Captive

by Catherine Oxenberg

  It was mostly an outpouring of kindness and concern from strangers, which gave me hope, as did the fact that India didn’t erase them. While other cult members were quick to delete any anticult posts as fast as people posted them, my daughter did not. I was afraid to read too much into it, but I wondered if it meant that at some level she was open to other points of view. It wasn’t just her mother talking now—it was people from all walks of life, from all over the world, giving her their unbiased opinions and advice: “India, go home!”

  Another part of me worried that she’d been ordered to keep up the posts as penance, because I had caused destruction—“an ethical breach”—against Keith and the cult. Now she had to pay for what I’d done and stand in front of the crowds as they threw stones at her, or hang on the cross as they jeered at her—she had to sacrifice herself and do penance for my sins.

  I hoped that was not the case. I hoped their words made her think.

  But even if the New York Times or hundreds of strangers didn’t get through to India, I had to keep the faith that I was doing the right thing and keep going.

  Throughout this battle, I’d been continually humbled and reminded that every time I had an expectation about India and a belief that something I did would sway her thought process, I’d been proven wrong. So the challenge for me now was to let go of those disappointments whenever they cropped up, refocus, and then direct my energies where I did have control: calling attention to the horrors perpetrated by this organization and exposing its abuse.

  Because although my efforts weren’t moving my own daughter, they were moving mountains elsewhere.

  The day after India’s FB post, I got a call from Lisa’s father, Jim.

  “Catherine! The chief investigator in New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office wants to speak with you! Can you call him?”

  “What? Of course I can! This is what I’ve been waiting for! But Jim, how did you pull this off?”

  “I’ve been pressuring Senator Chuck Schumer for months,” he said. “He must have pulled some strings.”

  “Oh my God, Jim. Who should I get in touch with? Who?”

  “His name is Antoine Karam. And he’s expecting your call.”

  14

  * * *

  BATTLE CRY

  A few days later, I spoke to Deputy Chief Karam and breathlessly sputtered bits and pieces of information at him over the phone: “sex slaves,” “trapped,” “my daughter,” “evil people,” “women in cages,” “need your help.” I probably sounded hysterical.

  I probably was hysterical.

  “I must see you face-to-face,” I implored. “The situation is too dire and too important to explain properly over the phone.”

  As it turned out, his office was in Albany—cult command central. Ugh. I never thought I’d return to the belly of the beast, but I made an appointment to meet the deputy chief in twelve days, on November 6.

  I got busy putting together the evidence packet Anne had described, sending out emails to anyone I could think of who could provide proof of Nxivm’s criminality. So far, I had the defectors’ letters from Frank’s court appearance, pertinent information downloaded from Rick Alan Ross’s Cult Education Institute website, copies of some slave-master texts, and evidence of identity theft. I needed more. So much more.

  “In my opinion, Keith’s a psychopath,” Rick told me over the phone, “but he’s a very methodical psychopath. I’ve been studying him for years. If you’re going to take him down, you have to match him. You have to be just as methodical as he is. Don’t be impetuous. If you make one careless mistake, one slip, he will take you down. That’s what happened to the others, like James Odato.”

  Five days before the meeting with Antoine, I was on my way to New York to appear on Megyn Kelly Today. The New York Times article had been quickly followed by a three-page feature in People magazine, and, on the heels of both, I was inundated with TV interview requests. Everything began moving at warp speed. The day before, I had given my first interview, to a Mexican TV station, Televisa, in hopes that it would spread the story there. I wasn’t surprised anymore when every step of the way, I met with people’s fears. As the interviewer left my home, he asked me not to mention his name or that I’d done the interview until it aired—“or I’ll be killed,” he said. He wasn’t joking.

  Not only was he referencing the cult’s potential power in Mexico, because it was populated with so many of the country’s rich, famous, and most elite citizens, but he was also acknowledging the danger that one of those citizens was Emiliano Salinas. His father, Carlos, the most feared man in the country, would do anything for his son.

