holy crow – there but for the grace of God…
Many years ago I had a four year intimate relationship with Keith Alan Raniere.
At the time, I thought we were a monogamous couple (I know better now) although I would sometimes accuse him of cheating which he vehemently deny and turn the accusation back on me.
He always had some excuse as to why other women acted towards him as they did.
He gave me a gold chain necklace for my birthday once with some smarmy note implying he would eventually give me a ring. I thought the desperation I felt at trying to hold on to a relationship with this very special man who was wanted by so many – I thought that was love.
Finally, when I started to get involved in other activities and met other people, I realized that there were people I liked far better than him. It was my strong emotion that I didn’t have to stay with someone who abused me that saved me. When I see Lauren Salzman denied her own emotions because KAR taught that a strong emotional response indicates one has an “issue”, I want to vomit.
I tried to leave peacefully – told him I didn’t think we worked as a couple, and I wanted to step it back to just friends. He blocked me in a corner with his body – pushed me onto my bed and sat on me so I couldn’t go anywhere.
So I waited until our lease was up and moved out on my own. Six-8 months later when I was seeing someone else, he called me at my then boyfriend’s place in a rage and demanded to know when we had broken up.
I told him I had been gone for months, and if he couldn’t figure that out, I couldn’t help him. Don’t think I’ve spoken to him directly since though he did send stalker minions a couple of times.
I left a message to tell him to quit it or I’d get a restraining order.
Clearly, he refined his abusive techniques and got more grandiose over the years with an army of enablers to back him up. And refined his targets – those who were able to close off their own conscience and deny their own emotions.
Good luck to Lauren; she’s gonna finally have to take responsibility for her own thoughts, emotions, personality. Not sure prison is conducive to that, but you gotta reap what you sow.
***
Keith Raniere – at the time when he was having sex with 12-year-old Rhiannon and telling several women he was in a monogamous relationship with them and keeping several others in a harem.
When I read the testimony of witnesses or accounts from others that experienced him directly, I am appalled at all the details that I recognize.
Beyond just looking on a necklace as a slave collar – using illness to demand sex and cooperation; making meaningless requests to demonstrate his power over you and your abject obedience; constant lying and gaslighting and contradicting what you think and feel until you no longer know your own mind; the refusal to let go and let someone move on despite his own waning of interest.
I see the world I lived multiplied and expanded a thousand times over. I still cannot fathom how a person can be so completely soulless, how they can be so committed to the destruction of others and cloak it in false “for your own good”.
Keith Raniere would tell several women at the same time that he was in a monogamous relationship with them. Much of his life was spent hiding and cheating. One of his finest gambits for prolonged absence was to tell a woman he was suffering from some dread disease, often cancer – and was at the hospital. In reality, he was in another woman’s bed.
Keith Raniere was a sex addict, this he all but admitted. But it did not give him pleasure. It exhausted him. His real pleasure came from destroying people’s happiness. And the best way to destroy the happiness of others was to trick them into thinking he was working to make them happy. This way they would get closer to him and he could gradually take control of their lives and ruin them.
