‘Smallville’ Actress Allison Mack’s Cult Recruitment Tactics Were Horrific
To reel in unsuspecting young women, Raniere and Mack began with the Executive Success Program (ESP); which is how Mack likely discovered Nxivm Corp. ESP had its base out of Vancouver, Canada, where many TV shows, including
Smallville, were and are still filmed.
Held in hotel ballrooms and conferences spaces,
Variety describes ESP as “a pricey series of lectures and classes designed to help participants set and achieve goals, overcome past traumas, and gain confidence and stature in their professional lives.”
These lectures could cost about $3,500 which included everything from 16-day intensive sessions to one-off classes. This meant that Mack and Raniere were targeting women with money.
An insider told Variety, “These were legitimate courses. It’s not like you showed up and there were handcuffs there for a sex cult.”
The actual slave duties for
the women in Nxivm’s The Vow are horrendous. Women followed a strict 600 to 800-calorie diet since Raniere liked extremely thin women. He also forced them to stop shaving or waxing their pubic hair. Many of them became so thin that they stopped menstruating.
The women also became extremely sleep deprived since they had to remain alert for their “masters” at all times. Outside of sex, many were branded with Raniere’s initials, forced to pose for nude photographs, and some even performed tasks like, editing Raniere’s articles and transcribing.
During the ceremonies in which her slaves were branded, the defendant placed her hands on the slaves’ chests and told them to “feel the pain” and to “think of [their] master,” as the slaves cried with pain. The defendant also “provided naked photographs of her slaves to Raniere and was aware of Raniere’s proclivity for having sex with multiple young women.