  Carlos’s violent upbringing began at age four, when he and his older brother, Raul, five, and an eight-year-old friend “accidentally” executed the family’s twelve-year-old maid. A reporter who brought up the incident when Carlos was running for election ended up in prison, a not-surprising turn of events.

  During the five-hour plane ride to New York, I jotted down notes on what I’d say to Megyn Kelly. Sarah Edmondson was to appear with me but canceled at the last minute: her publicists worried Megyn might not be a “friendly” interviewer. But how could anyone not be sympathetic to this story? It never occurred to me that she’d be anything but fair. I’d met Megyn almost a decade before when we were both ambassadors for Childhelp USA, a charity that protects children from abuse and neglect, and I liked and trusted her. A few days before I boarded the flight, she’d left me a compassionate voice mail that reassured me.

  Sarah also wasn’t comfortable because the show was live, and that made me nervous, too. There’d be no chance for a “take two” or for editing or retracting. One slip of the tongue could put me in litigation hell with the Nxivm mob for the rest of my life. But, heck, I’d already called Keith a “dangerous psychopath” in the British tabloid the Daily Mail twelve days earlier—I couldn’t be much more offensive than that.

  Either way, canceling wasn’t an option for me.

  Besides being afraid to speak out about the cult, defectors who’d been emotionally damaged by Keith’s reign of terror and lost years of their lives wanted to move on and never look back—it was the constant refrain I heard from them. But I still had a trapped child in jeopardy in that cult, and there’d be no moving on for me until I got her out.

  The NBC hallway and dressing room in Rockefeller Center looked eerily familiar, and then I found out why: it was the original Saturday Night Live studio. The décor was like a shrine to the eighties, with not one detail changed. I’d been there more than thirty years earlier, in 1986, when I cohosted the show, with Paul Simon and the South African group Ladysmith Black Mambazo as musical guests. Same nerves; different platform. Thirty years ago, I made the audience laugh; this time my monologue would possibly induce tears and outrage.

  Karim and crew crammed into the tiny dressing room with me as I studied and memorized a list of phrases to preface my statements with and supposedly protect myself from slander: “It appears,” “It seems,” “I believe,” “I was told,” “I heard,” “According to sources,” “Allegedly,” “I strongly suspect,” “I learned,” “I wonder,” “Apparently,” “My impression is,” “There are allegations of,” “I view this as,” “In my opinion” . . .

  I smiled at the irony. The first time I learned how to avoid slander or libel was in that first ESP course I took with India six and a half years earlier, never imagining that one day I’d be using what they taught me against them, to expose them. The preferred nonlibelous phrase of ESP was “In my opinion”; I made a mental note to include that one in my interview as an F-U to them.

  As I stepped in front of the cameras, I worried my mind would go blank or that I’d get carried away with my emotions and go off on a tirade, but, thankfully, that didn’t happen. My interview with Megyn ended up being the strongest, clearest interview I’d ever done in my life—the power and conviction of my words stunned even me. “To me, brainwashing is not consent,” I told
Megyn. “Extortion is not consent. Blackmail is not consent . . . I’m only doing this to bring awareness because without awareness, there can be no outrage. And unless there’s outrage, authorities are not going to step in and do what they should do, which is shut this down and stop this from happening.” As I left the stage, Megyn continued talking about the Me Too movement, and Matt Lauer, who’d interviewed me several times over the years, was standing on the sidelines waiting to say hello to me. Less than a month later, he, too, would be outed by the Me Too movement and terminated from his job because of previous sexual misconduct.

  In the dressing room, I collapsed into a chair and dissolved into tears.

  “Home run,” Karim said, giving me a hug. Maybe so. But to me, I’d reached my breaking point. I was done giving interviews. The anguish of exposing India on camera was unbearable.

  —

  BACK AT MY Lower East Side hotel that afternoon, I combined back-to-back meetings.

