Oxenberg Catherine - Captive: a mothers crusade to save her daughter from a terrifying cult

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This is a memoir based on my experience with Nxivm and subsequent years of research into the organization. Certain names and identifying details have been changed. Certain quotes have been reconstructed from memory, to the best of my ability.

For my India.

My love for you knows no bounds and my hope is that you will recognize this book as a testament of that unconditional love.

Be to her, Persephone,

All the things I might not be;

Take her head upon your knee.

She that was so proud and wild,

Flippant, arrogant and free,

She that had no need of me,

Is a little lonely child

Lost in Hell,Persephone,

Take her head upon your knee;

Say to her, My dear, my dear,

It is not so dreadful here.

E DNA S T . V INCENT M ILLAY

Malibu, California, May 30, 2017

It was a question no mother should ever have to ask her daughter. But I had no choiceher life was in danger. I needed to get to the truth, and fast.

India was on the tail end of a five-day visit home from New York. We were driving along the Pacific Coast Highway to a doctors appointment when I asked her point-blank:

India... have you been branded ?

Words I never thought Id hear come out of my mouth. Not in a million years.

Sitting next to me in the passenger seat, my daughter looked gaunt and sleep deprived. Her golden blonde hair had been falling out in clumps, and, at twenty-five, she hadnt had her period in a yearthe reason she was seeing the doctor that day. Adding to that, my lighthearted, free-spirited daughter had grown distant and burdened in recent months, to the point where I barely recognized her.

A few weeks earlier, to my horror, I had discovered why.

A friend called to warn me that India was involved in a secret master-slave sorority in which women were put on a starvation diet and, in a secret ceremony, held down naked and branded on the pubic region with a searing-hot cauterizing ironlike cattle.

Youve got to save her! my friend urged.

My head spun. What? Not India! In my mind, I could hear the womens screams and smell their burning flesh. I prayed my sweet daughter had not gone so far as to allow someone to barbarically mutilate and torture her, but I feared the worst.

I clutched the steering wheel as I awaited her answer.

Yes, Mom, India admitted hesitantly. Ive been branded. But why is that a problem? It was a good experience for me!

My heart broke. No, no, no! I gripped the wheel tighter and forced my eyes to stay on the road. How had I failed to notice shed fallen so deeply into such a dark and evil world? I knew if I became judgmental, Id push her even further awaybeyond my help. So I tried to appeal to her sense of logic.

Darling, I said as calmly as I could, if you can convince me how being branded can be a good experience, please, go ahead.

India fell silent. She seemed confused as she struggled to answer me. Finally, she looked at me with childlike sincerity through her weary eyes and said: Its a good thing because its... character building.

I wanted to scream. It was as if someone had tampered with her brain so she couldnt think clearly or had replaced her with an imposterlike in that 1950s science-fiction horror movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Her words and phrasing sounded preprogrammed, drilled into her head by a deviant master.

I answered slowly, reasonably.

But India, the fact that you think mutilating your body permanently is character building is proof that youre brainwashed.

Again she looked bewildered and shook her head.

Im not brainwashed.

You are.

Im not.

Angel, youre being manipulated by a psychopath.

Mom, Im not.

There was no getting through to her. Nothing I said could break the spell she was under.

A few hours later, shed be on a plane to the cults headquarters in Albany, New York, to take part in the next victims branding ceremony the following week.

Id lost her, I was sure Id lost her. And I felt like I was losing my mind.

But there were two other truths I was immediately certain of in that devastating moment.

I was going to do whatever it took to save my daughter from the clutches of this vicious cult and get her back. And I was going to take this cult down. Not just for my daughters sake but also for the countless other sons and daughters in this country who get lured into these exploitive, abusive traps every day.

I was a mother with a mission; I was on a crusade.

And I was not going to rest until our children were safe and the last enemy was down.

From the second she was a little speck growing inside me, India and I were a magical, mystical teaman intertwined force of nature and spirit to be reckoned with.

When I conceived her in the fall of 1990, I was traveling through Europe obsessed with hunting down murals of the Archangel Michael. Indias father-to-be, Bill, wasnt the spiritual type, but I dragged him along, waxing eloquently about angels as we explored villages and biked through the Alps.

A few weeks into my pregnancy, Bill swears that one night he had a vision of the Archangel Michael telling him we were creating an especially conscious being together, and it was our destiny to protect her.

Um, are you hallucinating ? I said, laughing over the phone.

By that time, Bill and I werent together anymoreour briefly crossed paths had uncrossedand the idea of being a mother on my own was daunting. But... there was that vision hed had. The Archangel Michael, I knew very well, had led Gods army to vanquish evil forces and banish them from heaven.

He was just the strong, valiant, protective hero a single mother and child could use. Hes watching over us , I decided. And so, I embraced my fate as a cosmic mother and guardian.

India arrived into the world on June 7, 1991, by my own hands.

My mother drove me to the hospital at three in the morning, and during labor I begged and screamed for drugs, but my midwife was having none of that talk.

You wanted a natural birth, she said in a cheerful, singsong voice, and thats what youre gonna get! Do you want to touch her head?

Nooooo! I whimpered, but I instinctively reached down and felt her. And then, without thinking, I slipped my fingers under Indias tiny armpits and gently pulled her out of my body.

At 4:36 a.m., one became an inseparable two.

My mother cut the umbilical cord, and I named my daughter India Riven Oxenberg. My best friend growing up was named India, but I was duped into believing that riven was Celtic for priestess. By the time I found out it meant heartbreak, it was too late to change it.

For the first seven years of her life, India and I were inseparableI took her everywhere with me, be it a film set for work or a spiritual trek for enlightenment. From as far back as I can remember, Id been an ardent seeker .

In 1999, our little family of two grew to five after I married fellow actor Casper Van Dien. India inherited younger stepsister Grace and younger stepbrother Cappy. Over the next four years our brood expanded further after daughters Maya and Celeste were born, and then we made seven.