Karma & Chaos with Kail Lowry & Becky Hayter

Transcript

Hello, everyone. A brief trigger warning before this episode gets started, this episode contains vivid descriptions of very dark things. It is not safe for work. It is not safe for children. It contains references to child sexual abuse, rape, sexual assault and just other evil acts of Keith Whineray. So if you're not a person who can watch a dateline with a stomach of steel, this is not the episode for you. And please exercise extreme caution as you proceed by. Second disclaimer is that this episode contains lots of spoilers, so the way this episode is structured is I give my thoughts in general about how I think Keith controlled these women. I talk about kind of some historical things and just kind of my thoughts overall. And then I give a brief synopsis of some of the major plot points of the season two. And I did this because I didn't want everyone to have to go watch The Vow season two in its entirety before listening to this episode. I just give a brief synopsis there's so much actual meat to these stories, so while these do contained spoilers, it's really not going to spoil watching The Vow because once you actually go watch it, the entire stories that I describe are brought to life in such vivid detail that I actually think listening to this podcast and then going and watching is going to be a very riveting experience. But if you're the type of person where you don't like to know anything that's about to happen and you don't want any spoilers, please don't listen to this episode as well. OK, and then finally, I spend the first 20 minutes of this episode going over how I think exactly Keith Raniere was able to mentally ensnare and control his victims. And I talk about lessons of history and by, you know, reference and philosophers. So if you're not interested in like some of my maybe indulgent philosophical musings, I recommend skipping to the 20 minute mark. You know, I was really left to my own devices for the first part of this episode. Chandler wasn't there to rein me in. And so listening back, I thought, maybe people aren't interested in teacher time with Lauren, so I'm trying to be self-aware. Give that disclaimer as well. If you just want to get to the narrative, the juice, the story. Skip to about the 20 minute mark. OK, so thank you all so much for listening. This episode is definitely a different tone than many of our episodes. It's serious. It describes really dark, evil things. It's more in the vein of like true crime and history and philosophy and psychology, and less in the vein of sister chitchat. So hope you all really like it. And if you don't, don't tell me. All right. Love you guys. Enjoy. Well, well, well, today we are doing something a little different. Welcome to the show, everyone. This is Lauren. So Chandler is out this week with Ben thinks at his family's Thanksgiving, and so I am doing a little bit of a different kind of show. So I'm going to have on Kate Casey in a little bit to discuss this season of The Vow. And before I do that, though, before I have her on, I want to kind of share some thoughts and my own Reader's Digest version of this season so that everyone can have proper context for when Kate and I really get into it because I don't want to spend my time with Kate rehashing and recapping, since she's obviously already seen it and is really familiar with the story. So you guys The Vow Season two on HBO Max. I first watched the first couple episodes, and I'll be honest, I was a little underwhelmed. I thought the first episode was a lot of just, you know, retelling the narrative, and I feel like I have a Ph.D. in all things things Nexium at this point. I feel like I have just scoured the internet. I mean, Keegan has been like, You are obsessed with Nexium. And I've really just kind of read everything there is to know. And so when this season first came out, I was a little bit like, Oh, I already kind of know all this, you know, and I feel like maybe they're just extending this. They're just trying to get another season out. It's like a cash grab. But there really isn't a ton of content here, and so I gave up on it. But then Casey posted about how this was the season not to miss an IDM tour, and I said, Are you sure? Like I thought, the first couple of episodes are kind of boring. And she's like, No, it is way better than the first season away. Juicier. And I have to tell you all, so I decided to give it another shot. Oh my gosh, the last three episodes are so riveting. It is absolutely mind blowing what this man got away with. And so I think that this season is actually going to be very much well worth everyone's time to watch. But I don't want everyone to have to watch this season to be able to enjoy this episode. So I'm going to kind of give everyone a brief rundown again of the key through Nery bulls**t, essentially. And some of the victims that are discussed in this season before we talk with Kate. That way, everyone kind of has some context and understanding of mine and Kate's discussions. So with that said, I have a few disclaimers. One. This episode is going to be full of really, really, really dark things. This is an episode absolutely not safe for work, not safe for children. Please do not listen to this with any kids around, and please only listen to this if you're a person who you know is fine and intrigued by the darkest parts of humanity. If you're a very sensitive person, you're not going to want to hear this episode because some of the things you know you might not be able to get out of your head again after you hear about them. So that's my one big disclaimer. This there's going to be mentions of suicide. There's going to be mentions of child sexual abuse. And really, please, please, please exercise extreme caution as you listen to this episode. OK? And the second disclaimer is that there are going to be spoilers. So Kate and I are going to be discussing the season as if you don't mind that we are talking about exactly what happened. That's going to provide a much more interesting conversation than dancing around the main plot points and the main developments. So if you prefer to watch this season first and then listen to this episode, I recommend doing so or just listening and then watching the season, I think that either way, it's going to be a very fascinating experience for everyone. And I think that even if you think you already know everything there is to know about Nexium and maybe your over cult stuff, I would caution you against that way of thinking. I think really give this episode a fair shot, because what we're about to discuss is really the juiciest and darkest and most horrible but most captivating part of the entire Nexium tale. So with that said, I'm going to organize this episode as follows. First, we're going to discuss the exact methodology and the exact way that Keith Ranieri enslaved his victims, mentally enslaved them. And I think that's really important because otherwise it's going to be really hard to believe and understand why these women committed the egregious acts that they did. And then I also think it's important to understand really how so many of us could fall prey to these kind of strategies, right? And the more that we're aware of them, I think the more that we can have intellectual. Resilience against people who are bad actors, essentially, and I think that, you know, Katherine Harris in this world come in lots of different forms and lots of different shades, and there are mentally abusive people in this world who aren't going to start a sex cult. But they might try to, you know, they might try to date you and ruin your life for a time. And so there are I think there are just lessons here that we can take from how Keith Ranieri trapped and so deeply got his claws into the psyches of these women. I think there's comparisons to history that are really important in literature, and I just think that, you know, I want to talk about this story on a little bit grander of a scale. And then I want to lead you guys through some of, I think, his most traumatized victims. Truly, the darkest stories from this documentary, the stories that I just couldn't imagine being real. And not only are they real, but we, you know, hear from these victims in this documentary. All right. So first, though, let's get into how Keith was able to do what he did exactly. Before I do that, though, I want to give a 60 second, extremely brief recap of the season one. So the first season of The Vow really focuses on Sarah Edmondson and Mark. Listen to stories of escaping Nexium and becoming the key whistleblowers that brought down the organization. We learn of the secret sex cult slash basically pyramid scheme within Nexium called Dos that Keith organized in order to have sex slaves groomed for him, seemingly at scale. And then this season concludes with Keith being captured in Mexico and extradited to the United States to stand trial. So now I want to talk about the way that Keith was able to gain such total mental control of the women surrounding him. And this was through axioms core curriculum. The curriculum taught in Nexium were courses called LSP, which stands for executive success programs, and there were courses that were supposed to make you a better person, right? There are courses that were supposed to allow you to become the best of virtuous, noble version of yourself so that you could show up as your best self in your life and make the world a better place. So they really attracted people who were very intentional, right? Who were not just kind of sleepwalking through their lives, but who were interested in living their lives as well as possible. Right? These were exuberant, enthusiastic students, people really, really with a sort of commitment to living well. And I think that it's kind of people like that, people that are willing to shell out thousands of dollars for self-development seminars to make themselves better people. Those are really people with a certain intensity that maybe others don't possess. And people really perfectly primed to be taken advantage of because their energies can be mobilized for evil, as Keith did so deftly. All right, but let's get into the core curriculum taught in Nexium. So Nexium had these courses called ESP, so I'm gonna use the phrase or the acronym ESP and Nexium courses. They they mean the same thing, right? It was the core curriculum taught in ESP, their executive success program in those seminars and the really the best idea at the root of the way that Keith was able to really destabilize these women. I believe there are two. One is a total moral relativity in the myth of victimhood. So both of these are really integral parts of the mental destabilization and unmooring that so effectively dismantled the sanity of his devoted followers. And I think they're both highly interrelated. So the first idea of total moral relativity that Keith was able to convince his victims of was that all morals are really social constructs. They're not absolute truths. And he tried to illustrate this by saying What's moral in one society could be immoral in another society. So there's no true morality because no moral laws are universal. So he gives this example. He loves to give this example, he says. In one state, the