  The first to arrive was an old family friend, Stanley Zareff, who’d been one of my first acting coaches (after Richard Burton) and who used to accompany me to auditions in the early 1980s, rubbing my back to calm my nerves. Stanley is a flamboyant Texan with an outlandish Auntie Mame optimism who can always make me laugh. He was the perfect antidote to my high-stress, high-stakes morning. Funnily enough, Stanley had been in the audience with my mother when I’d hosted SNL back in ’86.

  When I saw him now, I hugged him like a drowning woman clings to a life jacket. Stanley had stayed in touch with India and my mom over the years, taking them to the theater whenever they passed through the city. I asked him to text India, to see if we’d get a response. I’d sent her a note that I’d be in New York but hadn’t heard back.

  After Stanley, Karim, and his crew arrived, a few minutes later, so did cult buster Rick Alan Ross. It was my first time meeting Rick after having spoken to him for months on the phone about all things cultish. He’d driven up from Trenton, New Jersey, so we could meet and shoot some footage with Karim.

  We were all crammed in my hotel room, I was still a bit emotional from the interview that morning. I was telling Stanley that India had told her fathers and sisters that I was “victim shaming” her with what I’d been saying in my interviews, and even by giving interviews at all. (But if the cult didn’t believe in victims, how could I be victim shaming her?)

  “Catherine, I read your print interviews and watched your Megyn Kelly interview this morning,” Rick said, “and not one thing you said about India was derogatory or critical or shamed her. You attacked Keith and Nxivm. But all you showed for India was love and concern and fear about what she’s involved in. What you are doing is not shaming.”

  “But she can’t separate herself from Keith; that’s the problem.”

  “That’s the indoctrination,” explained Rick. “She feels one and the same with him, so she has to defend him.”

  It was pretty helpful to have a cult expert on hand, especially because, a minute later, India started texting me—and about the very topic we’d just been discussing.

  Mom, I love you. But I don’t agree with your approach, publicly shaming me and people I care for. That’s hard for me to see as loving for me. That’s not very considerate of our private relationship. I’m sorry if you’re afraid, that’s very sad for me to hear especially when there’s no reason for you to be. I’ve been cautious about our communication and don’t think the people you’re working with have your or my best interest.

  It was obvious she was being scripted by someone else—the wording wasn’t her style at all—and after a few back-and-forths, there were long pauses in between her texts. Since I had a cult expert by my side, I made good use of him.

  “How should I answer her, Rick?” He began coaching me, too. I wrote:

  You have every right to be angry with me. In spite of that, I hope u can understand that I am coming from love. No one is telling me to do this, no one is using me for their agenda. My agenda is to make sure that u are safe, and I have concerns for your well-being. I am a mother afraid for her daughter. I respect your right to make choices, and I hope that you can do the same for me. I look forward to seeing u soon.

  India: What do you think is happening? Safe from what? What is the danger that you see that I’m in? There’s many people I speak to on a regular basis who do not see this. So it’s strange to me since no one else seems to see that there’s anything happening that’s bad or dangerous.

  So she was being coached on her end, and I was being coached on my end. What happened next bordered on farce. I got a text from one of my neighborhood watches in Albany, who’d just seen India walk past her window . . . with Nancy Salzman and Keith! So now I had a good idea of who might be writing those texts: the Beast himself and Gold Sash!

  With Rick coaching me what to write in Manhattan, and Keith likely dictating to India what to write in Albany, the conversation essentially became a psychological sparring between Keith the Cult Leader and Rick the Cult Buster. Had the circumstances not been so serious, I would have been laughing my ass off.

  Our texting session finally ended with me telling India I’d like to visit her in Albany, and her saying she’d be out of town.

  —

  I SPENT THE next two days in Manhattan fielding calls from lawyers. Anne Champion had been right: they were lining up to work pro bono after the Times article came out.

  I decided on two incredible law firms whose attorneys graciously stepped up to the plate to champion the cause: Art Middlemiss and Anthony Capozzolo at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, PLLC, and Neil Glazer at Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C.

