A shocking look inside one of Hollywood’s sex cults, all in the name of ‘self help’

Allison Mack, who played Clark Kent’s sidekick Chloe Sullivan on the long-running CW series Smallville, has been outed as a high-ranking member of a sex cult. New York Times reported details last month that the cult brands, beats and starves its members all in the name of “self-help.”

The official name of the group is DOS, with the highest ranking members being part of the elite group called NXIVM. They claim to be a self-improvement group dedicated to living a successful life, but ex-members have revealed that the highest ranking members dedicate themselves to Keith Raniere and his teachings.

Notable members have included Linda Evans, Richard Branson, and actress Kristin Kreuk. According to Forbes magazine, 3,700 people had taken part in its “Executive Success Program” as of 2003, including Sheila Johnson, co-founder of BET; Antonia Novello, former Surgeon General of the United States; Stephen Cooper of Enron; and Ana Cristina Fox, daughter of former Mexican president Vicente Fox.

Ex-members describe the society as a master-slave hierarchy in which Raniere is at the top and Mack, who has worked closely with Raniere for years, operates as his immediate subordinate. Mack has her own set of “slaves” that she has recruited, and those “slaves” are required to recruit other members or face corporal punishment.

Mack and Raniere have created several YouTube videos touting their ideology. In one video Raniere attempts to explain what love is he equates it to pain and says, “If you have a fear of pain, you have a fear of knowing your own love.”

We can take from this that his justification for beating and starving women. He teaches that to know how to love yourself you must overcome your fear of pain, and how would you do that unless you were consistently exposed to it?

The women in the group are restricted to a diet of only 500 to 800 calories a day and required to run extensively. Cults are known for controlling their members through altering their state of consciousness to implement their beliefs.

Psychologists who have studied altered states of consciousness found that just as drugs can cause this hypnotic state, it can also be created by long-distance running, hunger, and sleep loss.

Nutritional deficiencies contribute to induction of trance-like states. Calcium has specifically been studied by Kehoe and Giletti who argue that cults predispose members to nutritional deficiencies leading them to physiological imbalances that cause trance-like states. (1981).

During altered states of consciousness, an individual experiences disorientation, changes in their sense of time and body image, loss of control, change in meaning and significance, and hyper-suggestibility (Ludwig 1966).

Through this dream-like state cults like NXIVM can control the minds of their members.

In the more extreme trance state, a parasympathetic dominant state causes unconsciousness that can lead to changes in beliefs, loss of memory and increased suggestibility (Sargent 1974).

It is likely that Raniere is using this type of trance state to create a blind obedience in the young women he calls “slaves.”

Multiple complaints have been filed against NXVIM by former members, yet nothing has been done by law enforcement. One report, filed by a former NXIVM member against an affiliated physician Brandon Porter, explained that as part of an experiment, the women were showed a violent film while connected to a brainwave machine and videotaped to record their reactions. She stated that the film included graphic footage such as women being murdered and dismembered.

Shockingly, regulators told her that her statement did not meet the agency’s definition of “medical misconduct.”

Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg’s daughter India is a member of the cult. Her friends and family have been fighting to get her to leave the sorority since finding out she had been initiated. India’s mother became increasingly worried when she noticed how thin her daughter was becoming. She explained that India’s dieting had become so extreme that she had not had a menstrual period in a year and her hair was falling out.

Upon confronting her about the group, her daughter defended its practices saying it was a “character-building experience.”

In an interview with VICE, Sarah Edmonson, a former member stated, “In the last curriculum, we had to take a gender-based relationship, sex, and identity program. Keith taught us that one of the strongest imperfections of the female gender—among other things—is that we’re weak and have no character, we’re indulgent emotionally, and we’re princesses.”

She tells the horrific details of her initiation that took place in Knox Woods in New York. “And then Dr. [Danielle] Roberts came in, who I also knew from Nxivm. We took turns holding one another down—three would be on them and the fourth would be filming. This is all on camera somewhere. The first woman lay on the table and then the other women and I were sitting on her holding her legs down. With the first cut of her flesh—they burned her flesh—we were crying, we were shaking, we were holding one another. It was horrific. It was like a bad horror movie. We even had these surgical masks on because the smell of flesh was so strong. I felt petrified. I felt—every part of my body was like: Get out of here. Run.”

For Edmonson, what started off as a friendship, turned into a “success program,” which then led to an initiation to the cult. According to her, most people miss the red flags and before they know it they’re in over their head.

Please keep those who have fallen victim to this cult in your prayers. Let us know what you think of all the Hollywood scandals exposed recently in the comment section below!