She Spent 20 Years in NXIVM and Helped Put Its Leader in Jail. Now She’s Speaking Out

Lauren Salzman didn’t have long as an adult before she became part of NXIVM, the self-help sex cult led by Keith Raniere. She had only graduated college a couple months before her mother, Nancy Salzman, brought her into the group. Nancy had met Raniere around Thanksgiving; by spring break she was in his fold. “She took us on this vacation to Florida, and she called it the transition from mother to friend vacation,” Lauren recently told podcaster Natalie Robehmed. “She spent the entire vacation in the hotel room reading Atlas Shrugged and on the phone with Keith trying to deprogram her children from being parasitic and to have real self-esteem.” Not long after this meeting, Lauren entered into a relationship with Keith; they would stay together, in some capacity or another, for the better part of two decades. 

It was Lauren’s 2019 testimony that helped bring down Raniere, who was sentenced to 120 years in federal prison after being convicted on several counts including racketeering, sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, and wire fraud conspiracy. (Nancy Salzman was sentenced to 42 months for charges including racketeering conspiracy.) Lauren has been silent since that testimony. That is, until she agreed to be interviewed for Robehmed’s new podcast, Allison After NXIVM, from Campside Media and CBC. 

Based on an extensive interviews with Allison Mack, the former Smallville actress who was also a high-ranking member of the cult, Allison After NXIVM served as a way for Mack to tell her story — once, and in its entirety. After Mack served three years in prison for her involvement, she just wanted to move on. But she realized that unless she told her story, people would keep hounding her. So Mack approached journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis, who she’d spoken with back in 2018 for the New York Times Magazine and who had since gone on to found Campside Media. Grigoriadis reached out to Robehmed, with whom she has worked on several investigative podcasts, to ask if she’d like to be involved.

“I said something to the effect of, ‘I have no interest in being a part of Allison Mack’s redemption arc,’” Robehmed tells Rolling Stone. But after several meetings, the podcaster realized that the former cult member was ready to address her involvement, warts and all. She talked about the coercion, the way she fell into a sexual relationship with Raniere, and, of course, the infamous brand of his initials that the women of his inner circle would receive. 

But Robehmed didn’t stop with Mack — there was one more mysterious former cult member who she wanted to track down. Now, in the episode released to nonsubscribers on Nov. 24, Lauren Salzman is finally telling her story — from the early days with Raniere and NXIVM; to the formation of DOS, the women’s-only sorority wherein most of the abuse took place; to waking up from a nap to find cops arresting Raniere; to the decision to turn states evidence against her partner of almost 20 years. 

We caught up with Robehmed to talk about how the podcast came together, how she tracked down Lauren, and what she learned from the whole experience. 

What made you want to do the podcast?
The podcast came together in large part because of Vanessa Grigoriadis, my executive producer on this project, and my longtime writing partner on various other podcast projects. Vanessa had interviewed Allison Mack for a story in 2018. This was when Allison was still very deep in NXIVM, very much brainwashed. 

But when she went to prison, this man [she knew], Stephen Belber, reached out to her. Stephen Belber is a really interesting guy. He’s a playwright, a director, a screenwriter, and he’s very focused on works to do with incarcerated people. And he thought that Allison might have a story to tell. So he got in touch with Allison when she was out of prison, started talking to her, and then it became clear that what they really wanted to do was a podcast. And so through various means, they got connected to Vanessa, who reached out to me and said, ‘Are you interested in doing this project?’

Were you hesitant to do it? 
I was hesitant at first because I only knew the Allison Mack that had been presented thus far. I’d watched [the HBO Max docuseries] The Vow, I’d read all the coverage, I’d followed the trial, and the Allison Mack that had been presented had been Allison Mack the villain. She was seen purely as a villain who brought women to Keith Raniere to be sexually assaulted. She was seen as a person responsible for getting women to be branded. 

But Vanessa said to me, just meet her and tell me what you think. And so I went and met Allison and Stephen Belber and Allison’s now-husband Frank Meeink for dinner in downtown L.A. I was very surprised by the person that I found. I found somebody who was much more introspective than the average actress, and somebody willing to grapple with the wrong that she had done, and was very clearly still in the process of understanding that wrong, which was interesting to me. She didn’t arrive as a fully formed PR package trying to redeem herself so she could get back in Hollywood. She was still pretty raw, very much in therapy, and still trying to come to terms with what she had done. 

