Captive

by Catherine Oxenberg

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  NOTE TO THE READER

  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.

  Prayer to Persephone

  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.”

  —EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  PROLOGUE

  Malibu, California, May 30, 2017

  It was a question no mother should ever have to ask her daughter. But I had no choice—her 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 doctor’s appointment when I asked her point-blank:

  “India . . . have you been branded?”

  Words I never thought I’d 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 hadn’t had her period in a year—the 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 iron—like cattle.

  “You’ve got to save her!” my friend urged.

  My head spun. What? Not India! In my mind, I could hear the women’s 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. “I’ve 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 she’d fallen so deeply into such a dark and evil world? I knew if I became judgmental, I’d push her even further away—beyond 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: “It’s a good thing because it’s . . . character building.”

  I wanted to scream. It was as if someone had tampered with her brain so she couldn’t think clearly or had replaced her with an imposter—like 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 you’re brainwashed.”

  Again she looked bewildered and shook her head.

  “I’m not brainwashed.”

  “You are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Angel, you’re being manipulated by a psychopath.”

  “Mom, I’m not.”

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

  A few hours later, she’d be on a plane to the cult’s headquarters in Albany, New York, to take part in the next victim’s branding ceremony the following week.

  I’d lost her, I was sure I’d 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 daughter’s 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.

  INDIA AND ME: OUR SEARCH FOR MEANING

  From the second she was a little speck growing inside me, India and I were a magical, mystical team—an 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. India’s father-to-be, Bill, wasn’t 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 weren’t together anymore—our briefly crossed paths had uncrossed—and the idea of being a mother on my own was daunting. But . . . there was that vision he’d had. The Archangel Michael, I knew very well, had led God’s 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. He’s 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 that’s what you’re 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 India’s 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 inseparable—I 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, I’d be
en 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.

  But when we were alone, India and I were still the original, inseparable duo.

  I continued on my path for self-improvement and illumination, often taking India with me to dance with shamans and practice with yoga masters and meditate with gurus.

  As far as I was concerned, India was already there. She was highly spiritual but grounded, with her own internal guidance and wisdom that she followed. I was in awe of her, actually.

  When she was around ten and struggling at school because of her severe dyslexia, I asked her if she wanted to do a guided visualization with me. We were the only ones home that Saturday afternoon—Casper had taken the other kids to see X-Men—and she said yes.

  She sat down, closed her eyes, and I told her to concentrate on her breath. I took her through some guided imagery, but she had trouble visualizing what I described. I thought about one of her favorite books, The Little Engine That Could.

  “Keep trying,” I told her gently, “just tell yourself you-think-you-can.”

  “I think I can!” she said. “I think I can!”

  Pretty soon, her mantra turned into “I know I can!” and she burst into tears of joy. We hugged, and she looked at me in amazement. “I can feel my body vibrating with energy. I feel so free and happy,” she said. “Like I’m brand-new!”

  It was her first experience with repetitive, positive reinforcement, and she sure took to it.

  The next day, the two of us slipped out to a Unity Church together, just us, and when the minister announced the theme of that day’s sermon—“I Can!”—we looked at each other with mouths agape. India was blown away and felt elated after we left the service. But a few days later, she wanted to know, “Mom, why doesn’t the joy stay? Why does it go away? The happiness feels like a light switch that turns on and off.”

  “Darling,” I said, sitting down. “You are experiencing the greatest and most common of all human challenges,” I told her, “the desire to find happiness—and keep it.”

  India, it seemed, was a seeker, too.

  PART 1

  * * *

  Losing India

  1

  * * *

  THE GURU AND GOLD SASH

  As always, India and I were excited to set out on a new adventure together.

  We made our way along the Venice Beach boardwalk early one morning in May 2011—past the maze of street performers, mystics, artists, funky shops, and bikinied girls on roller skates—until we reached our destination: a modern-looking duplex a block from the ocean.

  It was our first day of a five-day “personal and professional growth” seminar called Executive Success Programs (ESP)—a course, I was told, intended for people looking to bolster their business acumen and develop their communication skills; entrepreneurs who wanted to be successful and make money, but in an ethical, humanitarian way.

  “It’s conscious capitalism,” an acquaintance of mine, who’d been urging me to sign up for months, told me. “And it’s the best thing I have ever done. Truly life changing.”

  A business seminar, life changing?

  Hmm. I’d heard that line before.

  At fifty, I was a veteran of the self-help, self-improvement, self-realization genre. In an effort to overcome a tenacious, life-threatening eating disorder that I’d struggled with from age sixteen up until my midthirties, I tried every kooky idea out there that promised to heal my body, enlighten my mind, and, hopefully, save my life.

  In no particular order, I’d been rolfed, rebirthed, chelated, Deeksha-ed, magnetized, fêng shui-ed, baptized, ozoned, watsu-ed, and hypnotized. I’d meditated, chanted, 12-stepped, past-life-regressed, fasted, rehabbed, and sweated in lodges. I’d listened to Jungians, herbalists, angels, yogis, shamans, astrologers, Apache medicine men, Buddhist monks, Chopra, Robbins, Kabbalah, the maharishi who hung out with the Beatles, the constellations, and even my own dreams.

