Collateral Damage

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Speaker 4 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. It was the the secretive self-help group many called a sex cult.

Speaker 4 Now for the first time, Nexingham insiders speak out, including from prison, former leader Keith Ranieri.

Speaker 6 I've been the leader of the community and it has come to this horrible situation.

Speaker 7 I joined DOS in 2016. DOS was a secret society for women who wanted to become their best selves.

Speaker 8 We were told that it was exclusively women mentoring women.

Speaker 8 They used that front of self-help as a way to groom women for Keith Ranieri.

Speaker 10 Women were being physically burned with his initials.

Speaker 11 We wanted something that honored the permanence of our commitment.

Speaker 7 There are women who have said, I didn't want this. When they were in the room with me, they wanted it.
They were laughing.

Speaker 11 I chose to be branded.

Speaker 7 I chose to be branded.

Speaker 8 The option to say no isn't really an option. The pain was like, what is happening?

Speaker 7 These young women were on this runaway roller coaster to hell.

Speaker 7 That's where Keith Ranieri was taking them. To hell.

Speaker 4 Here's Kate Snow with collateral damage.

Speaker 7 It looks like a typical American subdivision.

Speaker 7 But the snow shrouds a dark past, as if the blanket of white is covering up the crimes that took place here. I can't imagine what you went through emotionally.

Speaker 7 You said, I have wanted to end my life on numerous nights since leaving. That's heavy.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 These successful and accomplished women bonded here in friendship and devotion to a leader who they revered.

Speaker 8 He destroyed a lot of people's lives to the point where we're still fixing the messes of the the chaos that he created.

Speaker 7 India Oxenberg grew up in Beverly Hills and Malibu and lived what seemed an enchanted life.

Speaker 14 What would you like?

Speaker 14 I love travel a lot.

Speaker 7 Her grandmother is European royalty, and her mother, Catherine, starred in the 1980s mega-hit Dynasty.

Speaker 7 India's father wasn't part of her life, so Catherine raised her as a single mom. What kind of bond did that create for you guys? I think a close bond.

Speaker 7 I mean, it was sort of an unconventional childhood. I was filming a lot and traveling on location, and she would come with me and spend a lot of time in a trailer.

Speaker 7 In fact, one reporter asked her, you know, you know what your mom does for a living? She said, yeah, she works in a trailer.

Speaker 7 A young girl and her mother facing the world essentially alone, but always as a team.

Speaker 8 My mom and I did a lot of things together, and we were kind of, I mean, partners in crime, if you will.

Speaker 7 Then in 1999, when India was in grade school, their family expanded when Catherine married actor Casper Van Deen.

Speaker 7 I married her stepdad when she was about seven, and he arrived on the scene with two kids from a previous marriage, so all of a sudden we were a blended family. Then I had two more kids.

Speaker 7 She was always the family mediator. She was great with her step-sibling.

Speaker 17 Hey, you guys could get jobs off of that.

Speaker 7 In 2005, the entire family, including 13-year-old India, starred in a lifetime reality series called I Married a Princess. India talked about her mom.

Speaker 8 It made me feel like she believed in me.

Speaker 7 A few years later, she hosted the pilot for a TV show called Teen Talk.

Speaker 11 Yes, I'm India Oxenberg.

Speaker 7 At 19, after taking a break from college, India was thinking about starting a catering business.

Speaker 7 That's when she and her mom learned about a course called Executive Success Success Programs from a family friend.

Speaker 8 Initially, my mom and I weren't really that intrigued, but she kept pushing and insisting that this was going to change our lives.

Speaker 7 That would turn out to be an understatement. Executive Success Programs was part of a company with a strange name pronounced Nexium.
Nexium had headquarters near Albany, New York.

Speaker 7 but attracted 17,000 clients in branches around the world, including Canada and Mexico. India and Catherine attended a meeting in Los Angeles to give it a try.

Speaker 7 You went to your first Nexium meeting with your mom, right?

Speaker 8 Yeah, I did. That was back in 2011.
They said that they were going to be giving me what was like a practical MBA

Speaker 8 and that this was going to be my route to building the skills that I thought that I was missing in order to have a career.

Speaker 7 How much was that first five-day course?

Speaker 12 Thousands of dollars? Yeah, thousands.

Speaker 7 At least 2,400. The classes got more expensive as one advanced through Nexium's ranks.
India thought it was worth it.

Speaker 8 And to me, I thought this was going to be the roadmap for me to build myself and grow.

Speaker 7 Nexium was led by a man named Keith Ranieri. His acolytes recorded almost everything he said to promote his philosophy.

Speaker 18 Someone sees something as life-threatening, and it's more than life-threatening.

Speaker 7 It's self-threatening.

Speaker 12 Dog.

Speaker 7 And posted YouTube videos to gain more followers.

Speaker 18 I know sometimes I like to,

Speaker 18 most of the time, I like to just be with a person.

Speaker 18 And sometimes that's the very thing that people don't want.

Speaker 7 Raniri didn't just market Nexium as a self-help group, but as an almost mystical community that served others.

Speaker 18 Imagine if you could have a

Speaker 18 precise understanding of emotions.

Speaker 7 He even invited the Dalai Lama to Albany. And as India saw at her first class, he courted wealthy and well-known people as prospective members.

Speaker 8 And there were people in the room who were notable, even to me, and I'm not even that good at noticing celebrities and things like that.

Speaker 7 India and other members were told Raniri had one of the highest IQs ever, that he was a world-class athlete and musician, and that he had numerous degrees and patents.

Speaker 7 Within Mexium, he was called Vanguard. India and Catherine rolled their eyes at first.

Speaker 7 At the time, what are you thinking as you sit in there and you take the course? Some of it must have been attractive.

Speaker 7 Well, I've had to think about this a lot because there were a lot of red flags that I sort of dispelled as, okay, these are quirky people and they have idiosyncrasies.

Speaker 7 They're wearing sashes that delineate a certain hierarchy. They say it's the same thing as having a belt system.
I've taken karate, so for me that wasn't so odd. They were unusually friendly.

Speaker 7 They do this thing called love bombing, which I I didn't know was love bombing at the time. They're very flattering.
They make you feel very special.

Speaker 7 They seem like very happy, a little too happy, maybe, friendly people. Over time, India and Catherine got more involved in Nexium.

Speaker 7 In 2012, about a year after signing up, they began to travel to Albany for events like V-Week, celebrations of Vanguard's birthday. What were your first impressions of Keith Ranieri?

Speaker 7 Vanguard, they called him.

Speaker 8 Well, I'm laughing because my first impression of him was that that he was very short and that he also resembled a teddy gram, which is those little bulbous cookies. And he was unimpressive, like

Speaker 8 not what I had expected.

Speaker 7 Catherine was also unimpressed, but her then-husband, Casper, had an unsettling observation.

Speaker 7 I have to give him credit. Before I said hi, there was this lineup of women of all ages,

Speaker 7 except they were all very thin, all coming up to greet him, throwing their arms around him, long lingering kisses, staring in the eyes. It was weirdly intimate.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 my ex said they're all having sex with him.

Speaker 6 Some principal, some whatever.

Speaker 7 Having sex with Keith Ranieri? India and Catherine thought the Nexium crowd was a bit odd, but that seemed ridiculous. They didn't know the half of it.

Speaker 4 When we come back, exclusive new details of life inside Nexium, including what seemed like a worship of its leader.

Speaker 8 They had a lot of propaganda about him that they were spinning within the community.

Speaker 4 And then, India makes a life-changing decision.

Speaker 7 What'd you think when she said that? Not good. I just felt sick to my stomach.

Speaker 7 India Oxenberg and her mother Catherine often traveled to Nexium functions in Albany, New York.

Speaker 7 The biggest Nexium event was called V-Week, a birthday bash for Vanguard Keith Ranieri, who was showered with affection.

Speaker 7 At first, he didn't strike you as someone that people would idolize, put up on a pedestal, revere? No.

Speaker 8 No,

Speaker 8 not really. I was so new into the program.
They had a lot of propaganda about him that they were spinning within the community, and that hadn't really reached me yet.

Speaker 7 It would. Catherine eventually left the group, but slowly India got more involved.