Who else did you talk to for this?
Perhaps the most notable person I spoke to besides Allison is Lauren Salzman. Like Allison, Lauren Salzman has never talked about her role in NXIVM before. Lauren is the daughter of Nancy Salzman, who is known as Prefect. She was the second in command to Keith Raniere and the person who really helped come up with NXIVM with Keith. And in the podcast, Lauren talked about how she was essentially in NXIVM before NXIVM was a thing, and how her mom got involved with Keith, and how her mom was fully in it from the beginning, and so was Lauren. 

Lauren is really a pivotal figure, because, like Allison, she was in NXIVM for a very long time, over 20 years. And she also caused a lot of harm within NXIVM. Lauren was partially responsible for ensuring a woman was kept in a room for two years. And that is just absolutely horrifying stuff. But Lauren herself has a very interesting story, and also experienced hardship at the hands of Keith and really psychological control and really intense stuff, but Lauren is the only person who was named in the NXIVM suit who turned against Keith and testified against him in court. I really wanted to hear from her about that decision to testify against Keith, to go against the man who had been her pseudo boyfriend for many, many years. 

Lauren was also with Keith when he was arrested. There was this incredibly dramatic raid that took place in Mexico, where Keith and a coterie of his women had fled. They were holed up in this house outside of Guadalajara, and they’re in there as the [police] burst into the house with guns and bulletproof vests. Lauren had been taking a nap with Keith, and she talks about in the podcast, how she just slammed the door and went into protection mode to save Keith, though, ultimately, Keith did not do the same for her. And that was one of the key turning points in helping her decide to turn against him, where she realized — I’m paraphrasing — that he was only out for himself, and he wasn’t the leader she thought he was.

Was it difficult to get Lauren to speak for the podcast?
Absolutely, [but] it actually came about very, very fortuitously. My husband was talking to a friend of his, and he mentioned that I was working on this story, and my husband’s friend was basically like, “No way. I went to high school with Lauren Saltzman.” So I got coffee with him. I told him about the project. He ran it by Lauren for me, and then was comfortable giving me Lauren’s number. And then I got in touch and had a couple conversations with Lauren, where I really laid out the project, and she decided to speak for the first time. 

I should say, Lauren and Allison were not in contact at all during this. They aren’t legally allowed to be in contact. But that was fascinating to me, because Allison and Lauren are still trying to figure out what happened and make sense of it all. 

Did you approach Keith Raniere?
No, we didn’t. I essentially felt that we had heard from Keith enough, and that wasn’t the focus of the story. And the other part is that we actually already had audio — we had tape from Keith because Vanessa had interviewed Keith when he was sort of on the run in Mexico back in late 2017, and there’s only so much you need. From my perspective, that wasn’t what this story was about. It was more about how this one person could wind up in a cult and do terrible things. 

Jeffrey Epstein has been in the news quite a bit recently, and I was wondering, from your perspective, how does Allison Mack’s involvement in NXIVM differ from someone like Ghislaine Maxwell?
That is a tough question, because I think what Ghislaine has been accused of is on a much larger scale and much more systematic and methodical and over many more years than Allison. And we do not know that Ghislaine experienced sexual abuse, control, or coercion, in the way that Allison did at Keith’s hands. And so it’s a little difficult for me to compare the two. Allison did the worst stuff — in terms of pressuring other people and coercing other people — in the final three years that she was in NXIVM. And that was within DOS, the women’s-only sorority that was this secret subset within NXIVM. But as far as I can understand, in the Ghislaine and Jeffrey case, this seems to have gone on for much, much longer, and there are allegations from victims that Ghislaine was involved in those sexual encounters. It just feels like a very different story to me. 

What were the most surprising things that you found in reporting the story?
How dark do you want to get? The most shocking [thing] to me — maybe it shouldn’t have been — was the level [to which] sex was used as a tool of coercion within the cult. We knew about this a little bit, but really hearing from Allison how her sexual relationship with Keith began, and that Keith knew that she had, as she puts it, ”blocks” around her sexuality, and thought that there was stuff that happened when she was younger that wasn’t OK. And that Keith really framed it as, this is a physical problem, so it’s going to need a physical solution. And that is how their sexual relationship began, and that from like 2015 through 2016, Keith was having sex with Allison daily. 

The other shocking thing to me was how self-destructive behaviors were framed as self growth. Obviously there was the food aspect of this, where Allison’s on a 500-calorie-a-day diet for three years, and running six miles a day. As part of her entry into DOS, Allison wore permanent jewelry at Keith’s behest. She wore a belly chain, because she could keep it on under her clothes. And that served a food purpose, where, if, in her words, she quote-unquote “ate too much,” the chain would dig in. I describe it in the podcast as a perverse wedding ring of sorts. That’s what it was. It was a way to show your physical commitment. But Allison took it one step further. She wanted to be the best cult member. She wanted to be the most extreme.