age of consent is 16 and in another, it's 18. Me dovetails this seemingly benign example into a comparatively outrageous one that in some societies, sexual relationships between adults and children are not seen as immoral, and in others they are. And I think that it's actually such a such a skillful move to move from that 16 to 18 year old comparison because that's something that you know, OK? I think that it's not that wild of an assertion that is true in some states. This age of consent is 16. In some it's 18. But then to move to that to the relationship between. Olds and children and compare that to really child abuse, which ran rampant throughout much of human history in many societies, in saying that the idea that these relationships are harmful and abusive is a social construct. You can see how he's so deftly maneuvers people through these examples, and especially when they're looking at him as this shining light of wisdom. He's their vanguard. He's the most noble person on Earth. He's a monk, you know, within Nexium, people thought he was celibate. So really, there's no ulterior motive on the surface for people listening to him state these really outrageous, horrible evil ideas. And so you can see how they could potentially be susceptible to them. So with these assertions, he argues, the claim that most moral rules are arbitrary, they're socially created. And he drives home this point. And he says that relationships between adults and minors or children are not objectively wrong and that kids, actually, some kids don't see anything wrong with the relationship, and they don't learn that the relationship is wrong until society and culture teaches them that later in life. And then, he says, it's actually society and culture abusing the child or the person, not the adult abuser. It's very, very perverse and wrong and horrible and egregious idea, but you can see how you can be led down this mental rabbit hole if you did idolize him. You know, I don't relish reiterating these morally depraved, convoluted and extremely damaging ideas, but I just think it's important to understand the psychology of the women that Keith groomed to commit the truly heinous acts they did, because we need to understand the way that he destabilized and deconstructed their moral framework frameworks. And I think that when you can convince someone that one of the most instinctually dark, wrong, morally egregious human acts when you can convince them to regard that act with a kind of cool neutrality, you've suddenly unmoored them from their entire moral framework. Consider the impact that this would have on the rest of your reasoning, right? If child abuse is OK, if there's actually no such thing, it's not really abuse. It's a moral construct. What else is OK? What other grave act is a moral construct? Is murder, OK? Is violence OK? OK, so also on this topic, I want to draw a comparison, right? Because I think that it's very easy to think, Oh, you know, well, keep as crazy. Keith clearly is a predator, so he is trying to convince people of this. But I think that we should all also kind of check ourselves with the cultural influences around us that are also probably trying to persuade us of this message. And one of, I think, one of the most stark examples of this is the prevailing popularity of the classic in Russian literature. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Lolita, for those unfamiliar, tells the story of a 53 year old man who becomes obsessed with a 12 year old girl, kidnaps her and repeatedly rapes her. So Lolita has always been a darling and a favorite. I think of girls trying to be edgy on Tumblr since, you know, the early 2000s. And it's a favorite of celebrities Katy Perry, Lena Dunham, so have said it's their favorite books. Also, Lana Del Rey, I mean, no surprise there. And I don't think that any of these people, right, are people who would consciously think that child abuse is OK, but I think that they've been duped by the stature of this book as a literary classic. And one of the interesting things about this book is when Vladimir Nabokov first wrote it, he sent it to his publisher, right, and the publisher wrote back. So he says he finds the book not only admirable from the literary point of view, but he thinks that it might lead to a change in social attitudes toward the kind of love described in Lolita. Provided, of course, that it has this authenticity, this burning and irrepressible ardor. So, OK, so what this publisher is saying is that actually may be a love between a 15, 53 year old and 12 year old is appropriate. If there's enough ardor involved, enough irrepressible ardor. I mean, I think that we would all really be unwise to not understand the way that cultures can move very quickly right in their attitudes. I think for everyone listening here has seen the way culture our culture has shifted in the past two decades. Right? I mean, and I don't I'm pro-gay marriage. I'm I am totally fine with gay marriage. I'm not making this example to say, Oh, these are this is a bad thing that. Now approved because I don't believe that, right? I'm very much pro same sex marriage, but I want to make the example of, you know, when I was in high school, it was very much a people were very outspoken about being anti-gay marriage, right? I mean, look at the way that politicians in 2000s versus 2010s look at the way they all flipped on the subject of gay marriage in the early 2000s. You had most key politicians even on the left Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama saying that they didn't approve gay marriage. Why is that? Because that is what, you know, the mainstream culture that was the prevailing attitude within the mainstream culture. And then you fast forward even 10 years, 2010, 2012, and all of those key politicians have flipped their beliefs on that. And I, you know, I use air quotes when I say their beliefs and the prevailing attitude within the culture has transformed, right? I remember a time when being openly homophobic was like it was in an attitude that was OK to voice, and now it's absolutely not OK to voice. And thank God, right? This is an example of the culture moving so quickly in a positive direction, in a good direction. But I think we'd be remiss not to acknowledge the fact that the culture could just as easily slip backward and move in a negative direction very quickly. So why am I talking about this? Why, on a larger scale, do I bring this up? So the reason that I bring up all of this is really to just illustrate how much people can be swayed by powerful storytellers and cultures can be swayed as well. So while Nabokov was clearly not adopt enough storyteller to sway Western culture, his ideas around these kinds of relationships, which are used in air quotes. Let's remember that ultimately other storytellers have been successful, and we can look at, you know, a storyteller like Hitler who inflicted suffering on a massive global scale or a storyteller like Warren Jeffs, whose breadth of suffering was not as wide but his depth of suffering was just absolutely horrifying within the community that he controlled. So I just think it's really important to understand the way that human nature can be very easily swayed. And right now, even within our culture today, there are things like Lolita, right? Things that people apologize for. I'm also not having ensured that I think is interesting and worth noting is that so within that time that which was published within French philosophy? Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, they were actually trying to get the age of consent reduced to twelve years old. OK. And Jean-Paul Sartre, I think, actually informed a lot of Nexium philosophy. There's a real key similarity in the Nexium philosophy and within Sartre's philosophy, which is that people need to take a radical responsibility for their own lives, for their own actions. And this is something that was a big part Ranieri's framework. And so this leads me to the second part, which is not just how Keith destabilize the entire moral framework of his followers on also discussed the way that he was able to escape any culpability of his crimes against the women that he victimized. And that was actually by abolishing the idea of victimhood. So in axioms ESP courses, the central tenet within the curriculum is that there's no such thing as being a victim, right? No one's a victim because every individual is responsible for his or her response to a given situation. So when you take total accountability first for yourself, you can no longer be a victim because you are in control. It doesn't matter how this is what you know, this is what the course is taught. It doesn't matter how someone treats you because you decide how you react to the react to their actions if you react poorly and your hurt. It's really your own weakness that is at the cause of your suffering. It's not the it's not the person deliberately trying to hurt you. And with this idea firmly entrenched in the women surrounding Keith, he can do or say whatever he wants without any fear of retribution because a negative reaction is the fault of the women. Right? So does it matter what he does because they react negatively to him? That's their own weakness manifesting, and that is very much tied to Sartre's idea of what he called the burden of responsibility. So Sartre thought that to have freedom that we have to be responsible for all of ourselves, right? All of our conscious thought, all of our actions and freedom is only through taking total radical responsibility for your life. I mean, that is exactly what Nexium espouses and the obviously the problem there is that it sounds really empowering, right? When you can decide if your abuse, you can decide how you react to all situations. Suddenly, your fate is not in the hands of other people. Your fate is within your own hands, and that seems empowering. But what it does is it removes any sort of culpability or responsibility or accountability of anyone who hurts you. And at that point, then all of a sudden you. Can be inflicted with any pain or damage, and any negative reaction on your part is your own fault. OK. So I think that with this idea firmly entrenched in the women around him, Keith could wreak his havoc on them. All right. So now that I think that we discussed the moral framework dissolving within the women surrounding Keith and then additionally, the way that he could inflict whatever he wanted on them and they could never call themselves a victim, they can never be victims. I want to discuss the things he actually did. So I'm going to talk about the Fernandez sisters, which I think are, you know, I think that they suffered some of the worst of his crimes. And really, what's really dark is when you get into this Nexium stuff, there are countless women, countless women who suffered at the hands of Keith. So let's talk about the Fernandez sisters, which are highlighted in the last half of the season two and who I think have the most riveting stories of abuse at the hands of Keith. So the first story is that of Daniella. So Daniela was the oldest of the Fernandez sisters. And the Fernandez sisters were from a prominent Mexican family whose parents were essentially brainwashed by Keith. So much at the entire family