Speaker 7 More and more of her time was spent at Nexium events, and she posed for photos with members who became close friends, many of them successful young women.

Speaker 7 India even recognized some of them, like actor Nikki Klein, one of the stars of the sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica. People know your face from Battlestar Galactica.
Yeah.

Speaker 11 You were in it for all of the seasons, four full seasons and a mini-series. I loved, I loved working on Battlestar.

Speaker 7 Nikki grew up in Vancouver, Canada, the shooting location for Battlestar and many other TV shows and movies.

Speaker 7 Looking to work on family relationships, she signed up for Nexium's executive success programs.

Speaker 7 Part of joining, part of going to those classes, was to try to repair your relationship with your father.

Speaker 11 Even before I learned about ESP, I was

Speaker 11 very curious about why we humans do what we do. I was very much on this search for truth.

Speaker 8 She was my friend. She was someone who I considered to be a really good friend.

Speaker 7 India also got to know Allison Mack, a star of the TV series Smallville. This is Allison addressing Ranieri at a Nexium seminar in Albany.

Speaker 7 But I just kind of feel it all the time now, like super exposed.

Speaker 18 What you're doing is you're exposing a part of you that you've long denied.

Speaker 7 In addition to Allison and Nikki, India became close with Danielle Roberts. Danielle had always been ambitious.
As a young girl, she was a star gymnast.

Speaker 7 I competed up to the national level. I was hoping to go to the Olympics.
And around ninth grade, I wound up having multiple ankle injuries. But I had great physical therapists.

Speaker 7 And I thought to myself, my God, like, if I can help people get back to doing what they love, that's what I want to do.

Speaker 7 So when she was older, she became an osteopathic doctor and had a thriving practice.

Speaker 7 In her early 30s, at a turning point in her life and career, she joined ESP and Nexium and soon gave talks about the group's philosophy.

Speaker 7 We've created specific awareness practices that help you become more aware of your body. If you were trying to get me to sign up to become a part of Nexium, what would you say?

Speaker 7 Well, I think it's different for every person.

Speaker 7 I was very interested in personal responsibility, in empowerment, and in understanding how the human body and human behavior works so that I could help more people.

Speaker 7 Danielle believed her work at Nexium would revolutionize healthcare.

Speaker 8 She ran a business called XOSO, which was created by Keith, and that was kind of his

Speaker 8 yoga type physical therapy program.

Speaker 7 India was impressed and thought she found a warm and loving community in Nexium.

Speaker 8 I remember believing so strongly that what we were doing was good and wholeheartedly believing that Keith Ranieri was a good person.

Speaker 7 This is India in a docuseries called Seduced Inside the Nexium cult.

Speaker 8 A lot of my life was spent in this place.

Speaker 7 Over time, she became another of his devoted supporters, something that worried her mother. At first, she had burgeoning careers.
She was acting, she was modeling, she was working with photographers.

Speaker 7 Living in LA. Living in LA, sometimes living at home, sometimes with a boyfriend.
And then all of a sudden

Speaker 7 everything became secondary to the mission. To Nexium.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 And she dropped doing all her other business interests.

Speaker 7 India spent almost all her time on Nexium, moving up the ranks and recruiting others. She made little money from her work, but it had become her obsession.

Speaker 7 By the fall of 2016, five years after she first joined, India told her mom she was moving to Nexium's headquarters outside Albany and taking on a new role with Rani.

Speaker 7 Her friends Nikki, Danielle, and Allison were already living there, part of a tight-knit band of Ranieri's closest supporters. What'd you think when she said that? Not good.

Speaker 7 I had a very, very bad feeling, especially as it was coupled with, and Keith is going to mentor me and we're going to start start this business. And I just felt sick to my stomach.

Speaker 7 There was good reason for that. If India or Catherine or any of the others had simply Googled the name Keith Ranieri, they might have never gotten involved in the first place.

Speaker 7 When they joined, they didn't know that in 2003, Forbes ran a cover story on Ranieri.

Speaker 7 The article quoted critics who accused him of leading a cult-like program aimed at breaking down his subjects psychologically. One source for the article was Edgar Bronfman Sr.

Speaker 7 of the Seagram's Liquor Fortune. Bronfman was angry that his daughter Claire, who was in her 20s, bankrolled Ranieri to the tune of millions of dollars.

Speaker 7 Reporter Robert Gavin of the Albany Times-Union says Nexium tried to hide bad press from members.

Speaker 10 And these were widely circulated articles. Dadani Fair had written about Nexium.
Many people, local and non-local, had written about it.

Speaker 7 When India and Catherine got involved, they hadn't seen the negative coverage.

Speaker 7 For instance, this newspaper expose in 2012, after following the Nexium story for years, the Albany Times Union did a groundbreaking investigative series.

Speaker 10 What that series did is it told anybody who didn't know that Keith Ranieri, among other things, has allegedly had sex with underage females.

Speaker 7 But the alleged victims did not come forward. Ranieri was not charged and never arrested for any crimes.

Speaker 7 One of the Times Union reports stated, A close-knit group of these women have tended to him, paid his bills, and shuttled him around.

Speaker 7 Several have satisfied his sexual needs, and a few have left their families behind to wrap him in their affections. Now, India was headed to Albany.

Speaker 4 Coming up.

Speaker 4 Within Nexium, a secret society of women where so-called masters required absolute obedience.

Speaker 7 Did you have to get permission to eat?

Speaker 8 Yes, to eat, to go and see people, permission to travel, all of those things I had to ask for.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 7 In the fall of 2016, India Oxenberg joined her close friends Danielle Roberts, Nikki Klein, and Allison Mack near Albany, New York, each devotees of Vanguard Keith Ranieri.

Speaker 7 No one knew outside Nexium's inner circle, but India was there because she had been inducted into a secret sorority.

Speaker 8 When we were told about this women's group, we were told that it was exclusively women. mentoring women and that there were no men involved.
Mentoring.

Speaker 7 Mentoring each other, helping each other.

Speaker 8 Yes, it was supposed to be about like executive coaching, but for women. And to me, that sounded great.
I thought like, well, I can use, I can use help. I can use some guidance.

Speaker 7 This women's group had an odd-sounding name, DOS, and Allison was a leader. Were you asked to join DOS by Allison Mack?

Speaker 8 She recruited me. And

Speaker 8 at the time, I didn't realize that I had been targeted for what DOS really was. I believed Allison when she told me that it was a women's empowerment group.

Speaker 7 Nikki and Danielle were also members. Who brought you in? You know, Allison had invited me, Alison Mack.

Speaker 7 And at the time where I was at in my life, it was something that I really thought would help me.

Speaker 7 But first, the women had to prove their loyalty. They had to sign a document requiring members to provide what was called collateral.
Some would call it potential blackmail.

Speaker 7 What was the collateral that you had to give?

Speaker 8 So the collateral was damaging or compromising information about yourself or your loved ones.

Speaker 7 So if you break with the group, they're going to release this damaging information about you.

Speaker 20 Right.

Speaker 8 But the way that they spun it was as if it was for your benefit.

Speaker 7 I'm not sure if you've talked about this, India, what your collateral was?

Speaker 8 A little bit.

Speaker 8 There was so much. It was videos, it was recordings, it was photographs.

Speaker 7 India says the collateral included graphic sexual images of the women, but that wasn't all.

Speaker 8 Really, a majority of it was made-up information.

Speaker 8 The collateral became increasingly more stressful and difficult because we had to make up things about people that we cared about and people who we loved.

Speaker 7 Did you make up things about your family?

Speaker 8 I did. And that was something that was so horrible for me because I knew that I would never break this secret because I would never want to hurt the people that I loved most.

Speaker 7 India was told it was to ensure they lived up to the goals they had set for themselves, an unbreakable commitment to the group. India went along with it.
Nikki embraced it.

Speaker 11 Yes,

Speaker 11 it was

Speaker 11 edgy. It was maybe a little extreme, but

Speaker 7 you're giving them naked videos of yourself, right? Things that might be damaging to your family.

Speaker 7 affidavits or letters about things that happen in your life that you're embarrassed and ashamed and don't want revealed.

Speaker 11 So, my experience of doing that.

Speaker 7 How is that okay, though? You know what I mean? Because people don't understand that. Why would you do that and allow someone to have your deepest secrets to hold over you as blackmail?