  I was so moved by these solid, decent men who wanted to help India and me and the other victims. Art volunteered to make the long drive from Manhattan to Albany to be with me during my meeting with Deputy Chief Antoine Karam of the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

  Art, Anthony, and Neil were three more angels I added to my army. All along, one of the main advantages Raniere had over his victims was Clare Bronfman’s endless billions at his disposal for lawyers and litigation costs. Now I had the unlimited support of three of the finest and fiercest attorneys on the East Coast. So I was about to give Keith the old one-two punch, with the law and the press behind me.

  At least, that’s what I hoped. Four days before my meeting with Antoine, Karim attended a cocktail party on November 2 where he chatted with then–Attorney General of New York Eric Schneiderman’s girlfriend, Tanya Selvaratnam. Karim was talking about what he was working on and told her about Keith and the cult.

  “I wouldn’t count on too much help from Eric,” she said to Karim, obliquely. “He has too many similarities [to Keith].”

  The day after Tanya gave the cryptic message to Karim, she moved out of Schneiderman’s apartment.

  Karim and I didn’t understand Tanya’s comment until six months later, when four women, including Tanya, asserted in a New Yorker article that Schneiderman used his stature to threaten them physically and emotionally.

  He would insist Tanya call him “Master” while he called her his “brown slave” and his “property,” Tanya told the magazine.

  Another ex-girlfriend claimed Schneiderman controlled what she ate and enforced such a strict diet that she lost thirty pounds and her hair began falling out. Two of the women interviewed claimed he threatened to kill them if they left him.

  Three hours after the New Yorker feature hit the news cycle, Schneiderman resigned.

  —

  THE CLOCK WAS ticking. I now had forty-eight hours until my meeting with Antoine, and I still needed to get my hands on some hard evidence. I’d been making frantic calls, but people were afraid. Everyone was always afraid.

  I boarded a flight to Buffalo. Only one man now could help me, and he wasn’t afraid.

  Frank Parlato had aggregated piles of evidence over the years after countless victims had reached out to him. But would he give it to me? I wasn’t sure. He was like a fire-breathing dragon sitting
on his mountain of loot. But I was also a fierce mother lioness, and I intended to go into that meeting with enough ammo to take down Keith, and I intended on making Frank my secret weapon.

  Frank had needed my help before, and now I needed his.

  I was both excited and apprehensive about our first meeting. He’s the kind of man who could elicit both those feelings from you simultaneously.

  We’d already had some drama in the days leading up to our meeting. First, Frank had been sparring with one of my new lawyers. Second, I was bringing Karim and the crew with me, and Frank made it very clear that he didn’t want to be on camera. Then he canceled our meeting twice.

  The latest word was that the meeting was on, but I wasn’t sure about anything else.

  When we arrived at his home in the afternoon of November 4, there was no sign of Frank. We were greeted by Chitra and Debbie, two friends of his who had offered to help us with the paperwork ahead, they said, which was a good sign.

  Twenty minutes later, Frank arrived, flanked by a Felliniesque posse. On his right stood a giant biker wearing ginger chops, Hells Angels gear, and a belly like a battering ram. He was also sporting a huge hunting knife, very visibly. To Frank’s left was a very elderly gentleman sporting a chic beret and mumbling through his thick white mustache. He took copious notes on a giant legal pad the entire time he was there and then left with them.

  Frank himself looked like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and a crime reporter plucked out of a 1970s newsroom. He was in his sixties, of medium height and build, wore a tweed jacket, and slicked his hair to the side. He delivered hilarious zingers, but his face remained deadpan—was he smiling or sneering? You never knew.

  Frank circled us, eyeing the camera suspiciously.

  “No cameras. I told you I want to focus on the work,” he said. “We have to get this done, and I don’t want any interruptions. Everyone has to be in the same headspace, or it will interfere with my concentration.”