moved from Mexico to Albany to be to be near Keith in the Nexium community. And Daniel's case is absolutely one of the most egregious to me. So Daniela was this really extremely smart girl who had been accepted into a very prestigious boarding school in Switzerland by the time she was 15. But instead, you know, her parents take her to the Nexium course and she becomes very inspired by Keith's mission to save the world in the way that he, you know, Nexium ESP courses can empower humanity to be better. So she decides to, instead of going to that boarding school in Switzerland, to move to Albany, to be educated by Heath instead. So she works for Keefe, writing book reports for him. He attacks her with compiling, you know, with with reading dense scientific books and then writing book reports for him. You know, essentially, Cliff notes that these books for him, obviously, so that he can read them and pretend he knows what's within those books. I just think it's so hilarious that he used a 15 year old girl in order to basically, you know, spout these pseudoscientific nonsense that he did in order to seem so smart like he couldn't couldn't read the books, but he could have a 15 year old girl read them and send him Cliff notes. It's just hilarious to me. So anyway, so Daniela is hard at work in Albany, doing these book reports and then also doing other odd jobs. And she testified that she's only paid four hundred dollars a month and she didn't have a work visa. So and she was so young. So obviously she had no other way of making money, and she said she got really desperate for cash at this time. And at one point, she gets so desperate that she stole $6000 from Nexium offices one day and immediately she's filled with remorse. She puts it back, but unfortunately she is so Felder remorse that she confesses to Keith what she did, and she takes this as an opportunity to imprison Daniela literally for her ethical breach. This is just the most hilarious phrase to me, so he was really big on the idea that people, you know, when they do anything that he doesn't like, it's what he calls an ethical breach. And the only way for them to essentially be exonerated from their sins to find redemption is through some sort of like bulls**t punishment that he gives them. So Keith plan for Daniela to atone for her sins is to go in a room in her family's home and not come out. Nancy, in the documentary, says that Danielle was only supposed to be in there for a weekend, but somehow that weekend turned into two years. I want everyone to fully appreciate what this was. This was a young child, right? A 15 year old girl whose parents were so swayed by Katherine Neary, who told them that Daniela was there, was something she had done that was totally wrong and evil. And they allowed Keith to convince them to not see their daughter for two years as she was imprisoned in her bedroom. So the bedroom door was not locked, and that was one of the things the defense attorney says like you could have left at any time. But Daniel had no papers, right? She didn't have an ability to make money. She couldn't. Actually, if she left that room, she thought she would lose everything, not just Nexium and Keith, but her family. Her family kept her locked or not locked. Bearcat family kept her in that room as well. Food would be delivered at meal times. Each day, and they wouldn't even speak to her. OK, so no family interaction for two years. The horror of this, it's just it's honestly beyond my real. It's hard to even imagine what this would be like to suffer through. So Daniela says that she would spend days just sitting against a wall. She had no way to stimulate her brain, so she said she would just trace back through her memories in order to entertain herself every memory she had. She would just try to replay in her mind as vividly as possible in order to pass the time. The horror of this is so vivid. Just thinking about it, it's absolutely devastating. So the only thing she was allowed to do, of course, is write letters to Keith apologizing for her sins. So nearly two years into this solitary confinement within her room, Daniela, you know, does an act of desperate rebellion against Keith. One of Keith's beliefs is that women shouldn't cut their hair. Carol, why all religious psychopaths keep women with extremely long hair. It's so strange to me. Long hair is not people's best look all the time, right? OK, but anyway, apparently, Keith cannot appreciate the chic ness of a shoulder length bob. And anyway, I shouldn't make light of this Daniella. In a extreme act of desperation and rebellion, she cuts her hair off right? And she said that this was really cathartic for her because it felt like taking more, taking possession of herself. And it just felt like something she could do right in this empty room by herself cutting her hair off. I guess she found some scissors in the bathroom. It was like something an act she could take. Well, this causes Keith to fly into a blind rage because not only has Daniela defied him with this act, but she's made herself less sexually desirable to him because he found long hair to be so much more attractive. So he has Lauren Salzman deliver the punishment or sentence for her, which is that? And just mind you, she went from shoe, you know, waist hair below her waist to shoulder length. And his punishment for her is actually to show me to stay in the room until her hair goes back. That would take years and years and years, you guys. So she realizes this and she is suicidal. She contemplates drinking cleaning supplies in order to kill herself. But I guess she's looking out the window as she is contemplating this, and she hears birds chirping. And she just says at that moment she thought, f**k my parents thought Catherine Arie, I want to live. And she literally gets up and walks out the door. Her family was so enraged with her for defying Keith by exiting the room after two years that her dad and another Nexium member take her as a child with eighty dollars in her pocket and drop her at the Mexican border. OK, imagine that you've been involved. It's like I can't even I don't even want to repeat it, but it's just it's truly it is abuse on a scale that really defies description and it's hard to articulate. And Daniela is forced to rebuild her life in Mexico by herself, estranged from her family, and it's absolutely astonishing the resilience of this young woman to even be functional, in my opinion. So the second? So the middle daughters Mariana Mariana Fernandez and Mariana Fernandez, we don't know a lot about her, except she's one of the few women that she actually had a child with. And she's the only woman Keith had a child with who he allowed her to keep the child. There's a photo of Mariana walking with Keith and pushing her baby their baby in her stroller. Little is known about her to this day, except that she's still devoted to Keith Ranieri, and we know that because she didn't testify against him. OK, so query, Mariana, is it within the clutches of Keith Neary and has probably suffered untold, untold horrors? But I want to talk about Camilla. Camilla is the youngest of the Fernandez sisters and I personally think that her story is, I don't know her and Daniel's stories are, I think, the worst. So Camilla meets Keith, and she's 13, and she describes their first conversation as her, probably telling him that she plays second and her eighth grade spelling bee. And Keith, of course, is immediately sexually interested in Camilla, and he requests that she move in with other women within the next community so that she can be tutored by them or taught by them, and especially by Nancy. And she's also allowed to work for Nancy as a maid. So. Apparently, Camilla's parents are fine with this, they're so, you know, they're so idolatrous of key that they will, you know, cast their children for him, for him to do with, with what he wants. And they love the idea that she is taking Camilla under his wing to teach her all about life and how to be a noble, virtuous person. I mean, they are, you know, also so enamored with the idea of Nancy taking Camilla under her wing and I guess giving her a big, exciting job of being her maid. So Nancy takes Camilla under her wing and teaches are all sorts of ESP or pseudoscience mumbo jumbo. Keith takes Camilla under his his wing and takes her on long late night walks, teaching her many lessons, including, of course, that the age of consent should be 12 years old. He teases her about her sexual past, knowing that she has not nicknames her virgin Camilla. So this is from an article describing the beginning of Camilla's sexual abuse at the hands of Keith on September 18, 2005. Ranieri introduced Camilla to sexual intercourse. He was 45. She was 15. Keith commemorated the occasion by taking nude photographs of her, including close-ups of certain things, and he celebrated that September 18th consummation of their relationship. I used that word in air quotes as their anniversary. So following this, she often asks Camilla to sneak away two from her house to his to have sex with him, and he would meet up with him at his executive library. She would meet up with him at his executive library and they would, you know, they had their sexual relationship. Him a five year old man, her 15 year old girl, and he told her that she was beating her for her age and slotted her in that way. They, of course, hid their sexual relationship from others. He also, of course, tried to control her weight. Was five five, and his goal for her was to reach 100 pounds or less each day. Camilla would have to report to give her way, and Camilla really struggled to be as thin as he wanted her to be, and she would often fail at eating less as he had instructed. But Keith demanded that she achieve his weight goal for her, and when she cut it, she developed an eating disorder. And when she asked for professional help, he said, First, you should lose the weight. I've instructed you to lose. So what follows is an extremely toxic and abusive relationship between this adult adult, middle aged man and her and this child. And it also includes sex trafficking, so he's convinces Camilla to overstay on her visa. And this is really the moment when Camilla goes from being a child, being abused to also a victim of human trafficking. Because Keith lies to Camilla and says, Oh Claire. Claire Bronfman, who is an heiress to the Seagram fortune. So Claire Bronfman was a very high up Nexium member heiress to that fortune, and Keith tells her Eau Claire has fancy immigration attorneys. Don't worry about renewing your visa. You need to go back to Mexico and then come back to not overstay and Claire's attorneys will take care of it. So Camilla overstays on her visa and suddenly she is completely at the mercy of Keith with no legal status in the United States. Camilla is then forced to work under the table for Nexium higher ups as a domestic worker, most often as a nanny, and she's completely at their mercy. So it's interesting to me the way that he was so interested in not only the women being totally, you know, sexually submissive and his property, but also being like menial workers for him now about like being a nanny is menial work. But but the way that you know, Daniela had to or Camilla has to clean for Nancy