Speaker 11 Well, that's not what it was for. Okay.

Speaker 11 How important is it to truly become the woman I want to be? And the collateral was me saying, I want that,

Speaker 11 and this is what I'm, the chips I'm willing to put in.

Speaker 7 collateral was just one of the requirements of dos allison told india about another bizarre practice in which they used the loaded terms master and slave did she become your master

Speaker 7 she did she was my master within dos allison mack invites you in to use your terminology she's the master right yeah and you were a slave to her.

Speaker 7 DOS stood for dominus obsequious sororium latin that roughly translates to master above female slave and what did that mean it meant that i was to be ultimately obedient to her and that she could instruct me to do whatever she wanted that was what it really meant india says allison controlled everything did you have to get permission to eat

Speaker 7 to

Speaker 7 leave to travel yes allison mack was a very

Speaker 8 intense person,

Speaker 8 and she took her role as master very seriously, which also included having to ask permission to eat,

Speaker 8 permission to go and see people, permission to travel, all of those things I had to ask for.

Speaker 7 This whole thing is just so hard to understand from the outside. You're depriving yourself of food.
You lost a ton of weight. I did.

Speaker 7 And for India, there was another requirement. And you were having, as I understand it, you were sleeping with Keith Ranieri?

Speaker 8 Yes. I don't even know.
It's such a weird thing. It's so hard to understand from the outside.
And one of the more complicated things was my relationship with Keith Ranieri and what that was.

Speaker 7 India wasn't the only one. She says many of the DOS women were essentially coerced into having sex with Rani.

Speaker 8 And I was one of many women that Keith Ranieri abused. And it was non-consensual sexual interactions because we were all collateralized.
And none of us wanted to engage with Keith in that way.

Speaker 8 It was not an option to say no.

Speaker 7 Nikki says her experience was very different and she was happy to say yes.

Speaker 11 I had a sexual relationship with Keith for over 10 years

Speaker 11 that was completely separate from DAS.

Speaker 11 There was never once was I

Speaker 11 asked to do a sexual act with anything to do with DAS.

Speaker 7 But you were having a sexual relationship with him while other women were also having sexual relationships with him.

Speaker 11 From the beginning, he was very honest and upfront with the fact that he had other partners and

Speaker 11 most of those he had for 10 or more years before DAS was ever

Speaker 11 conceived.

Speaker 7 And you call your relationship with him consensual?

Speaker 11 100%.

Speaker 11 100%.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 7 There's a man in a leadership position who's having relations with multiple women. You're all

Speaker 7 living in the same way. Let's break it down.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 11 So I find it

Speaker 11 difficult

Speaker 11 when people view my decisions. as something I'm only doing because

Speaker 11 some man

Speaker 7 is

Speaker 11 inspiring me somehow to do.

Speaker 11 I made all of my decisions because I wanted something and I got something out of what I chose.

Speaker 11 So my relationship with Keith was an effect of something that I wanted and that I benefited tremendously from.

Speaker 7 For the women of DOS, there was still another practice they had to say yes to, one that India would find terrifying.

Speaker 4 Coming up,

Speaker 4 a secret ritual.

Speaker 7 I had a few of my friends with me. One was stroking my head, another one was holding my hand, another one was helping to secure my leg.

Speaker 4 Women submitting to the unthinkable.

Speaker 8 The pain was something like that I had never experienced before.

Speaker 7 India Oxenberg had given up almost everything for Nexium. Her life in California, her family and friends, her career.

Speaker 7 As part of the secret sorority called DOS, she handed over sexually explicit pictures of herself and damaging lies about her family.

Speaker 7 She had agreed to obey her so-called master, Allison Mack, who now had another demand. India and the others were about to be branded.

Speaker 8 I remember saying to Allison, do we really have to do this? Like there was a part of me that was still there that didn't want this.

Speaker 7 Is it still vivid in your mind, India?

Speaker 8 Yes, the answer is yes.

Speaker 7 The unusual ritual took place inside the Nexium compound. India's skin would be scarred with a searing hot instrument, a cauterizing pen.
branded like cattle.

Speaker 7 It seems unimaginable that the members of DOS would submit to this, but they did. India had already watched when Danielle Roberts became the first in her group to get one.

Speaker 8 I watched that happen to Danielle without even really registering that that was going to happen to me. It was almost like, oh, okay, that happened to you, now moving on.

Speaker 8 It's very common that people will dissociate from experiences that are traumatic. And the brand, to me, is one of those experiences where we were really out of our bodies when it was happening to us.

Speaker 7 What was the scene like when you got the brand? Because there were other women in the room watching, right? Well, I had a few of my friends with me. One was up

Speaker 7 by my head, kind of stroking my head. Another one was holding my hand.
Another one was, you know, helping to secure my leg.

Speaker 7 She's stroking my hair, whispering, like encouraging things into my ear, helping my leg not move, you know, so I don't... get hurt in a caring, loving way.

Speaker 7 As an outsider, imagining this scene and hearing what you're describing, it is really hard to understand. I know.
I know.

Speaker 7 Even your explanation right now, you describing it to me, makes me wince, makes me think, I just can't imagine...

Speaker 7 What about it?

Speaker 7 The pain of having a cauterizing pen on my flesh.

Speaker 7 I can't imagine that.

Speaker 7 I can't imagine why I would do that. Help me understand why

Speaker 7 you would do that.

Speaker 7 I think it's very simple. I mean, we wanted to be part of

Speaker 7 a kick-ass organization where women were really committed to making a difference in the world. That was the price of entry, you know, and that was something that would join us all together.

Speaker 7 We can do that.

Speaker 12 We can do anything.

Speaker 7 It was India's turn later. By that time, she was so used to following orders, she says she saw no way out.
The branding is hard to understand. How did you decide to go ahead with that?

Speaker 8 It's not really much of a decision. It was a command.
So part of being in DOS and pledging to this sorority was agreeing to be branded.

Speaker 8 But we were also told that the brand was going to be, you know, the size of a quarter.

Speaker 7 In fact, the scars on India and the other women were much larger on very sensitive skin in their pelvic areas.

Speaker 7 And it was going to be cauterized into you.

Speaker 8 And it was going to be cauterized into our skin. None of that was explained to us in detail.

Speaker 8 We were talking about women that are sleep deprived, women that are deprived of food, women that have already given tons of collateral.

Speaker 8 The option to run away and say no isn't really an option anymore.

Speaker 7 What on earth was that like?

Speaker 8 It was mixed. I mean, there was a part of me and the other women that felt like it was a bonding experience, like we were doing something really difficult together.

Speaker 8 And then there was another part of me that was also terrified of what was going on. And the pain was something like that I had never experienced before.

Speaker 8 There was no anesthesia, there was no numbing cream, there was none of that.

Speaker 7 It wasn't clear at the time, but they would later learn the brand was KAR, the initials of Keith Allen Ranieri.

Speaker 7 The brandings were supposed to be secret, but when word got to India's mother, Nexium's days were numbered.

Speaker 4 Coming up, an alarming phone call, what an ex-Nexium member told Catherine.

Speaker 7 I fear for India's life. She's in danger.
You have to save her.

Speaker 4 When dateline continues.

Speaker 7 As darkness fell over Los Angeles one evening in the spring of 2017, Catherine Oxenberg had no clue what was really happening with her daughter.

Speaker 7 India, who'd been involved with Nexium for six years, was on the other side of the country in Albany. Out of the blue, Catherine got a series of frightening text messages.

Speaker 7 They were from an actor, Bonnie Peace.

Speaker 7 Bonnie was never part of DOS, but she was a longtime Nexium follower who had recently defected from the group. After reading the texts, Catherine called Bonnie.

Speaker 7 And she said, I am afraid to talk to you on the phone. Will you meet me in person? But I have to tell you that I'm really, I fear for India's life.
She's in danger. You have to save her.

Speaker 7 You hear.

Speaker 7 I'm afraid for her life. She's in danger? Do you break down? Well, no, because I'm thinking, is this woman crazy? But I immediately, I said, okay, I'll meet you tomorrow.
So I met with her.

Speaker 7 She was shaking.

Speaker 7 And I wrote down everything that she said, and she basically gave me a breakdown of everything she knew up to that point.

