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Nxivm: Seagram whisky heiress Clare Bronfman pleads guilty to role in 'sex cult'

Heiress to Seagram fortune admits to harbouring undocumented immigrant for unpaid labour

Saturday 20 April 2019 17:49 BST

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Former Smallville actor Allison Mack leaves court on allegations of involvement in Nxivm sex cult

The heir to a multibillion dollar fortune has pleaded guilty to charges related to a “cult-like” group which allegedly forced women to become sex slaves and branded them with the initials of its leader.

Clare Bronfman, heir to the Seagram alcohol fortune, admitted to harbouring an undocumented immigrant for unpaid “labour and services” and committing credit card fraud on behalf of Keith Raniere, the leader of a group called Nxivm.

Prosecutors have accused Mr Raniere of running Nxivm as a cult, in which women were allegedly branded with his initials and forced to have sex with him.

Ms Bronfman, who is the daughter of late billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr, has agreed to forfeit $6m (£4.62m) from her fortune, which is believed to be worth $200m (£154m).

Her father was the chairman of Seagram – an alcoholic beverages company that became defunct in 2000.

The world of Cults: in pictures

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1/10The world of Cults: in pictures

The world of Cults: in pictures

The Collective - London, UK

Aravindan Balakrishnan, known as ‘Comrade Bala’ within the women-only collective he founded 40 years ago, carried out a brutal campaign of sexual degradation against the women over several decades. In this picture, he stands with some of his cult followers including his daughter.

Rex/words by Hardeep Matharu

The world of Cults: in pictures

The Collective - London, UK

Balakrishnan brainwashed the cult into thinking he had God-like powers and that he could read their minds, as a means of subjecting them to years of abuse.

Metropolitan Police/words by Hardeep Matharu

The world of Cults: in pictures

The Collective - London, UK

Katy Morgan-Davies, 33, formerly known as Rosie Davies, who was kept as a prisoner by her father Aravindan Balakrishnan. Revealing her real identity, Miss Morgan-Davies said that waiving her anonymity was an important step – “to retrieve the identity the cult tried to steal from me”. During his trial the judge said he had treated his daughter like “an experiment”. She said: “Your treatment of her from her birth to the age of 26 was a catalogue of mental and physical abuse. “She was slapped with slippers or a stick from a McDonald's balloon you kept for the purpose.”

PA/words by Hardeep Matharu

The world of Cults: in pictures

The Collective - London, UK

Evidence picture showing the bedroom of the imprisoned daughter of Aravindan Balakrishnan. She was banned from leaving the house unaccompanied and routinely psychologically and physically abused. As a child, she became so lonely she would talk to the taps in the bathroom, and tried to make friends with the rats and mice that scuttled into the kitchen. After 30 years of being kept as a “slave”, she managed to escape in 2013 after memorising the number for an anti-slavery charity she saw on the news.

Rex/words by Hardeep Matharu

The world of Cults: in pictures

The Collective - London, UK

Boarded up windows in Peckford Place, Brixton, south London. Aravindan Balakrishnan was jailed for 23 years in 2016. To keep his devotees in check, Balakrishnan invented 'Jackie', which he said could kill or trigger earthquakes if anyone went against his will. He claimed that a challenge to his leadership resulted in the 1986 space shuttle disaster and Jackie, an invisible war machine, was responsible for the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour party leader.

PA/words by Hardeep Matharu

The world of Cults: in pictures

The People’s Temple - Guyana, South America

Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple sect in Jonestown, north Guyana, in 1978. Believers of the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ followed Reverend Jones to Guyana in the Seventies, hoping to create a utopia in the jungle. Jonestown was envisaged as a “rainbow family” of all ages and races, the preacher had promised them: “Divine principles. Total equality. A society where people own all things in common, where there is no rich or poor, where there are no races.”

AP/words by Adam Lusher

The world of Cults: in pictures

The People’s Temple - Guyana, South America

Reverend Jones wanted to create a glorious sacrifice, a defiant act of “revolutionary suicide” that would echo through history. Some disciples willingly colluded, cheering as he exhorted them to kill themselves and their children. But the bodies found with bent needles in their arms testified to the fact that some refused and were forcibly injected.

Rex/words by Adam Lusher

The world of Cults: in pictures

The People’s Temple - Guyana, South America

When they finally counted the bodies after what would become known as the Jonestown massacre of 18 November 1978, the total came to 918, of whom 304 were children. They had been persuaded to “drink the Kool-Aid”, Flavor Aid, used to mask the bitter taste of cyanide, mixed with a dash of Valium.

AP/words by Adam Lusher

The world of Cults: in pictures

Freemasonry cult - France

Maude Julien, now 60, was forced to hold onto an electric fence for without showing feeling as a child. The ritual was considered to be a test of her willpower by her father, who wanted to make her “superhuman”. She says she was subjected to 18 years of controlling and manipulative behaviour by her father Louis Didier, an alcoholic who belonged to an esoteric lodge of Freemasonry which believed in the occult. He reportedly believed his daughter had been chosen as his protector, so sought to indoctrinate her and make her withstand torment by making her participate in cruel experiments. She says she was locked overnight in a rat-infested cellar to “meditate about death”. He forced her to drink whiskey before making her walk in a straight line, which she says led to the liver damage she lives with to this day. Didier adopted a 6-year-old girl, who he groomed to become his wife. The three lived in a remote mansion in northern France, which Ms Julien was forbidden to leave for a decade.

YouTube/librairie mollat

The world of Cults: in pictures

Rajneesh movement

Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho, and the free-love community which was built up around him in Oregon in the 1980s. Rajneesh, who died in 1990, was a charismatic Indian guru (who relocated to the US after the Indian government frowned upon his activities). His disciples gave huge amounts of cash to their figurehead and lost contact with their families.

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Ms Bronfman told the court in Brooklyn, New York, that she had wanted to help people through Nxivm, which branded itself as a self-improvement group, but ended up dishonouring her family.

“Your honour, I was afforded a great gift by my grandfather and father,” she said.

“With the gift, comes immense privilege and more importantly, tremendous responsibility. It does not come with an ability to break the law.

“For this, I am truly sorry.”

Ms Bronfman is believed to have donated tens of millions of dollars to fund Nxivm.

She faces more than two years in prison at her sentencing on 25 July.

However, her guilty plea means she will not have to go to trial early next month with Mr Raniere.

Prosecutors say Mr Raniere ran a secret sect within Nxivm called DOS that “operated with levels of women ‘slaves’ headed by ‘masters’.”

“Enslaved women” in the group were reportedly ordered to refer to Mr Raniere as “Vanguard”.

He has also been accused of being in a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl and of possessing child pornography.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyers have insisted any relationships between Mr Raniere and his alleged victims were consensual.

An accountant for Nxivm, Kathy Russell, also pleaded guilty on Friday to a fraud charge.

The guilty pleas come after Allison Mack, an actress known for her role in the Superman spin-off TV series Smallville, pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges related to Nxivm earlier this month.

Nxivm’s former president Nancy Salzman and her daughter Lauren Salzman also pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy last month.

Agencies contributed to this report