and Daniela did all those odd jobs. I think the book reports being the, you know, the most interesting of them. I know she did a lot of menial work. It's just so bizarre to me that it's like he wanted to push them into the most intense of a miserable experience as possible. I really believe that. But anyway, I digress. So Camilla is forced to work under the table for Nexium as a nanny. So what really, I think incriminates keep are the texts between him and Camilla. He ridicules her for not being way fish enough for his tastes and instructs her to starve herself. She tells him, This is where it gets really insane, you guys. This episode is really not for the faint of heart, but she tells him that she wants to leave and then he proceeds to rape her. And one thing of note in the next scene, of course, us. This was a course designed specifically for women within that course. Nancy Salzman taught that when men sense their when their woman is trying to leave, they will rape them to mark their territory in. Nancy also taught in this class that women can actually learn to climax when being raped. So. Camilla proceeds after this experience of trying to leave and being raped by Keith to attempt suicide. And Keith chastises her for this, telling her how terrible it would be for him if she had committed suicide. Basically, like what a mess would be left on his hands. Of course, because everything's about Keith. So after her suicide attempt, the idea of her dos comes to fruition or the idea of dos conceive. And Keith makes Camilla vow to a life of total obedience to Keith in not commit suicide. She must commit her obedience to Keith and never to commit and attempt suicide again and to hold her to her word, he demands collateral out of her. So Camilla at this point is pushed to her utter breaking point. She's a prisoner within Nexium. She's a domestic worker, then Nexium, when she's also very much the sex slave of Keith Ranieri and also the victim of him raping her repeatedly. And so at this point, Camilla, much like Daniela, she commits an act of rebellion against Keith. So Keith, of course, hated women cut their hair. But the one thing that he could never stomach was women having relationships with other men that were not him, right? So he could have as many relationships as he wanted, but he demanded total absolute loyalty from the women that were in a relationship with him. And so Camilla, knowing this decides, well, maybe I can break free from Keith's clutches. Maybe Keith will lose his interest in me as possessiveness. His obsession with me, if I, you know, have a relationship with another man and become less desirable in his eyes. So Camilla has a sexual relationship with a man named Robbie, a brief sexual relationship in order to make herself less desirable to keep. This is what she testifies and to say to Keith. To say that Keith does not take kindly to this would be an understatement of the century. He becomes completely enraged that Camilla is no longer pure in his eyes, and he makes her vow to find him a Virgin successor. Don't forget everyone that he has. He has collateral on this woman. She is his captive in the United States with no legal status. And this is how Dos comes to be. He has collateral on her, and now he's instructing her to essentially create a down line of sex slaves for him. So Camilla's story is really one of the most horrific, not only because of the age at which the abuse started, but the extreme mental, physical, just total control in every way and abuse. When an axiom does eventually collapse because of the whistle blowing by Sarah Edmondson and Mark Macenta, Camilla escapes to Mexico with the help of some of her family. One of the things that I want to drive home here is that the Fernandez family, I guess, has somehow been able to the sisters. The daughters have been able to forgive their mother and able to have a relationship with her again. But their father, while knowing the abuse that she doled out on his daughters. The father knows exactly what kept the father helped Keith do what he did by supporting the imprisonment of his 15 year old daughter, Daniela. And he knew he knows exactly what kept it to Camilla, taking nude photos of her raping her, etc.. The father is still a supporter of Catherine Neary and wrote to the judge trying to exonerate him. It's just one of the most horrific, horrific things to witness is the way that the father is still a supporter. And the judge just said made a statement that receiving that letter from Camilla and Daniela, those father in support of Katherine Neary, this man who had abused his children so deeply was one of the most horrific things he'd ever read. OK, so finally, before we chat with Kate, I want to talk about the lost women of Nexium. So I'm sorry, everyone. This episode is going to be like a Joe Rogan link to our episode, but there's just so much to get into with Nexium, and the lost women of Nexium are some of the most. So these are some of the most interesting stuff as well. So before dos, right before Allison Mack and Nicki Clyne and Lauren Salzman and the front line slaves, there were another generation of women the first generation of Keith's heroine with a Nexium. And what is very interesting about this hair is that many of these women ended up dead, and there was really no resolution as to how and why so many of them died mysteriously. So I'm going to talk about four of the women in Heath's hair that perished. And I want everyone to digest that for a second, right? For women within his hair, dyed died. Most people just don't drop dead, right? It's a very, very coincidental that these women are so close to him just suddenly died. So the first woman I want to talk about is Kristen Snyder. So in the final months of 2002, Kristen Snyder becomes absolutely obsessed with Kiefer Neary, and she becomes so obsessed that she dives headfirst into all of his courses and allegedly a sexual relationship with him, even though she was a lesbian. And in February of 2003, she takes her own life. Allegedly, she vanishes into the wilderness of Alaska and takes her own life. So in 2002, Kristin Snyder discovers Nexium and gets heavily involved with S.P. and Catherine Urie. It's reported that the courses seem to destabilize her mental health completely. She actually had a wife at the time he's interviewed in the Amazon documentary The Lost Women of Nexium, and it's reported that she goes to this intensive course right right before she commits suicide. She goes to this intensive ESP course. And within that course, she had a total outburst. She had like basically a complete meltdown. And she claimed during her meltdown that in the course that Keith had impregnated her, she apparently she made very disturbing pronouncements during the course and she was thrown out by Nexium staff members. And after she was forcibly removed, according to reports with the official tale is is that she drove out into the Alaska wilderness. She took a kayak out into a very cold Alaskan lake and intentionally capsized, killing herself. A suicide note, a reported suicide note was found in her pickup truck and Anchorage, Alaska. And this is what it reads. It says I attended a course called Executive Success Programs based out of Anchorage, Alaska and Albany, New York. I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed. Such turned off. I still have feelings of my external skin, but my internal organs are rotting. Please contact my parents. If you find me on this note, I'm sorry I didn't know I was already dead. May we persist into the future? She also writes No need to search for my body. And what's unsettling about this is the fact that she claimed to have been impregnated by Keith and then suddenly mysteriously goes and kills herself and a hair, any expert on the Amazon documentary, The Last Woman of Axiom, says that the handwriting on the suicide note does not match authentic handwriting. Examples from Kristen Snyder and her wife. Her widow is interviewed, and she very much is fearful of Nexium members and doesn't believe the official account of Kristen's alleged suicide. So the next woman is Gina Hutchinson. This is a woman who met Keith when she was 14. He was 22. Apparently he, of course, had sex with her and that became her mentor. And then he had her quit school, quit high school to become tutored by him. And she he told her that she was born to be his consort and could achieve enlightenment as a Buddhist goddess through him. Apparently, she was very interested in Eastern philosophy and Buddhism. Keith charmed her mother and hung out with her extended family in Clifton Park, and Gina really looked up to Keith and apparently was a big recruiter for him, a very loyal, enthusiastic promoter of Nexium in the 80s. But apparently, she became heartbroken and devastated when she learned that Keith was not only having a relationship with her, but a relationship with many other women. So Gina stays on to work as a computer programmer in the 90s, and she remained close friends with several inner circle Haram members who constantly tried to urge her to overcome her jealousy issues and share Keith with them. Gina was found dead of a gunshot wound to her head on the grounds of the Kati Monastery Woodstock, New York, in October 11th, 2002. There were two rifles at the suicide scene. One was lodged into the back of her skull. So one of the things in the Amazon documentary, she told guys that a shutdown that I fell down this rabbit hole again. One of the interesting thing in the Amazon also Nexium documentary is that she uses a huge rifle to kill herself. And what they say is that this is a gun so big that it's very, very uncommon for a woman to use this kind of gun to kill herself and actually have a woman of the same height. Try to, you know, get in position with the gun and even just, you know, see if her arms could reach a trigger, which her fingers cannot. So it's very suspicious if this woman actually committed suicide. Some people think that Gina Hutchinson was going to come forward with Keith's abuse of her as she was a teenager, and that she was going to come out with this. And this was at the time that he was basically courting the Bronfman sisters and Clare Bronfman specifically as his biggest supporters. He was really trying to, you know, tap into their resources, and he thought that her coming out with this could potentially ruin that or, you know, sway them that they shouldn't devote themselves to Keith and their resources to Keith. Keith has also said there are recordings of him saying that he's had people killed for Nexium, so the death of Gina Hutchinson is very disturbing. And finally, we're going to talk about Barbara Chesky and Pam Caffrey. So Barbara Gesicki and Pam Caffrey were both part of Keith's initial harum and Albany, and both died of cancer. So actually, for women who lived with Keith, who developed cancer, two of them survived and to died. Keith was very controlling of the women with their cancer treatments. And one of the most interesting things about about this is not only the coincidence of so many women around him getting cancer, but it's that one woman survived and actually kept the hair she had cut off when she was undergoing treatment during this time, and she had it tested years later. Suspecting