Speaker 7 She told me about this group, this inner circle called DOS, DOS, Dominus, Obsequious, Sororium. India was part of a group that was a master-slave arrangement.
When she says that...

Speaker 7 Well, a master-slave.

Speaker 12 Have you really processed that?

Speaker 7 Well, it takes me a while to process this, which is why I'm writing everything down just so that I can figure it out for myself. Then she says, they're on diets.
She said they're sleep-deprived.

Speaker 7 They're on what's called readiness drills, which means that if their master contacts them and they don't respond within 60 seconds,

Speaker 7 they're punished. The punishments could be that they're starved even more.
They have these penances they have to do. If somebody fails at an assignment, then somebody else is held responsible.

Speaker 7 You have to pay the price. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And it just got darker and darker. And then she said, they've had to sign over collateral in order to join admission to this group.

Speaker 7 And then she said, on top of everything else, they've had to sign a vow, a lifetime vow of obedience to their master.

Speaker 12 So

Speaker 7 I'm reeling.

Speaker 7 Catherine could not process what she was learning, but she quickly made the decision to lure India home to Los Angeles with the promise of a big birthday party, a party that was really a planned intervention.

Speaker 7 Then a few days later, another actor, Sarah Edmondson, who had also defected, told Catherine about the branding.

Speaker 7 And I found out two days before India was scheduled to come to LA for her, like, the pseudo-birthday party that I'd planned that was really an intervention.

Speaker 7 It looks like it really pains you when you talk about the branding. It pains me on many levels.
One young woman, her master said, I'm so excited for you.

Speaker 7 You're going to be involved in this very special ritual. You're going to be on lockdown for a couple of days.
I'm not going to tell you anything about it. Can you imagine?

Speaker 7 That's a very special ceremony. being branded with this man's initials without anesthetic without

Speaker 7 a quarterizing pen without any anesthetic. Your daughter had that done.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 India, did you tell your mom about the branding?

Speaker 8 No, my mom actually questioned me first about the branding, and I was shocked. I had no idea my mom knew about the branding.
I had no idea anybody outside of DOS had spoken about DOS at that point.

Speaker 7 Catherine's attempted intervention did not work. India was in too deep and had no intention of leaving DOS.

Speaker 7 In fact, she had her own so-called slaves and was actively trying to persuade other women to join. You did recruit other women?

Speaker 8 I did. I was commanded to recruit other women into this group, and there was a part of me that really believed that this was good while I was in there.

Speaker 7 After India returned to Albany, Catherine declared war on Nexium and Keith Ranieri, and her first call was to an unlikely ally.

Speaker 7 had written some pretty incendiary blogs about Keith, about the Bromfmans, about the organization. And I called him and I said,

Speaker 7 I see that you haven't written any blogs recently. Are you aware what's going on right now? His name, Frank Parlato, and he had quite a history with the group.

Speaker 7 Ten years earlier, he worked for Nexium as a public relations consultant. What did you think of the organization at first?

Speaker 21 I thought the people were delightful. I thought that Keith was a very

Speaker 21 fun-loving, kind of charming person.

Speaker 7 But that all changed. Frank says he uncovered financial improprieties by Ranieri.
When he started to investigate, Frank says Ranieri fired him.

Speaker 7 Soon after, he was sued by Claire Bronfman, who bankrolled Nexium. You believe they were coming after you legally as retaliation?

Speaker 21 That and just for the pure sport of it, because I believe that Keith Ranieri does these things just to destroy other people.

Speaker 21 You know, he's had more than 40 lawsuits against people that either worked for him, were students students of his, or were his lovers.

Speaker 7 Most of the lawsuits didn't go anywhere, but by 2015, Frank was facing other legal problems. He was indicted on financial and tax charges, including fraud and money laundering.

Speaker 7 Frank, who insists he's innocent, has pleaded not guilty and is still awaiting trial. But he vowed to expose Ranieri and Nexium.
and began a website called the Frank Report.

Speaker 7 You over the years wrote hundreds and hundreds of articles on your blog about Nexium. Critical, intensely critical of Keith Raneri, right? You became like his arch nemesis.
Is that fair?

Speaker 21 I think that is fair. I wrote maybe 5,000 stories about him.

Speaker 7 And then Catherine handed him the biggest story of all.

Speaker 21 She said, my daughter is in Nexium. and she has been branded.

Speaker 21 And in addition to that, she is being blackmailed because the group is holding some very compromising photographs and information about her so that she couldn't leave even if she wanted to.

Speaker 7 When you heard that, what did you think?

Speaker 21 Well, my first reaction was, if this is true,

Speaker 21 Keith is finished.

Speaker 7 But with Nexium's history of suing its enemies, Frank knew he had to be extremely careful.

Speaker 21 I contacted Sarah Edmondson and some other people to verify that this was true.

Speaker 21 Then once I determined that it was true, I published it on the Frank Report.

Speaker 7 That was on June 5th, 2017.

Speaker 21 And about 30

Speaker 21 so-called slaves bolted from DOS because they felt now they were safe to leave because of the exposure they wouldn't have to be as concerned about their collateral, their blackmail material being released.

Speaker 7 That story is like a bomb going off inside the organization, right?

Speaker 21 It cratered the cult.

Speaker 7 But some followers, including India, remained loyal to Raneri and Nexium.

Speaker 4 Coming up, will Catherine's efforts to expose Nexium cost her her daughter?

Speaker 8 I felt betrayed by my mother. I thought she was crazy.

Speaker 7 In the summer of 2017, the lid was blown off the story of DOS and the branding of women within Nexium.

Speaker 7 Until then, the vast majority of Nexium members had no idea about the harsh requirements of the DOS sorority.

Speaker 7 Some members of DOS fled before they were branded too, thanks to the story published in the Frank Report. But India wasn't going anywhere.

Speaker 8 I felt defensive because I trusted these people

Speaker 8 for years. They were who I considered my closest friends and

Speaker 8 authority.

Speaker 7 But Frank and Catherine were on a mission. and joined by actor Sarah Edmondson, who'd been branded.
I reached out to law enforcement and I get stonewalled. What did they say? Yeah, we know about them.

Speaker 7 We've been following them, but there's really nothing we can do. Did they say the women were there by choice?

Speaker 7 Yes, and actually Sarah Edmondson went into one of the field offices in person and showed them her brand and they said, I'm sorry, but it sounds like it's consensual. There's nothing we can do.

Speaker 7 Four months after the Frank Report story appeared, The New York Times published a front-page article. Catherine did an interview, and Sarah Edmondson came forward to show her scar from the branding.

Speaker 7 It ignited a firestorm. Robert Gavin of the Albany Times Union.

Speaker 10 It was a blockbuster. When this came out, it was like, oh my god.

Speaker 7 A few days later, when Dateline first visited Catherine in her home in Malibu, she was clearly in agony. This is my last recourse.
It is excruciatingly painful to expose my child like this.

Speaker 7 I had a fantasy that when the New York Times came out that she would read it and go, wow, mom, I want to come home. But that's not what happened.
Instead, India remained loyal to Nexium.

Speaker 7 Catherine felt she had no choice but to continue her crusade in the media, even though she risked further alienating her daughter. On November 2nd, she went on the Today Show.

Speaker 7 I love her to the end of the world, and I am only doing this.

Speaker 7 to bring awareness because without awareness there can be no outrage and unless there's outrage the authorities are not going to step in and do what they should do, which is shut this down and stop this from happening.

Speaker 7 The Today Show piece that I did was pivotal as far as I was concerned. It was the strongest interview that I did, and I literally got the call 48 hours after the Today Show.
Got which call?

Speaker 7 The call that I got from my lawyer saying that the FBI were moving in aggressively.

Speaker 7 But Catherine's effort to get India home was backfiring.

Speaker 7 Your mom kept asking you to leave. She kept contacting you, trying to convince you.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and on television.

Speaker 7 And very publicly. Yes.
From your end, what did that feel like? And what did you say to her when she was pleaing with you?

Speaker 8 I mean, when she first went to the media, I was still very deeply involved in Nexium. And I felt kind of in shock at that point.
I felt betrayed by my mother.