  I drank a Peruvian tea that makes you hallucinate and vomit; I ran across hot coals and floated in sensory deprivation tanks; I flung myself off a sixty-foot telephone pole in the middle of a winter blizzard in Oklahoma.

  I did everything I could to try freeing myself from the addictive clutches of a disorder that held me in its grip. Subsequently, self-help became a way of life. A badge of honor.

  Did any of them help? Some did, some didn’t. It always seemed that the more they cost, the less effect they had.

  What my experiences did do for me was make me skeptical about anyone or anything that promised to have The Answer and guaranteed to truly change your life. My life and I were just fine now, thank you very much. I’d recently entered a new decade and made peace with my past and with myself. I was done looking for that one magical, miraculous recipe that would make me perfect.

  Life didn’t work that way, I’d learned. And human perfection was an oxymoron.

  My sweet India, on the other hand, was a young woman on the threshold of seeking, trying, questioning, and experiencing everything life had to offer—as one should be at nineteen.

  Back home after a year studying entertainment media at Bay State College in Boston, she was head over heels in love with her high school sweetheart, Hudson, and embarking on a new business venture with a friend: a gluten-free baking company called Scrumptious Soul.

  India was a born entrepreneur and foodie. As a little girl, she watched the Food Network as passionately as other kids watched cartoons. At six, she was whipping up those premixed, chemical-filled Easy-Bake Oven cakes (that Mom ate dutifully with a smile), and by seven, she’d graduated to artfully arranged vegetable and burrata platters (that Mom devoured!).

  When we’d attended the ESP introductory meeting three months earlier, she’d been in the happy throes of creating her company and shooting a pilot for a potential TV series about their mobile bakery truck called Food Angels.

  I was helping her launch this dream career of hers, so the opportunity to take a course that would hone India’s business skills (and in a humanitarian way!) sounded like a good idea.

  India and I sat in a rented conference room with a small group of other wannabe entrepreneurs, ready and eager to hear how to be successful businesswomen with heart.

  Mark Vicente, a high-ranking member of ESP, began by explaining that the program was based on a revolutionary, patent-pending “technology” called Rational Inquiry, created by a scientist and philosopher named Keith Raniere.

  “As we develop, we form beliefs about ourselves and the world, often innocently making associations that are inconsistent with reality,” said Mark. “Our technology allows you to uncover, reexamine, and integrate these mistaken perceptions. We offer you the tools for removing errors of cognition and for creating consistency . . .”

  Right around there, I started daydreaming—then perked up when I heard Mark say that this guy Keith had an IQ of 240, which apparently was in Guinness World Records. Really? Was that even possible? I’d never heard of anyone breaking the 200 barrier, not even Einstein. And this Raniere guy obviously wasn’t a devotee of physicist-cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who said a few years earlier that “people who boast about their IQ are losers.”

  Mark continued to boast:

  “He’s been recognized as one of the world’s top three problem solvers. He has an estimated problem-solving capability of one in four hundred twenty-five million with respect to the general population.”

  Whatever that meant. If he was the third best problem solver in the world, I wanted to know who the first and second were! Still, number three was pretty impressive. Mark Vicente was known and respected in the entertainment industry, so I assumed he wasn’t making up this shit. He’d cowritten, directed, and produced the 2004 indie hit What the Bleep Do We Know!?—a s
piritual, existential documentary about quantum physics and how consciousness shapes the material world.

  After Mark’s pitch, a handful of current ESP devotees got up in front of the room and proselytized about how much better their lives were because of the program. A pretty brunette, who I would later find out was Sarah Edmondson, an accomplished Canadian actress in her late thirties, stood up to give a charismatic close, avowing that “ESP is the key to success and happiness.” With Mark, Sarah was the co-owner of the Vancouver ESP center, and she was hosting this introductory course with him.

  Again I heard the term life changing. It was about more than just business, they stressed; it was about learning tools that would improve all of mankind.

  What tools, you ask? So did a bunch of us in the room, including me, who couldn’t make heads or tails of what they were saying. Mark was expounding some kind of lofty, noble ideology, but it wasn’t clear how they or we were supposed to achieve it.

  Apparently, we’d have to wait a little while longer to find out. None of those details could be divulged in the slightest until after we made an initial down payment on the very special, time-limited $2,400-per-person discount rate that would end imminently.

  It was all very top, top secret because their material was “proprietary,” Mark said with a reverential tone, and people were always trying to steal it and copy it.

  “You do not want to miss this deal of a lifetime,” one of the coaches urged us.

  Oh, pleeeeease, I thought, trying not to let any of them see me roll my eyes.

  I turned to India, assuming she would have seen through the snake oil tactics as well.

  “This is for me,” she said resolutely. “I want to do this, Mom. And I want you to do it with me.”

  Later, I would wonder desperately what attracted her so powerfully. I think it was their talk about creating more joy in the world and improving mankind. Ever since she was born, India was good and kind to her core and drawn to help others. She was the family mediator who rushed to diffuse anger and find common ground when a squabble was brewing among siblings and parents. With her light touch and disarming sense of humor, there was an artistry to her diplomacy.