Toni Natalie - The Program: Inside the Mind of Keith Raniere and the Rise and Fall of NXIVM

Keith Raniere, a narcissistic con man, was the self-styled philosopher king called Vanguard who ruled over a cult known as NXIVM . After more than thirty years of cult-watching, I have rarely seen a group more tightly wound around its leader. Ranieres disciples hung on his every word and there appeared to be no limit to their devotion.

Whatever Raniere said was right, was right, and whatever he said was wrong, was wrong. This was the distilled essence of the training that was drilled into the heads of every NXIVM student. Raniere called it Rational Inquiry; others insist that it was brainwashing. That is, a synthesis of coercive persuasion and influence techniques used to gain undue influence.

I first began to look into him when, in 2002, a family hired me to deprogram their children. They also commissioned two doctors to analyze Keith Ranieres methods of training. In 2003 those expert reports were published online at the Cult Education Institute website. Their reports concluded that Keith Ranieres training seminars employed coercive persuasion and thought-reform techniques to gain undue influence over participants. These findings reflected the same dynamics that I have seen in many authoritarian groups called cults over my thirty-seven years working as an observer and researcher of organizations like these. The CEI reports were the first to publicly expose the inner workings of NXIVM , prompting a lawsuit filed by Raniere and the corporate entity which became NXIVM .

When Toni Natalie called me so many years ago, I was just beginning my journey concerning Keith Raniere. Toni Natalie was the first person to recognize the evil in Keith Raniere. She was ground zero, the epicenter of the havoc wreaked by Raniere. The first to fully recognize his twisted mind and predict the path of his destructiveness. For me, Toni was the lone voice explaining what I could expect because she knew.

When Toni Natalie left him, Keith Raniere, who could never accept either rejection or criticism, responded with endless harassment until he was locked up. Toni painfully came to realize that there was no limit to Keith Ranieres vindictiveness and that he was relentless. He wanted to crush his perceived enemies, no matter what it cost, until it cost him his freedom. With this same persistence, he sued me for fourteen years, in an effort to remove the doctors reports described above from the Internet.

I believed I was an extreme example of Keith Ranieres punishment, but when I spoke with Toni, her story of abuse and harassment was beyond belief. As each of us shared our individual stories of years of being stalked, sued and violated by Keith Reniere, I learned that Toni had suffered much more than me, and that whatever Toni said was always true.

My journey with Keith Raniere largely ended when his lawsuit against me was dismissed.

My last encounter with Raniere was in the courtroom when I testified against him as a fact witness in his initial federal prosecution. Subsequently, he was found guilty on all counts.

Toni Natalie would lose both her parents and her brother before her torment was over.

Toni inspired and offered solace to Keith Ranieres victims. She never thought twice about telling the truth even if it meant personal sacrifice. She shared herself and her story to help others.

It is an honor to know Toni Natalie.

Keith Raniere will now join a list of notorious cult leaders such as Charles Manson, Jim Jones, and David Koresh. Raniere horribly abused women, but it was brave women who exposed and finally stopped him. And the first woman to stand against Keith Raniere was Toni Natalie.

By Rick Alan Ross