that she could, she and the other woman could have been potentially being poisoned. And what the test revealed from her hair sample was that she had very unnaturally high levels of barium in her hair. And then it speculated that she could have been chronically exposed to low doses of rat poison for about two years. And there's some sort of white milky drink. Keith would make these women, and it is. There is a I don't know if it's a conspiracy theory, but there's just this dark theory that he potentially poisoned them. And that was to make way for new women in his hair because he was, you know, potentially down with these women. So Barbara, Jesse and Pam Caffrey, it's unfortunately devastatingly both died from the cancer that they developed while living with Keith in his hair. And this is just some of the devastation this man has wreaked. So why did I want to go through all that? Well, I wanted to go through all that because I didn't want to have to rehash it all with Kate. It took a well over an hour to get through that. And so Kate would have had no time to really say anything around much. So I wanted to give everyone all of that context before we go into the interview with Kate. And then I just also really wanted to drive home the following point, which is that ideas are really important in narratives really matter. And so many of us could fall victim to the mental destabilization of these tactics. And I'm particularly passionate about this because I'm I myself am a very intense person, right? I get very swayed by ideas and very into becoming a better person, and I can just see myself having fallen victim for someone like Keith. Ranieri, so I just think it's very much a there, but for the grace of God, go I and we situation and I just think that it's important to draw parallels to other egregious men in history. Other evil actors and also to things like Lolita, things that are in the culture today that should absolutely be reviled and cast aside. But somehow we have been duped into regarding these frankly evil things, evil books whose ideas with some sort of perverted, cool neutrality. OK, so we never done an episode like this. So I hope that was it too excruciating to listen through just me droning on and on and on. And now I'm going to cut to my interview with Kate Casey, where we even go deeper into all of this channel. I just have to tell you, I woke up in the middle of the night last night with a little bit of anxiety. I had half an early bird gummy and I swear to you within 30 minutes, I was peacefully dozing off. Early bird CBD gummies are magic. They're truly magic. They are literally magic. I don't want to travel without them. I don't want to be without them. I think it's the twelve point five milligrams of CBD, two point five milligrams of THC. It's that little c**ktail. It gives you the warmest gulyas fuzzy feeling. If you're so good, it's so light. Also, one bottle last so long, it's a lot of product. Also, I feel like I prefer it to drinking at this point. Absolutely. You guys go to Earlybird CBD. Com Use Code Pop Apologists 20 for 20 percent off your order. You will not regret it. Earlybird CBD Icon Use Code Pop Apologist Twenty. Well, well, well, today we are joined by Kate Casey, host of the super popular Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast. You're returning to the show for, I think, the third time. Kate, we have to discuss the next season two documentary you posted about it saying that it was super good and kind of like lost interest after the first episode. I think because the first episode of so much, just summary. And for the next few years, it felt a little slow. But you said, No, no, you have to stick it out. It gets so juicy, juicier. And so then anyway, I did, I watched and I was like, Holy s**t, I need to talk about all of this with Kate on the pod. So thank you so much for joining. You're welcome. No. It was unbelievable, wasn't it? It's on believable. And I want to tell you that I already recorded a full intro to this episode kind of summarizing everything. OK, that way I have to spend our time being like, Oh, this is what he did. This is who the person is. We can kind of just get into like the meat of what actually happened to and just discuss it. But yeah, it's absolutely riveting. I mean, I did. You fall down the complete Nexium rabbit hole after the vow season one and kind of read through all of the Frank report and oh no, you know, we kind of thought I was OK. I was dialed in since day one. I had a baby. No, I don't remember which kid it was by this point, but I had a baby and I would stay up late to nurse and I would be up late into the night. Looking through the frank report long before anybody in star knew what the Frank report was. That's why I was like one of the first people on the story because I felt I don't remember how I initially found out, but I was way deep into it, and I was like communicating with people way deep into it way before anybody else was. That's the crazy part. And then what is insane while like actually, while I was at the hospital with the with, I forget which baby it was. Now I have so many kids. I was in communication with like Catherine Oxenberg and Frank Parlato and all of those people. So when I say I have a next name scholar, I'm telling you guys, I've been there from the very, very beginning before mainstream media was really covering this like it was. Oh yeah, I've been there from the beginning, and that's why. So when I spoke to Sarah the first time, yeah, this was somebody that I was not just worried for, obviously, but like I knew who she was before that New York Times exposé came out. How did you discover the Frank report? I don't even remember now that I'd go. It's been so, so long, but I remember thinking what was so compelling was actually the international ring part of it, because there was this extremely Emilio Selina's, who was from a Mexican political family who was in Nexium, and they were recruiting people into Mexico. And we're talking about Mexican families with a massive amount of money and power. So I would ask my babysitter, I'm like, OK and know, like, these are the names of the families. And she'd be like, Oh my God, you have no idea that's so bad. Like, this is going to be really, really hard for them to basically untangle because it's basically like doing deals with like the mob or something like way, way deep in where you're like the person is going to die. We're never going to hear from them ever again. So I was fascinated by that part of it because you could say one thing about like, Yes, it's this group in Albany. But that's why I think he was starting to go abroad was because they couldn't rely on just the money from Claire. And they saw an opportunity to get a ton of money in Latin America. Latin America is a great place to grow a cult because people are typically already have some sort of faith structure. There's like it's like an untapped area in terms of and I'm sure you know, with your with your background, a lot of Mormon missionaries have a lot of success in those countries. So they're really not that you're Mormon practicing Mormon now, but it's a it's a it's a it's a fertile ground for people that are faithful, who are looking for something to like, boost their lives and all of this untapped money. So that's the part of it that I was like, Oh, this is going to get really crazy. Also, I knew some of those oh yeah, I knew some of the names like Camilla and Daniela, we before other people too, because of my digging. So I would say most of my digging has been in previous years and now a lot of the information came from personal conversations I'd have with people. It's absolutely so wild. OK? To your first point, I think one of the most interesting things about Dos was that Keith, it wasn't just this pyramid scheme, you know, of having all these women create a down line of sex slaves for him, like that was a primary motivation. But I think he did have like wild fantasies of having women in government who were actually under his control, branded by him, like I think he. I think that there was an end game of like government control, potentially for Keith Neary. As insane as that sounds. I I heard I think it was Sarah alluded to that. Did you hear about? Yeah, I really didn't think it was that, but I thought that was like a lofty. I thought that was his use of that. He was using linguistics to boost himself up, but I don't really think he took that part seriously. I think money is much more important to him convincing people to use their mass amounts of money to to get him things. But I don't necessarily he saw. I think he is brilliant in the way he saw the red tape that would would disallow him to move his way up. I think that he got a real high off of taking women who were easily groomed to be compliant to him. I don't think that having somebody in government would have given him the same high. I will also say I think that they could absolutely do a volume three because it's actually way worse than they're showing. I think the volume three, they could dive into the the group that they were doing psychological studies on. For example, they would have this doctor have members sit and put like earphones on them and make them watch beheading videos to desensitize them. They had all these basically like human trafficking. They would have women from other countries, baby sit and then for like 24 hours, pretty much like they got no sleep trying to convince children that they could speak a couple of little languages. What they wanted to do is like get normal people to come and use their academies. And they had this whole propaganda where we've taken these kids and they can speak eight languages. Well, they could say like one thing, which is maybe there are all these other you could do things that they had that I think would be compelling in a volume three to yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's just there's so much that I actually forgot about those they were. I remember there was a there was a podcast series that came out a long time ago that went into having those people, you know, watch extremely disturbing content in order to desensitize them. And then the schools and all of that, there probably could be ten documentaries. It's like the topic is race psychological warfare. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Let's let's focus on the Valley season two, though, and really what's covered therein, because I think that I'm very curious as to your thoughts on a few on a few things that happened in the series. But the main theme that I would love your thoughts on is the journey that so many of his victims took from victim to perpetrator. Right? So when we have like an Allison Mack, a Lauren Salzman, a Pam Caffrey, it's right. These are people that seem like they were engaging with. I'm sorry with Nexium and ESPN. Good faith just wanting to be better people. Not with any sort of mal intent and setter in, somehow he was able to mold them into actually perpetrators of heinous crimes, you know, sex trafficking, just all, just the way that he was able to get them to commit these acts. And, you know, having lawn salesmen essentially as a prison warden of Danniella how I'm curious as to your thoughts on, I guess, that whole phenomenon. And if you think these women are primarily victims like a Stanford experiment, adjacent victims where they were just completely manipulated and controlled, or if you think that they do bear accountability for their actions. It's interesting. I ask Sarah and the same question Do you think that these women deserve prison time? And their feeling is that. They believe, especially in the case of Lawrence Salzman, that analysis, too. They said this to me privately that also know they believe they need significant therapy and not jail time. That's their position within and and I say that with the caveat, as this is a very small group. This is a group that talks about their innermost demons 24-7. All of them are very aware of their of each other's insecurities and what they would call ethical breaches. So there are no boundaries in these groups. So I'm saying that with the caveat that they know these women far better than I do, and it's their position that they need significant therapy and not prison time. But I think that right? Absolutely, these women went from victims to victimizers, and if we were to make that decision for them only to seek therapy, then we're minimizing all other victims. In any other case, for example, if a child grows up in a home where they're sexually abused and then they become an adult and they are a pedophile or a rapist, would we just give them therapy? I don't think we would. I think in any of these cases, people need to face consequences. It's the great thing about our justice system and sometimes in in that period of consequence, which is prison time, they have more time to reflect if they just sought therapy and were in the normal world. I don't know if that process would come as swiftly and as. Deeply, I don't know, like, for example, the filmmakers over. They did those interviews with Nancy Saltzman for two years. They asked her for nine months to do it and she agreed to it finally with the caveat that she would do it if it only aired after sentencing. So there were no more repercussions. And the good thing about that is that she had time to really think about her answers. It wasn't like on the fly knowing that it was coming after sentencing. And then they've also said that since she's been incarcerated, that she has written them letters, which has led them to see that there's even more of an awakening. And they've said some of these are really that this process is like a tunnel with the light at the end. And then you get to the light at the end of the tunnel and then you find out there's another tunnel. So I think that this is going to be a very long term process for them to completely awaken to their complicity, especially in Nancy's case. But she had, yeah, she has had to serve some sort of consequences. I just don't think it would be fair. And this is somebody who is totally a feminist. You know, I am like pro victim. But I do think when you cross the boundary to victimizer, you have to face consequences. I absolutely agree, and I think that unfortunately, it doesn't like that's the point, right? That's why we try to study history and learn from history. So don't we don't repeat it because human nature is fallible. But if you use human nature as an excuse for perpetrating great acts of evil, that essentially abdicates everyone, all responsibility. And so it just doesn't matter if you were a victim first. If you commit a crime against another person, you have to bear the consequences of that crime or else there just is no justice. Agree. So I agree with you. I just think it's it is. I think we can know that. But we can also have empathy for these people who really were in a major way tricked and deceived and became the way they were because they were at the hands of a master manipulator. Speaking about Nancy, I want to get your thoughts on her culpability and her accountability because I do think that Nancy was more of a perpetrator than his first line slaves like Lauren and Alison and all of those women. Tater Tots McGee on Twitter says, I do not believe for a second that Nancy Salzman had absolutely no idea. Keith Ranieri was sexually abusing women. I don't believe it. Nancy knew she just didn't want to acknowledge it, even when her own daughter was involved because she was desperately in love with Keith. I don't think that's true. I think she was desperate, really in love with the recognition that came with being a prefect. I think she grew up in a family of origin for whatever reason that she felt overlooks that she didn't have, like as much value as she had wanted. I think that she found a lot of power in being very good in her field. And I think that that that's actually what her Achilles heels while he was and that's what he preyed on. So when he said, I think he he'll sup with her. I only think he sleeps with people for like almost like a. It's almost like a tactic he uses to gain power over that. It's like he's got something on them. It's the same way that right? Well, actually, it's been said of Keith. He was never sexually attracted at all to Allison Mack. He only she wanted to sleep with him for like a year or two before she was in love with him, and he didn't have any sexual attraction to her. I think he uses the sex as an act, as a tactic to gain power and then to use it over their head. So I think he slept with her just to lure her in. But then he said, I want you to at my behest, I want you to be celibate because by doing that, you are solely focusing on the work of this curriculum and to me in terms of like as your boss. And she agreed to it because she was exhaled as this like. So that was her Achilles heel. She wants. It's like if you take a podcaster, I don't know on a micro level and you're like, I'm to make you the most famous podcaster in the world, but you have to have you have to do all these other things. If somebody is has an insecurity about recognition and a want for like podcast power, they made agreed to it over a period of time. Yeah, somebody was trying to argue with me yesterday. They're like an adult. Can't be groomed. They absolutely can be group. It's not like he shows up on day one, and he goes, here's the deal, Nancy. I'm going to make you prefects, you're going to have this all encompassing power and I could do whatever I want. And if it's against women, you deal with it. She's like, Fine, that's cool. It was a slow burn, a psychological slow burn. He knows what she wants, and he it's like, he's polite. I mean, that's what's astounding to me is he's not exhausted in the least. I mean, I guess he was because people said he slept all day, but like he that what what time and attention it took to groom all these women that slow burn for years and years and years, like multiple women at one time? Right? The sheer volume of women that he destroyed is mind blowing, especially when you consider his apparent laziness. You know, he actually won't read any of the dense books he claims to have mastered. He'll just have a 15 year old girl, condense them for him and provide him the cliff notes. He just hangs out at Nancy's house, on his on her couch all day, taking phone calls. I mean, it's it's absolutely mind blowing. Also another mind blowing thing that's a little bit tangential, but. I just do find it to be a crime, another crime that I guess the U.S. government didn't find it necessary to prosecute. Keith and Nancy for it, but really, when you have that much money, can you live in a nicer house? Like can you can we have the surroundings look a little bit better? That was another thing was baffling to me. It's like, why do you want all this money if you're just not never even going to really use it for much? I think that two things I don't think these are people that even care about materialistic things. They're so much about, oh, that's like like self-awareness like this. This idea of like, we're going to create this group where we just like, you know, do yoga and then we talk about each other's feelings like they don't give a s**t about like Chanel or having paper or like a fancy luxury car. Yeah, that's not what is important to them. I also think that, yeah. They're reliant so much on Claire's money. Claire holds the purse strings. That's why Claire is the most evil of everybody, I believe, because I think she was completely, completely complicit because she was the one controlling the money. He's another well, really quick, I don't know if you how much he was sleeping with her because he told people that he found her not attractive. He didn't want to like he found zero attraction to her. I think for for Claire City, you know, women as my I think he I don't think he was attracted to blondes. This is like they also look like the real skinny. Yes, extremely. Yeah. OK. So just to sum up with Nancy. So Nancy's crimes were wanting to continue to be exalted within and have power and recognition and esteem within the organization. So she was willing to to kind of she was willing to look the other way when she knew about his, you know, his his devious sex life, his, you know, very clear abuse of women. And she was also willing to engage in the abuse and bullying of people who had left in order to intimidate them into silence. So it sounds like Nancy is definitely, you know, not just this duped woman, but when it comes to Claire Bronfman, I'm curious more on your thoughts as to her being the most culpable just because she held the purse strings is that why do you think that she was fully aware of the evil Keith was was perpetrating? I think she's the most evil. I think she's the most evil because she has limitless amounts of money and is litigious, and I think she uses that as a fear tactic to force people to do things out of fear that they are going to lose their life, their entire livelihood. I mean, their congregants here for lack of a better term, members who have no money because they've devoted every extra penny into the curriculum. So you have people that don't have a lot of money and then you have the emotional part where you're like, I've dedicated like six years in my life to this curriculum in this group. And if I am wrong about them, I've made this massive life decision that went or went the wrong way. And I can't say or do anything because I don't want Claire. So they're like at her beck and call so she doesn't sue them. So I think she is a lot more complicit, and I do think she's more evil than most of her. It's my understanding, too, that she's still very devoted to Keith. So I don't know how that's going to work when she's let go. But you know, from what I hear, I go to prison. Yeah, from what I hear, she's still through her lawyers, making, you know, pretty. Pretty, you know, important decisions in regards to the maximum still seriously take though her take her money away. Who is she? She's very powerful because of the money. Yeah. Yes. Right, right, right. And she's still very, very devoted to him. And it will be interesting to see what she does when she gets out and she has access to her resources again and can potentially sue and go after people like Sarah and be, I wonder, have you talked to them about that at all? Not not Claire. So I listen to the podcast that you did with Nippy and Sarah, and we're nippy said that you thought that the people still, you know, Allegiant are