Speaker 8 I felt like she was exposing me unnecessarily. And I also thought that she was crazy.

Speaker 7 All the publicity from Catherine's battle helped expose more details about Ranieri's past.

Speaker 7 He grew up in a middle-class family in suburban New York and attended the prestigious Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Speaker 22 It's an amazing idea.

Speaker 7 Yes, well, sometimes it even amazes me. After college, Ranieri started a business called Consumers Buyline.
The company was a multi-level marketing scheme that was sued by several states.

Speaker 10 He had been in trouble years earlier with his former business, Attorneys General,

Speaker 12 who went after him.

Speaker 7 But within a few years, he started another multi-level marketing business, Executive Success Programs, part of Nexium. His lectures were often recorded.

Speaker 18 The longer inductive process is sometimes the most useful one, depending on where you want to go, how you want to be.

Speaker 10 Nexium is where Keith Ranieri becomes the Keith Ranieri. We now know who he is.
That's where he decides

Speaker 10 to be known as the Vanguard. And Keith Ranieri was at the top of the Nexium world.

Speaker 10 For me, I think for people who are familiar with this, we certainly weren't surprised to hear that Keith Ranieri was being accused of nefarious activity.

Speaker 7 It turns out Vanguard wasn't exactly who followers thought he was. Remember, he was supposed to be a world-class athlete and musician with multiple degrees.
None of that was true.

Speaker 7 And what about being the world's smartest man? Well, he had a so-so 2.6 GPA in college.

Speaker 9 Keith Ranieri was sold as this, you know, this genius with an IQ of over 200, someone who was revolutionary, who could change the world.

Speaker 7 Cult intervention expert Rick Allen Ross says if Ranieri was a genius at anything, it was manipulation.

Speaker 9 He could determine what were the vulnerabilities of people that he had sway over, you know, who had personal issues with their their family, in their workplace, and then exploiting those vulnerabilities to leverage control over them.

Speaker 7 Control over people like India who thought Raniri was a victim.

Speaker 8 I was so indoctrinated into what they wanted me to believe we were doing, which was

Speaker 8 this great community of good people who want to grow and this poor martyr of a man who's being targeted by the media and the government.

Speaker 7 And as Catherine continued to speak out, India says Nexium loyalists called her mother the enemy.

Speaker 8 She's out to get you. She's trying to destroy us.
She wants to hurt your friends.

Speaker 7 India says the woman who bankrolled Nexium pushed her to turn on Catherine.

Speaker 8 Claire Brothman wanted to discredit my mom completely. She wanted to get rid of my mom as a threat to Nexium and to Keith.
And part of that was using me as a pawn against my own mom.

Speaker 7 As law enforcement worked its case against Nexium and Ranieri, Nexium loyalists tried to intimidate Catherine. Did anyone from Nexium contact you and tell you, stop?

Speaker 7 Yes, I got calls from what I would call their enforcers. They were called

Speaker 7 the Ethics Police. And people would call you

Speaker 7 and say what terrible harm I was

Speaker 7 perpetrating.

Speaker 7 Catherine was frightened, but less concerned about her own safety than she was about India's.

Speaker 4 Coming up,

Speaker 4 Keith Ranieri takes off, triggering an international manhunt and a dramatic confrontation.

Speaker 11 Some of them had like valuas and they had machine guns and bulletproof vests.

Speaker 17 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 20 A BetterHelp ad.

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Speaker 7 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 7 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 22 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 7 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 16 We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 9 NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts.
Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 2 On the night before Halloween in 1975, 15-year-old Martha Moxley was murdered, but police failed to make an arrest. Until, in 2000, her one-time neighbor, Michael Skakal, was arrested.

Speaker 2 He was also a cousin of the Kennedys. The Kennedy connection is the reason that most people know about this case.
But the deeper I dug, the more I came to question everything I thought I knew.

Speaker 2 Find and follow Dead Certain: the Martha Moxley Murder on Pandora to listen to the latest episodes each week.

Speaker 7 India Oxenberg was still loyal to Nexium and Keith Ranieri. Afraid for India's safety, Catherine went looking for her near Albany in late November 2017.

Speaker 7 That's a courageous thing to do to go drive to where you think your daughter is being effectively held and not knowing if they have security, if they're... I mean, did you think she was in danger?

Speaker 7 Did you worry that

Speaker 7 you worry for her life? I did at that point. I did worry for her life.

Speaker 7 I knew also that they would be blaming her for all of this public outrage because it was her mom.

Speaker 13 Her mom, yeah.

Speaker 7 So I thought that, if anything, would increase her jeopardy. As Catherine looked around the neighborhood, she was anxious.
And who do we bump into? Keith Ranieri and two of his Haram members.

Speaker 12 What happened?

Speaker 7 Well, not much because he ran.

Speaker 12 He ran from you? Yes.

Speaker 7 He ran and hid in his house. Catherine didn't find India, who had left Albany for New York City.
Soon after that, Catherine learned Ranieri had left Albany, too.

Speaker 7 He took off for Mexico while American authorities were looking into the allegations against him. His followers, Nikki and Allison, were with him.

Speaker 7 By this point, Allison and Nikki were more than close friends. They had become a couple and gotten married.
You described earlier that you were in a sexual relationship with Keith.

Speaker 7 You're married to Allison.

Speaker 7 Is that a loving sexual relationship also?

Speaker 11 I think, yeah, that isn't something I want to

Speaker 11 discuss here. There's just no way that I could

Speaker 11 do justice to the beautiful soul that she is

Speaker 11 in a short answer.

Speaker 7 Nikki, Allison, Ranieri, and others hung out in Puerto Vallarta.

Speaker 7 Then, in March 2018, a knock at the door.

Speaker 7 At first, Ranieri hid in a closet. Nikki captured the scene as he was arrested and taken away by Mexican authorities.

Speaker 11 We're going to follow them.

Speaker 7 Were you standing right there?

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 11 And some of them had like balaclavas and they had machine guns and bulletproof vests and we didn't know what was happening.

Speaker 7 What happened was Ranieri was immediately deported back to the U.S., where he was charged with crimes related to Nexium.

Speaker 7 Did you get a phone call? I did.

Speaker 7 I was getting a facial.

Speaker 7 My lawyers called me up. My phone went ballistic and said he's just been arrested.
And

Speaker 7 it was a waste of a facial. I had like tears pouring down my face, creams all over the place.
Yeah, best phone calls of my life. Did it feel like an end?

Speaker 7 Felt like the beginning of the end.

Speaker 7 Keith Ranieri was charged by federal prosecutors with a litany of felonies, including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking.

Speaker 7 When Keith Ranieri was arrested, did you worry that you might be in legal trouble too?

Speaker 8 I was definitely worried when Keith Ranieri got arrested. I think I was also in a great deal of shock because

Speaker 8 it was starting to hit me that this was not going to just go away, that this was gaining speed.

Speaker 7 Catherine warned India she faced legal risk. She could technically be arrested.
You don't know that they're not going to go after her because technically she has women reporting up to her as slaves.

Speaker 15 I know. I know.

Speaker 7 That was my fear. That's why I kept texting her saying you're in a very dangerous situation.
Then two weeks later, Allison Mack was arrested.

Speaker 8 And it really wasn't until Allison Mack was arrested that I started to fear that I could be too.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 that's a very scary place to be.

Speaker 7 Would India be next?

Speaker 4 Coming up,

Speaker 4 India reveals her darkest moment.

Speaker 7 That's heavy. It is.

Speaker 8 That was a really vulnerable thing for me to share.

Speaker 7 India was in a very lonely place, by herself and at risk. She was still in Nexium's clutches.
It would take months to find her way out. It was a process for her to remove herself or to recognize

Speaker 7 the danger she was in and what was happening, right?

Speaker 7 It didn't just happen overnight. No.
There's not a light bulb moment when she said, I'm leaving.

Speaker 7 I think it has for other people who have left cults, they had a clear, concise, precise moment of shifting, but with India, it was incremental.

Speaker 7 After Keith Ranieri and Alison Mack were charged in July 2018, Seagram's heiress Claire Bronfman was arrested along with other Nexium insiders.

Speaker 7 India finally acquiesced to having her first session with a cult expert who had been working with Catherine. The goal to finally bring her home and deprogram her.

