‘Seduced’ on STARZ: The Most Shocking Details About NXIVM ‘The Vow’ Left Out

According to one news report in the docuseries over 16,000 people worldwide took courses from the organization. Most people seemed to become interested in NXIVM for the same reasons Catherine and India Oxenberg initially joined. The organization promised to help people pursue their career goals and better themselves. But really NXIVM was primarily interested in its higher status members.

The organization would target celebrities or children of famous families. It especially focused on the latter, exploiting these people’s desires to break away from their families. This was a PR move stemming from the belief that if well known and connected people joined a group, it appears more alluring to everyday people. Almost every time a famous or near-famous person would take a NXIVM course the organization would pull out all stops. That’s how Nancy Salzman herself came to teach Catherine and India Oxenberg during one of their first sessions. Though this heavy-handed recruitment wasn’t always successful it worked on occasion, which explains why so many celebrities were part of this fringe group.

This detail comes from India Oxenberg. “We drove to this beautiful house in Venice that was apparently owned by Eric Clapton. And it was a modern home with a big open living room,” Oxenberg says in Seduced.

This was part of the five-day NXIVM intensive India signed up for with her mother, Catherine Oxenberg. The course cost $3,000 per person, and both of the women saw it as a mother-daughter bonding activity. “Unfortunately, as I found out later, it was probably the worst decision of my entire life,” Catherine Oxenberg later reveals.

Early in the five-day intensive students were divided into small groups. India Oxenberg was separated from her mother and placed in a different group. The leaders explained that they always distanced family members, but several cult experts in the docuseries point to a more nefarious explanation. It’s not uncommon for cults to separate potential members from their communities and support systems, thereby making them easier to control.

NXIVM also employed another strategy to control its students. “Every time I had an issue with any one of their rituals and brought it up in class they accused me of being defiant, so they would throw it back in my face,” Catherine Oxenberg says. Since NXIVM defined being defiant or being suppressive as a personal fault, the organization constructed an environment in which questioning anything made students feel like they were wrong.

After their five-day intensive Catherine Oxenberg was less enchanted by the organization. But she admits that seeing her daughter so invested in a program that seemed to help her made her happy. That’s a major reason why Oxenberg aoffered her house to host a workshop for Jness, NXIVM’s society aimed at women.

The workshop emphasized the importance of men taking responsibility for women and women accepting that dynamic. This was presented to students under the guise of feminism. Led by Salzman and described as the first feminist movement developed by a man, Jness immediately rubbed Oxenberg’s mother, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, the wrong way.

“I thought it was complete rubbish. They said she was very important, Nancy Salzman. But I thought she was a complete idiot,” Princess Elizabeth says. “I knew there was something fishy going on and I thought it was stupid. And I didn’t want to irritate Catherine because, after all, she put this whole thing together. But looking back on it, I should have maybe been more rude.”

If you’ve been wondering why HBO’s The Vow seems to have a never-ending supply of behind-the-scenes footage, that’s because it basically does. According to India Oxenberg, members weren’t allowed to film or photograph events. Instead, the organization always had its own crew of filmmakers on standby to record events and use the footage for NXIVM-branded documentaries and promotional videos. Since Mark Vicente was one of the leaders of this team, that’s why The Vow has so much footage of deeply intimate moments.

Though Raniere claims his organization was unlike any other, experts in the field claim that’s not true. According to cult specialist and author Rick Alan Ross, NXIVM borrowed from several sources. He has traced parts of this organization back to the multilevel marketing company Amway, Erhard Seminars Training, and the philosophy of objectivism from Ayn Rand. But the most glaring similarity has to do with Scientology.

“For example Scientology has what they call auditing,” Ross says. Auditing refers to a process in which an auditor asks deeply personal questions to rid the interviewee of negative influences. In reality the answers from these sessions are also used to blackmail members. “That’s the same thing as EM exercises in NXIVM. So Keith Raniere was not at all an original thinker. That’s what Nancy Salzman helped him with.”

“They had modules to address all of the thoughts someone might have, like ‘Oh, this makes me feel a little uncomfortable,'” Neil Glazer, an attorney representing former NXIVM members, says in Episode 1.

“They were trying to normalize things that seemed a little strange so that later on down the road you could have horrifying, curriculum concerning, you know. ‘Why is it wrong to have sex with children?’ They even had a module ‘Why We Are Not a Cult,'” Glazer reveals.

Despite the astronomical cost of NXIVM’s courses, the group didn’t make its money from selling trainings. “I sort of always marveled about why anyone gave Keith credit for being kind of a business genius. Because, in fact, every business he created was a failure,” Barry Meier, a New York Times journalist, says in the docuseries.

“If you looked at NXIVM from a business perspective it just didn’t generate much money. It was basically a horseshit organization,” Meier adds.

So where did NXIVM’s wealth come from? Most of its money came from Clare and Sara Bronfman, the heiresses of the Seagram’s liquor company. It’s been estimated that they gave NXIVM at least $200 million.

“There was a very disturbing expose in the Albany Times Union alleging that Keith was a child molester, a pedophile,” Catherine Oxenberg says. “That was the moment I decided I could never take another class with NXIVM, ever.”

The article Oxenberg is referring to is “In Raniere’s Shadows,” which was published in 2012. The article claims that Raniere raped several underage girls, ranging from 12 to 16 years old. At the time India Oxenberg dismissed the article as part of a smear campaign against NXIVM. Catherine Oxenberg doubted its validity too since Raniere wasn’t in jail. Yet the allegations were still haunting enough for her to cut ties with the group and ask her daughter to do the same.