loyal if you are the people who have nothing left to go back to. Right. They don't have a fear that everything if no livelihood, no outside community. They probably earned a lot of their family bridges. These are the people who are hanging on for dear life because it is their whole life. And so it does make sense when you consider, OK, that's why these people are still, you know, full steam ahead with Nexium doing the dossier project, shining their flashlights and doing dances outside his prison. I guess the only person who that doesn't track with is Claire, given that she does have so much independence and doesn't need Nexium to. So I don't think she. I don't know if she sees it that way. I think that she was like a really odd bird kid. I don't think she like there's something a little off in terms of her social skills. I don't think she's connected to really any community at all. So this was like when you have money like that, people, unfortunately in this world are like, Oh, you're you're cool. Like, if you have like, think about school, you got to like dork of a person. But if they have money, it's like, OK, you're included in the popular crowd because you have the nicest sneakers and you can go on these trains, an over-the-top birthday party. Think about that. Like in the world, like she's a dork. She's kind of an introvert who likes her horses, not very socially connected. Then she joins this group and they're all like all about being social and huggy and then hanging out. But her power, like, hangs over them because she's the one who can pay all the money for any curriculum she wants. She can throw help throw the the retreats. All of a sudden, it's like she's cool. So that's the Achilles heel that he worked on this like, I'm going to make her feel like she's so involved in the like. We just love, you know, have her a part of this group as a way to get her money. And she stays because that's the only time she ever felt any acknowledgment, any like sort of social acceptance without that group. Who is Clare Bronfman? She has no social social connection to anybody. And she's basically admitting that she wasted, you know, 20 years of her life on a guy who was like a con. I found, I think one of the most disturbing parts of the documentary for me is when Nancy was talking about just all the women who had burned through their childbearing years with him that he had just the most horrible part to like the most devastating. So he had promised still countless women that he would have children with then women who he met when they were young and who, you know, in their 20s, and who for decades stayed in a hair on with him. And then they hit their 40s and even 50s. And literally they he is telling them that they can still have kids because he has some pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo and they're believing him. And they've actually gone through menopause and wasted the most critical like 25 years on this complete charlatan. And it I mean, it is just it's just so devastating. That's the part I really have the biggest, biggest problem with is the way that he had a chokehold on their fertility and now. That period is gone. It's gone endlessly frustrating. Yeah, that's the worst thing I think you could do to a woman, really. And I think that it's not just their fertility, but it's also like the years when really you were the most able to build a life for yourself, get a job, get a career like build your life. Like it's so much harder to start your career at 50 than it is to start it at 20. And unfortunately, and also to find a partner to have a real partnership in life with someone. And he just denied woman after woman died experience. It's interesting in one of the tax exchanges with Camilla, she says, and Camilla was one of his worst victims, I think, and she says, I want to get a job. I want to be independent. And he said, you should reject that thinking at all costs that would be the worst mistake of your life. He wanted total complete control and he wanted to ruin these women's lives, and he wanted to see them like basically starve to death for him, essentially. Yeah, I mean, he didn't even look at them as humans. He just looked at them as like. Like, hard like pieces of a checkerboard, like, that's it. They had there's no humanity here at all. And so taking your fertility, taking your independence, taking your virginity, there was nothing that he wouldn't take from you. It's insane. And then the worst part too is like, much like Scientology, you try to leave and then they go after you and then they make your life even harder. So that's why a lot of people go back because they're like, Oh God, study even worth it. Well, and that's, you know, that's kind of like when it comes to Danniella, the one who he had locked in, we're not she wasn't locked, but she was imprisoned in her own home. I thought one of the things that they didn't highlight in that document they should have was she was literally living with her family and they all participated in her being like that. The idea that he could manipulate her parents into having their daughter in solitary confinement for two years and not speaking to her for two years. It's just absolutely mind blowing. One of the thing with that was they said, Yeah, it oh, in order for him to get it like turned on, it had to be really like extreme like, oh, like they told Nancy when you were gone. You know, he had sex all over your house. Like, it's never like just like you would go see him and then you would have like missionary style, intimate sex. It was always like pushing the boundaries. So for him, I think that's an extension of, Oh, I'm going to sleep with all these sisters and on their parents watch and their parents are going to be subservient to me too. They're going to basically hand this child over to me. That's how like, he got a high off of it. And I mean, the Fernandez sisters are not the only sisters, there's a letter from one of his followers to him as an email where she's like basically very contrite over the fact that she has conflicted feelings over him having sex with her underage daughter. And have you seen this email? And she's basically like apologizing to him for her failure to not get over that petty jealousy. And she says, I know my daughter is, you know, you are what I want for her. And so like, forgive me and basically, I will like deliver her to you. It is just so disturbing. It's it's just utterly it's unbelievable. Well, that makes me makes me also think that's probably the kind of language he is with Nancy, like a fancy had come to him, and I suspect we're going to hear more from her as she's had time away to really reflect. You know, maybe if she had said, like, why are you sick with my daughter, he probably used some of the same language, too. Well, this is really your issue, right? Oh, just turn a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I think it was quite painful, a documentary to watch her as she said, you know. You know, she I don't I agree with you. I don't think she was in love with Keith. But I think that when you are a woman, she basically said I was the only woman around him he wasn't pursuing. And she said she felt great shame over that. And then she said that was another that was another tactic to be like, I'm going to make her feel terrible about like like, I think you could go back to season one, the footage where there's a party, I think it's actually for her birthday. And just watch it because he's going around, he's kissing everybody on the lips. And you can see in her face the tremendous sadness because he's not doing that to her. Yeah. And I don't know what kind of like mine f**kery that was supposed to do to her. I guess maybe just keep her wanting his approval, keep her feeling rejected. It's to remind her I'm in power. That's why it this not a feminist like, doesn't create a feminist march for every woman watching this, I don't know what is. I mean, this is like what can happen when we all are not paying attention and hobby much other's backs because he created this system where they were all out for one another. They're dying to his attention. I just need a few minutes and they're not communicating with one another because he made made them so reliant on him and had distrust for each other. So I feel like as women, we need to check and balance one another like check, like, are you OK with me? Like, This is what I'm feeling. But he set it up that you can't I think that this like the great thing that will come out of this is that this is going to make so many people pay attention to, like the leaders of the groups, whatever group that is that they're part of and thinks and ensure that people are a little bit more communicated with one another. This is the worst thing that could happen to people who run a cult. I mean, not that they think that they're running a cult, but an organization, because even if it's well-intentioned, I think any group now has congregants, parishioners, members, whatever it is thinking about, not just this docu series, but all the others that are about co-leaders. Like, what does you know? Is this a little Scientology? Is this a little vow? Am I feeling a little like, holy hell here? Like, am I in the right place? Well, and I think the way that he I think the way that he twists the way that relationships are supposed to feel right, like in a healthy relationship, like there's actually the absence of pain it's understanding, it's being seen is, you know, it's it's peace. The healthy relationship is one of the foundation of peace. And I think that what he said is that a, you know, love you only show your love through pain. He got them to believe all of these just crazy ideas that would support the way that they would feel when he would abuse them, but then also put the blame on any sort of response on them for their own weakness. It was really like, it's a quite a masterful manipulation. And I do want to say, though, that that when Nancy said though in the documentary, she said that she was always ashamed that Keith was never interested in her, but was interested in everyone else. And then, she says, but it felt worse when he started having sex with my daughter. The wheels just came off the bus. In my mind, it was like such an explosion. I think that's the hardest part for me to unpack, and that's why I think I'm going to be excited to hear what she says when she's had some more time to reflect to unpack that because that to me is like the part I just kept thinking if I were her daughter, like, what? What do I need to hear from her to forgive her? And that would be the part I need to hear from her. You knew that I was sleeping with him and you didn't write for me. Why? Right. Right. Well, maybe it was just to keep her power. Maybe it was to continue being the beloved prefect, and even she was willing to kind of throw her daughter to the wolves on some level in order to not rock the boat. I think also of what she lost in her life, like, you know, she didn't have a romantic partner. She wasn't, probably. I mean, I would have really like to hear more from her, like what her life was like. Was she working 24 seven? She needs to answer for why she had cash piles of cash in her house. Like, was that Keith making sure? Did did he set