Speaker 8 We were in a hotel room together speaking with a woman who was the deprogrammer that my mom introduced me to, who really was my entry point into rebuilding my capacity to think critically again because it had been so tampered with.

Speaker 7 The effort took months, but slowly India took halting steps to leave Nexium behind. But India's friend Danielle, the doctor, was still loyal to Raniri.

Speaker 7 It would have been a lot easier, you know, for me to just say, you know, I made a mistake. Let me go through the deprogramming.
And

Speaker 7 I just asked because

Speaker 7 so many people that were in Nexium did kind of break ties. You know, they...

Speaker 7 They didn't have strong relationships anymore with their families. Did you have that happen? You repaired it or you.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean,

Speaker 7 my family never

Speaker 7 like left me.

Speaker 7 You know, they never disowned me, which I know there are some friends of mine that their, their families have done that and they've they've stayed true, not because it's easier, because it's not.

Speaker 7 It's a lot harder.

Speaker 7 It was hard for Nikki Klein, too. She was losing her close circle of friends after spending 10 years of her life in Nexium.
It's a whole decade of your life. Yeah.

Speaker 11 Yeah.

Speaker 7 How do you look at it now, those 10 years?

Speaker 11 I'm just so

Speaker 11 grateful that

Speaker 11 I had the opportunity to experience the people, the tools, the community that I did because it's not here anymore. At least not in the same way.

Speaker 7 By fall 2018, India had finally left the DOS group and Nexium and moved back to California, but the process was excruciating.

Speaker 7 How did you repair your relationship with your mom?

Speaker 12 A lot of work.

Speaker 13 My mom and I are

Speaker 8 a lot of time.

Speaker 8 We knew that our love was strong and that we had to just keep the communication open, keep sharing, keep talking, even when it was really uncomfortable. And my mom did that for me.

Speaker 8 She was there from the moment that I got out with open arms. She said, I'm here with you for

Speaker 8 whatever you need, I'll give to you.

Speaker 7 I wonder if now, India, now can you see that your mom was driven by nothing but love?

Speaker 8 Now I can.

Speaker 8 Everything that she did came from love. Everything she did came from the fact that she knew that I had a life beyond this

Speaker 8 that I couldn't see for myself.

Speaker 7 Emotionally, India, this, this...

Speaker 7 I just, I can't imagine what you went through emotionally. You said, I have wanted to end my life on numerous nights since leaving.

Speaker 7 Yeah. It's heavy.

Speaker 8 It is. And it's.

Speaker 8 That was a really vulnerable thing for me to

Speaker 7 share.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 the more I've been able to speak about my experiences, the more I see the similarities with many other women and men. who have experienced trauma or abuse.

Speaker 7 Nexium leaders were now accused of orchestrating that kind of trauma and abuse. But just as they were to have their day in court, there were new revelations.

Speaker 12 Coming up, one revelation.

Speaker 4 The person who did most of the branding of DOS women was none other than Dr. Danielle Roberts.
Now, she speaks out about it publicly for the first time.

Speaker 12 You are a doctor.

Speaker 7 How could you then inflict pain on people? I think people are making an assumption that people were harmed. Nobody was harmed in this.
These women wanted this. They asked for this.

Speaker 4 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 7 As the leadership of Nexium was charged with multiple federal crimes, Another investigation was underway in the spring of 2018.

Speaker 7 Not criminal, but a medical investigation into the person who branded India and most of the other DOS women. Someone you'll recognize, Danielle Roberts.
My intent was never

Speaker 7 to hurt any of these women.

Speaker 7 Remember, she was an osteopathic doctor and now her medical license was at stake. Danielle is now answering questions about branding DOS members in an exclusive interview.

Speaker 7 She says she was asked to do the branding by her so-called master in DOS, Allison Mack.

Speaker 7 They say the women were naked and that they were restrained by other nude women. Is that true?

Speaker 7 I branded 17 women total. All of the women that I branded were naked.

Speaker 7 That was part of the process.

Speaker 7 It wasn't a bad process. Some people are outraged.
that you did this as a doctor, frankly. Sure.

Speaker 7 That you used a cauterizing pen and put a brand in people because you took a Hippocratic oath to protect, to help people, to keep them from pain, and you were inflicting pain.

Speaker 7 What do you say to that?

Speaker 7 I mean, I think it's a very misunderstood thing and it's going to take a little bit of pulling apart.

Speaker 7 The first thing is that this, you know, this clearly wasn't the practice of medicine.

Speaker 7 Danielle says she was not acting as a doctor during the brandings, that she was a member of a social group taking part in a social activity.

Speaker 7 These women didn't come to me because they thought I was a doctor. They had no idea who the branding technician was going to be.
You know, there was no patient-physician relationship.

Speaker 7 But my question,

Speaker 7 just as

Speaker 7 a human being hearing this story, my question is, you are a doctor. I am.
I understand you're saying you weren't practicing medicine in that moment. But you are a doctor.
You're a trained doctor.

Speaker 7 You took an oath.

Speaker 7 How could you then,

Speaker 7 you know inflict pain on people well I think pain and harm are two different things you know I think

Speaker 7 people are making an assumption that people were harmed nobody was harmed in this these women wanted this they asked for this you know I mean and I understand I understand now they're that narrative has changed and they're saying otherwise there are women who have said I didn't want this I felt like I had to do it there are women who have said India said India India Oxenberg said to me, I didn't really want this.

Speaker 7 She's now covered it up with another tattoo. She's ashamed that she has the brand.
And I feel badly that

Speaker 7 that's how they've chosen to perceive it. I feel badly about that.
When

Speaker 7 understand that when they were in the room with me,

Speaker 7 they wanted it.

Speaker 7 They said they wanted it. They were laughing.

Speaker 7 Danielle says she is convinced the women really made a free choice to get the brand.

Speaker 7 All their body language, all of their words, all of their mannerisms. Were they nervous? Sure.
Were they excited? Absolutely. You know, but they wanted it.

Speaker 7 They would say they wanted it because they were brainwashed.

Speaker 7 That's what they would say.

Speaker 7 They only wanted it in that moment because they had been led down that path and their minds were not their own.

Speaker 7 Well, I mean,

Speaker 7 this leads to a very key issue. I mean, like, when do we say you're responsible for your decisions and when are you not?

Speaker 7 You know, I believe

Speaker 7 that we're responsible for all of our decisions, no matter what the consequences of those are.

Speaker 7 That was the case Danielle made to the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct. After the investigation, the OPMC determined that Danielle would not lose her medical license.

Speaker 7 This clearly wasn't the practice of medicine. Very clear.

Speaker 7 Danielle was able to continue with her medical practice and even gave seminars. But in 2019, as the Nexium trial was about to get started, the medical board began another investigation.

Speaker 7 and the case is ongoing. Danielle says that happened because of all the bad publicity about Nexium.

Speaker 7 Whether it was influenced by the public discussion or not, this is happening. Why should your license not be revoked? If I had done something morally unfit, that's for a different venue.

Speaker 7 You know, that would have to be adjudicated in a different

Speaker 7 criminal court or some other court. And to be clear, you don't think you did.
No,

Speaker 7 I did not. If they take your medical license away, what does that mean to you?

Speaker 7 What does that mean for your life?

Speaker 7 I mean, I've spent most of my life

Speaker 7 working to get that license.

Speaker 7 You know, it would be devastating not to do the thing that I

Speaker 7 have dedicated my life to do, you know, to help people and to

Speaker 7 I mean, to share with people, honestly, everything that I've learned over all of these years and all of this study would be tragic, not just for me, but for many people that I could help.

Speaker 7 As Danielle attempted to salvage her career, Keith Ranieri attempted to save himself from a lifetime in prison.

Speaker 4 Coming up at trial, a stomach-turning bombshell.

Speaker 7 She's an underage girl. I mean, that's the level of depravity that Keith aspired to.

Speaker 4 And then a stunning verdict.

Speaker 7 I couldn't stop sobbing. It was like this river of tears.

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Speaker 17 I'm Julio Vaqueiro, anchor of Noticias Telemundo. You can watch Daidline, the heat true crime series on Telemundo.
And now, you can listen to Daidline as a podcast.

