A cult leader has been sentenced to 120 years in jail after victims confronted him in a hearing.
60-year-old Keith Raniere, an NXIVM cult leader, was convicted of conspiracy, sex trafficking of children, and conspiracy to commit forced labor.
The court reportedly heard how Rainer’s group branded women with his initials, commanded them to have sex with him, and starved them.
Many of his victims attended his sentencing, including the daughter of Dynasty actress Catherine Oxenberg.
India Oxenberg said that the cult leader treated her like his ‘human science experiment,’ adding she ‘may have to spend the rest of my life with Keith Raneire’s initials seared into me.’
The 60-year-old’s attorneys asked that he be sentenced to only 15 years behind bars. However, Judge Nicholas Garaufis handed down the high sentence after Raniere said that he had ‘no remorse’ for the crimes as he ‘did not commit them.’
“To him, the brave victims… are liars. Mr. Raniere remains unmoved. … (He) has therefore failed to demonstrate remorse,” Judge Garaufis said.
Raniere said: “I do believe I am innocent of the charges. … It is true I am not remorseful of the crimes I do not believe I committed at all.”
15 of his victims gave impact statements during the hearing.
“He screwed with my mind for so long. It is difficult for me to utter his name, so I will only refer to him as ‘he’,” Camila said. “I can still hear his voice in my head — it continues to be a daily struggle.”
Camila said that she was only 15 and Raniere was 45 when he was sexually abused by him. “He manipulated me for what he wanted. I became unreachable to my parents, my brother, my friends until I had nobody to worry about me. He knew the things that mattered most to me and what I feared and used that against me,” she expressed.
“He told me to keep it a secret, and he would ask me to sneak out of the home to meet in a place where we were isolated from everyone. He took naked pictures of me — the experience of being photographed is seared in my memory.”
It was in 1998 when Ranier founded NXIVM in New York and recruited over 17,000 people, promising to help them.
But Ranier punished young women who were starved, brandished with his initials forced to engage in group sex, sleep deprived, and blackmailed with ‘collateral’ they had provided in the form of videos, photos, or information about them or their loved ones.
In a recent interview, India Oxenberg shared how she was brainwashed for years into thinking the cult leader was helping her.
“What I thought I was learning was self-help and personal growth. What I was learning was the opposite. It was inhumane!” she expressed.
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Replaced!