Speaker 17 Stories of love and betrayal, of secrets revealed, of the men and women who stand between evil and justice. Every twist and turn can now be heard in Spanish, with new mysteries arriving every week.

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Speaker 7 At home in Malibu, there were some long nights. As India tried to recover from her time with Nexium, her mother still worried she'd be prosecuted.
India did have slaves too.

Speaker 7 Was that uncomfortable? I mean, that's...

Speaker 7 Your daughter, I know you see as a victim in all of this,

Speaker 7 but she did also victimize victimize others.

Speaker 15 Yep.

Speaker 7 And she has to come to terms with that.

Speaker 7 There is a clear line for the prosecution of who they consider victim and who they consider perpetrator. And many victims became perpetrators, and that's why it was such a slippery slope.

Speaker 7 But in their view, India is a victim, and that's why she was not prosecuted.

Speaker 7 India was never charged with any wrongdoing, nor was Danielle. But five members of Nexium's high command had already pleaded guilty.
Among them, Claire Bronfman, who bankrolled the group.

Speaker 7 She pleaded guilty to harboring an illegal immigrant and the fraudulent use of a deceased person's identity. Allison Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges.

Speaker 7 Left to stand trial alone, Keith Ranieri was not going down without a fight. His attorney, Mark Agnifolo.

Speaker 23 This is basically a case, as odd as it sounds, about how grown adults are intimate with each other. I think we're a very puritanical country.

Speaker 23 That's why I wrote in court papers that the government was the morality police. I think this is a very, a case that's based on very limited roles of what's appropriate sexually.

Speaker 23 And Keith has never been married. He has multiple sexual partners.
That seems scary to us.

Speaker 7 Among his arguments that the brandings were consensual.

Speaker 23 And it's the government and the media are coming down on the women of DOS, and they're taking the traditional side of the traditional, oh, the poor little deers.

Speaker 23 You know, this was done against their will. You know,

Speaker 23 women have a secret society, women brand themselves, and they're poor little deers and they're victims. When men do it, they're Marines.

Speaker 7 In May 2019, Keith Ranieri went on trial at the U.S. courthouse in Brooklyn, charged with felonies including racketeering, sex trafficking, and forced labor.

Speaker 1 Good afternoon.

Speaker 7 Prosecutors argued that the women in DOS were essentially brainwashed and blackmailed, and what happened to them wasn't consensual.

Speaker 7 And because Ranieri liked to record almost everything, prosecutors were able to use his own words against him by playing a conversation he had with Allison Mack.

Speaker 7 Keith and Allison, January 9th, 6.59 a.m. talking about branding of a woman.

Speaker 7 Prosecutors said the tape proved that the so-called women's empowerment group DOS was actually run by Ranieri. In it, he discussed the branding.

Speaker 22 Do you think

Speaker 22 the

Speaker 22 person who's being branded should be completely nude and sort of held to the table like a sort of almost like a sacrifice?

Speaker 22 It also, of course, videoing it from different angles or whatever gives collateral.

Speaker 7 Ranieri also said the women should be ordered to ask for the branding to make it seem like they weren't forced.

Speaker 22 Should say, please brand me, it would be an honor, or something like that. And they should probably say that

Speaker 22 before they're held down.

Speaker 22 So it doesn't seem like they're being coerced.

Speaker 7 Prosecutors cast Ranieri as a predator who abused scores of women. Ranieri was also accused of sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography.

Speaker 7 And there was disturbing testimony about Ranieri abusing underage girls. Catherine was in the court at times and walked out horrified.

Speaker 7 There was testimony in the trial that a woman named Rosa, oh god, who's a mother in Mexico, she wrote an email and they shared the email in court.

Speaker 7 She says, I am 100% clear that you are what I want for my daughter, writing to Keith Ranieri.

Speaker 7 This is a mom ready to give up her own daughter to the leader.

Speaker 7 You talk about a mother's love all the time and why you've done everything you've done for your daughter. This was maybe some of the most disturbing evidence that I saw.

Speaker 7 First of all, this woman's daughter is a teenager. She's an underage girl.
And she was offering her up as a like a virginal sacrifice. It's disgusting.
That teenage girl never was sent to Ranieri.

Speaker 7 But investigators also testified about another young woman who was allegedly molested by Ranieri as a teenager.

Speaker 7 Then over several years, she was molded into being what Doss called a slave master, Robert Gavin of the Albany Times Union.

Speaker 10 A young girl who we now know Keith Ranieri was having sex with since she was 15.

Speaker 10 And as the prosecutor said in her opening statement, this is someone who, it's the full circle, someone who he abused when she was 15, and now she's being ordered to be the abuser.

Speaker 7 A high-ranking Nexium insider named Lauren Salzman flipped and backed up much of the prosecution's case.

Speaker 10 She was a co-defendant.

Speaker 10 I mean, this is someone before the trial was sitting at the defense table with Keith Ranieri, and she not only testified against him, but she absolutely stuck it right in the jugular, I think.

Speaker 7 India was not in court because she was on standby as a witness, though she was never called. The trial lasted eight weeks, but when the jurors got the case, it didn't take them long.

Speaker 7 After just four and a half hours of deliberation, they reached a verdict, guilty on all counts. Catherine was overjoyed.

Speaker 7 I was like all of this pent-up emotion that I'd probably been carrying the weight of this for two years.

Speaker 7 It was overwhelming. And in October 2020, Keith Ranieri was sentenced to 120 years.
India was one of scores of women and men who filed victim impact statements.

Speaker 7 You said in your victim impact statement that it was bad enough to be physically raped, which he did.

Speaker 7 but that Keith is also the type of predator who targets and degrades the entire fabric of his victims' lives. How should he be held accountable for what he did?

Speaker 8 Well, I think he is being held accountable for what he did. I think it's a huge statement to say 120-year imprison.
He's not getting out.

Speaker 8 And that to me is a testament to all the people who helped bring Nexium down. I mean,

Speaker 8 that was our goal.

Speaker 7 But even while he's behind bars, essentially for life, India knows many people who are still his loyal followers

Speaker 4 coming up

Speaker 11 how those loyal followers respond to accusations that they've been brainwashed I think anyone who knows me knows I'm a pretty smart person I have my eyes wide open I'm willing for everyone to think I'm brainwashed to stand up for what I believe in when dateline continues

Speaker 7 We saw them on the street at night, hoping they'd be seen recording videos of themselves just outside the New York federal prison where Keith Ranieri was being held, dancing for their vanguard.

Speaker 7 That's former gymnast Danielle Roberts.

Speaker 7 At least 100 Nexium loyalists still dedicate themselves to Keith Ranieri. Nikki Klein is one of them.

Speaker 7 She and other former DOS members started the dossier project, which aims to supposedly set the record straight about the secret sorority.

Speaker 7 People who study cults would probably say that you are so deep in it

Speaker 7 that you can't see it for what it is, that you've been brainwashed. That's what they would say.

Speaker 13 Yeah.

Speaker 11 It's a great way to cut someone off at the knees. I think anyone who knows me knows I'm a pretty smart person.

Speaker 11 I have my eyes wide open. I'm willing for everyone to think I'm brainwashed, to stand out for what I believe in.
And, you know,

Speaker 11 it's not been easy.

Speaker 7 It certainly hasn't been. Once a highly paid actor, a cast member of Battlestar Galactica, she's now broke looking for a job.
I didn't realize the extent that your life has changed.

Speaker 7 Your career, your money,

Speaker 8 your livelihood.

Speaker 11 I got a job at a cafe.

Speaker 11 I started working as a barista.

Speaker 11 It's the first time I've ever had a job like that. And sometimes people would be like, oh my god, do people ever tell you you look like that girl from Battlestar?

Speaker 7 Dr. Danielle Roberts also says she's broke, out of work, and has sold everything she owns.
But she continues to insist her experiences with Nexium, DOS, and Rani Ranieri were positive.

Speaker 7 You know there will be folks who see what you're saying, hear what you're saying, and think you're brainwashed.

Speaker 7 What do you say to them?

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 7 they have to judge for themselves. I don't believe that brainwashing is possible.
You know, I very clearly made my own choices.

Speaker 7 You know, I chose my own thoughts, chose my own beliefs, chose my own decisions and behaviors.

Speaker 7 India Oxenberg, who's been out of Nexium for two years now, has not spoken to her formerly close friends, Nikki or Danielle, who branded her.

Speaker 7 If you had a chance to talk with Danielle Roberts, what would you say?

Speaker 8 I'd probably just ask her questions because I don't feel personally, because of what I've experienced and what I know about what it takes to leave a cult or a group like this, forcing someone to see the truth is not respectful.

Speaker 8 And I know Danielle's heart is a good heart, and that if she had

Speaker 8 the opportunity to distance herself from this, maybe she would see it differently.

Speaker 7 It's difficult to comprehend how these women are still loyal to Keith Ranieri. But cult awareness expert Rick Ross says it's understandable, given what they and the others have been through.

Speaker 9 This is at the end of a long process. It's so easy to blame the victim.

Speaker 7 Ross says the classic film Gaslight illustrates what happened to the women of DOS.

Speaker 9 And that's where we get the expression gaslighting from.

Speaker 24 You're slowly and systematically being driven out of your mind.

Speaker 14 Why, why?

Speaker 9 There's a man who's manipulating a woman, and he's constantly making her disbelieve her own intuition, her own gut feelings, undercutting her logic, and making her feel like she's crazy if she disagrees with him.

Speaker 7 Nikki and Danielle and the others still loyal to Ranieri reject that characterization. My life would be so much easier if I decided that, you know what, I am just going to say

Speaker 7 this was bad.

Speaker 7 I was brainwashed. I didn't realize this was a bad thing.

Speaker 7 You know, go to the medical board and tell the medical board I made a mistake. I was duped.

Speaker 7 And I would be championed and heralded as

Speaker 7 a woman who was strong enough to face the truth. But deep down inside, I would know that's a lie.
In October 2020, the Nexium True Believers rallied to Ranieri's defense.

Speaker 7 Law enforcement and prosecutors made knowingly false statements about they said he was denied due process and made claims of prosecutorial misconduct that even Ranieri's own attorney did not follow up on.

Speaker 7 Those efforts led Ranieri to a phone call with his longtime nemesis. And for the first time since his arrest, Ranieri would answer questions for Dateline.

Speaker 4 Coming up, does Ranieri take responsibility for women being branded with his initials?

Speaker 6 I didn't come up with the branding. If you look at my long-term partners, I'm even against tattooing.

Speaker 4 But then, an astonishing admission, the blame he does take.

Speaker 1 For that,

Speaker 6 that haunts me forever.

Speaker 7 It almost feels like Keith Ranieri could have destroyed your life.

Speaker 8 Well, he destroyed a lot of people's lives. I mean, we're...

Speaker 8 He destroyed a lot of people's lives to the point where we're still fixing the messes of the chaos that he created within personal relationships, even people who I was very close to. And

Speaker 8 he's done a lot of damage.

Speaker 7 Keith Ranieri never took the stand in his trial and never addressed his victims, but he wanted to tell his side of the story, so his supporters arranged a phone call. What's Carl?

Speaker 7 Keith Ranieri. An inmate at a federal prison.
Hey, Keith. With, of all people, his longtime foe, Frank Parlato.

Speaker 7 They both, the devil and the saint, should be able to get the exact same treatment under our justice system.

Speaker 7 Ranieri claimed prosecutors rigged the case against him. Frank agreed to hear him out.

Speaker 21 I'm not saying he's innocent. I think he's guilty.
However, there's still a process that has to be followed.

Speaker 7 Ranieri told Frank of numerous perceived injustices. His new attorneys plan an appeal.

Speaker 7 During that call, Ranieri also agreed to talk to dateline producer Tim Ullinger, who spent three years following the Nexium story.

Speaker 24 Our first question really is, you say that many people might consider you evil or despicable. Do you apologize?

Speaker 24 You say it's a horrible situation and there has been pain and suffering. Then why do you think you're you're innocent? That doesn't make sense.

Speaker 24 Well, well, being innocent of crimes and being innocent, if you will, of any wrongdoing or you know, people cause damages inadvertently

Speaker 24 and well-intentioned damages, and they don't mean to damage, but it happens. You're sorry for some of the damage that you've caused these victims.
What damage do you mean?

Speaker 24 Do you mean the branding that you ordered

Speaker 24 or the calorie or sleep deprivation

Speaker 24 of the members of DOS? What do you mean that

Speaker 24 you apologize and you're sorry for the damage you've caused?

Speaker 6 Okay, and I say damage I've participated in because I don't believe we're always the cause of all of it. We are the cause more or less, but all the damages I

Speaker 6 can fathom I participated in, I feel responsible for. It's not just a matter of did I cause it all myself.

Speaker 6 I'm involved in the cause of it. And for that,

Speaker 6 that haunts me forever.

Speaker 7 In our call, which was kept to a strict time limit, he denied being the mastermind behind the branding, despite the taped evidence played in court.

Speaker 24 Did you order the branding to be done on the DOS members?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 6 Not only that, I didn't come up with the branding. If you look at my long-term partners, I'm even against tattooing.
I don't have tattoos. tattoos.
None of my partners have tattoos.

Speaker 6 If my partners want to get them, that's up to them, but I am dissuasive of it. And they even chose to do it without anesthetics so that they would feel it.

Speaker 6 No, no ordering whatsoever.

Speaker 19 Someone being branded, they agreed to it as one of the four conditions to even be considered for entrance into the sorority.

Speaker 24 And that was said in testimony. When you heard about the branding, did you try to stop it?

Speaker 19 No, but I was slightly,

Speaker 19 in a way, almost embarrassed. At first I thought, well, if it was Albert Einstein's initials, no one would care.

Speaker 19 And then I thought if it was Brad Pittsburgh initials, maybe you'd have some jealous husband. But that's not what I'm like.
So I took it as an honorary thing, a tribute thing.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 that Brad was going to be tattooed over anyway.

Speaker 7 It was symbolic. And as for the so-called collateral that was used to blackmail many DOS members,

Speaker 5 you did not see the collateral.

Speaker 24 But that was testified to in trial that

Speaker 24 you were saying you needed the collateral to be better or wasn't good enough. So you're now saying that you did not see any of this collateral?

Speaker 19 I did not take the collateral at all.

Speaker 19 I did not have possession of the collateral whatsoever.

Speaker 24 But you're saying you did not see any of this collateral because there was testimony.

Speaker 6 You asked me to

Speaker 19 do that collateral.

Speaker 19 I have seen some of the collateral.

Speaker 7 The prison call ended abruptly before we could ask him any more questions. Last month, Ranieri was transferred to a federal prison in Arizona, far from his New York followers.

Speaker 7 Allison Mack, who is awaiting sentencing, has filed for divorce from Nikki. Danielle Roberts is waiting to hear if she'll lose her medical license.

Speaker 7 Claire Bronfman has been sentenced to six years in prison. And India Oxenberg has found love and is engaged.
She's a remarkable young woman and her

Speaker 12 all the

Speaker 7 it's like she's intact

Speaker 7 but at the same time

Speaker 7 she's not completely unscathed. I mean she was brutalized and traumatized but she's not been broken.
But getting here was even more traumatic than she ever imagined.

Speaker 7 Seven years of your life spent in Nexium, you finally leave, you get your life together, you get a job, you move back to California, and you're finally reuniting with your mom.

Speaker 8 I moved in with my mother and the objective was for my mom and I to build this farm together in Malibu. And we had worked on it a couple months during the summer.

Speaker 8 We were rebuilding, we were renovating, we were moving in come fall.

Speaker 7 And then the unthinkable.

Speaker 8 And four days after moving in, the Woolsey fire destroyed everything to a couple inches of ash.

Speaker 8 So everything that I owned, that my mother owned, that my fiancé owned, every heirloom, every painting, every photograph

Speaker 8 was gone.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 for me,

Speaker 8 it gives me chills actually.

Speaker 12 It was just so shocking.

Speaker 8 But at the same time,

Speaker 8 as losing everything,

Speaker 8 It was the first time that I had had my family intact.

Speaker 8 I almost felt like a relief.

Speaker 8 It was like everything was gone and now we were here and we were able to start new. We have the most important things, which are each other.

Speaker 8 So it's been a lot.

Speaker 4 That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us.