it up? Set it up that all the pornography, all of the collateral, all the cash, all those things were kept in her house that if there was a raid that she would be found guilty like I wanted, I need to know so much more information. Well, and honestly, I think that the document, like the people who made this documentary, this documentary, they really just were way too soft on her because she she genuinely takes almost no responsibility for anything she's done. And she really kind of puts herself as the role of the victim. And I just think that it would have been really good if they had made her kind of say, OK, these are the things I did do wrong. These are the things I am accountable for. But they can't make her like as a as a filmmaker, they can't do that. All they're doing is their their job is to put the camera up. And I mean, they can ask her questions. But they're like I said, their goal is to talk about the vulnerability of the mind. Yeah. So they have to take us on a journey if they're intervening and they're asking, why didn't you do this? Why do you do that so early into the process of her healing? It's not an authentic documentary, so they have to kind of show that arc. And you do see that it's not until she sees the text communication between Keith and Camilla, and she and I thought that was a beautiful scene where she was like, This is when I knew that he was wrong. And that was like a profound moment because you have to you have to take into context. This is someone who's worked with him for over 20 years. Her realization, her awakening is going to be different than everybody else's, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that's a that's a really good point. And I'm sure that if they had tried to like nail it to the cross as she wouldn't have been comfortable proceeding and like working, not only, you know, she wouldn't answer it, she would just say, Yeah. And they made it an agreement to like this. These are the stipulations I'm working, you know, they're like, we're going to be asking you questions. And they likely knew, and I would like to ask them that she's not a very forthright person that takes time and nippy even said to me in my interview with him, she was still charging people after all of this for like a thousand dollar sessions, and he was angry about it. But I thought of that as she still believes in the curriculum. Right, right. I don't see that as like, she's doing this to get people's money. She's like, Oh, the ship's going down and all of a lot of money. I saw that as she still believes in it. That's what she. Yeah, I get that part documentary. Yeah, I get that, that part there, you know, even Sara's like, there's still so much of the Nexim curriculum that I still use, and I think that it is good. It's key because they're really. He's just pulling from different disciplines anyway. It's oh for sure, twisted it. So they were well intentioned people. It's not all like, OK, now you're going to beat somebody up or deprive them of food or anything. There are things in there that are probably for you and me. We would be like, Yeah, amasses, of course. But there are people who are like, tend to buy this. I don't buy self-help books. That's not my jam. There are people that are, like, inclined to believe in the stuff because they're always there seekers. They're looking for something so right? Exactly. I think that if you're if you if you believed in the curriculum, you're staying there for a while because you're like, but this stuff works right, that has to be this is their own thing because this what I've devoted all my life and attention to that stops working and it's going to help people. So to just walk away completely is like admitting that you have spent years of your time and your money and your energy and your resources, and you're like separating yourself and your loved ones for absolutely nothing. And I don't think that's an easy thing for people to do. Well, and also, I think that it's just I think that the the nuance of life is that most of these things, virtually all of them, you don't get trapped in something because it's all evil on the surface, right? There probably is a lot about Nexium curriculum that actually is empowering and help people heal trauma and actually is useful. It's not all just on the surface instinctually, you know, bulls**t in Dhaka. Yeah, like goth. Let's take an example to like you see in the curriculum that they're talking about things that kind of at a very cellular level that there could be something that happens to you as a child. And it's an imprint and you carry with you throughout adulthood, like you didn't get attention from your parents. And maybe as an adult, you're frustrated because you don't get a job promotion because it takes you back to that place. That's a very simple minded thing that a lot of disciplines kind of agree with. So that could be very useful for someone to sit and go, let me think about who I was as a child and how I've been unable to kind of ring myself of that into my adulthood. That's a very pure thing. But then you add the element that Keith, for example, uses that that's shown in volume two, where? He throws in me. Well, let's talk about our emotional points, like, what do you like? What do you think of abuse like, does it really exist if you're a 15 year old or or is it really worth telling the 50 year old 15 year old You're abused and or excuse me, or or that you're an adult and you're told, you know, you were abused as a kid and now you're convinced that you were abused. But as a 15 year old, you wouldn't have said you're abused like basically in essence, trying to to get people to take a pass at childhood like like pedophilia. So you have something that's a very simple thing. Look at your past and figure out a way how you're still holding on to things as an adulthood. And then he has this very perverse way of getting people to agree to his pedophilia based on things that happened to you when you're a child. So that's the crux is that most of those people, 85 percent probably are in that first space of like, yes, do the work figure out who we are? And then there's the evil part, and then that sometimes that evil part seeps into the pure part, and that's what it gets confusing for people. They're like, Wait. All of a sudden, I'm complicit in this. I didn't come in with this intention. So it's pretty scary. I, when I think and I kind of talk about this in the intro to this episode, but I think that he gives that example in order to completely on more women and people from their moral frameworks, right? So he brings up one of the most actively wrong things a person can engage in, and he gets you to mentally do the gymnastics to guard that act with cool neutrality. And then once you're there, then all of a sudden, what else can you reason yourself out of thinking something is wrong? You know, can you think but murder isn't wrong? But as Nancy points out, it was a slow burn. It was part of a bigger curriculum, so it's not like he walked. It was like, Nancy, let's just do this whole part today where we're getting people to rethink what they think of pedophilia. For sure, it was a slow he was like, Let's do this and this and this, and then it's almost like he sneaks it in underneath the tablecloth, for sure. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. You know, one of the dark things amongst a lot of probably thing like lessons and courses that are genuinely useful and a lot of ways. And I think that so what's interesting is and I talk about in the intro, but the idea of taking total responsibility for your own life and that freedom comes from basically being solely accountable for all your own emotions. It's that's actually an idea that came from Jean-Paul Sartre, who's a French philosopher who very much espoused that idea. And he actually and Simone de Beauvoir and Fuko were part of a kind of like coalition of thinkers in the 60s and 70s who put together a like manifesto trying to get the French government to bring the legal age of consent down to 12. So gross and so gross. And I also make the comparison to Lolita, right? Like Lolita is a book about an older man who rapes a 12 year old, and there are celebrities to this day who say this is their favorite book. And I just think that the the thing that we all need to realize as we watch this documentary is like, there are so many dangerous ideas that we could all fall prey to in finger. Okay? And when you look at like the way that cultures move and how quickly things that were OK or were not OK suddenly are OK. And maybe that goes in a positive direction, right? Like think about in 2000 how it was totally normal for people to be homophobic and anti-gay marriage. And now in 2022 and even in 20, you know, fast forward 10 years and and it's absolutely like all those people were shouting from the rooftops that they didn't approve of gay marriage, including politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. All of a sudden, the culture has completely moved, saying something like that is completely wrong. Now that's I think, the culture moving in a good direction. Like, I believe in gay marriage, but cultures, I think, can also make that shift in a bad direction. And I just think that it's really important to realize how how fragile our minds are. That's there, and that's exactly back to what their goal was, is the fragility of the mind. It is so true how easy you can take advantage of somebody when they're in a vulnerable place. So it's for Michelle, who is the one who's still an active member of the black woman who's had a shaved Sara. And Nippy said in the interview I did with them that she had just been through a breakup. So she joined after a breakup, and he probably asked her lots of questions or somebody else did. And then he was given notes on her, and then he used it to basically to compromise her. He weaponized his people's personal tragedies and vulnerabilities to prey on them. I think you also weaponized people's interest in being like their their own commitment to being well-intentioned, thoughtful, purposeful people, right? Like you have to be cut from a certain cloth to spend thousands of dollars on a self betterment seminar. Like, a lot of people are just not into that, you know, they'd rather just go to the beach and go skateboarding. So yeah, it's just a whole. It is kind of like weaponizing, I think, a special characteristic and certain people like one of passion and one of wanting to be a good person in a really thoughtful way. Yeah, it's just sad because you're taking advantage of people who have such. Well, like I said, well, we need intention to help other people. I just really it always creeps me out when Colt say, but we were doing it for the better betterment of humanity, I'm like, That's something to think about on a daily basis. Like, What can I do to better humanity? It's just it's almost like it's obnoxious in a way. Like, you think you have that much power? I'm very aware every day that I'd like, the best I can do is to just, like, raise great kids. I love this country, Eleanor Roosevelt moment, like actually no one. Oh, well, I'm just saying like like, you have very little a bill like you can do things on a micro level, right? But cult members are led to believe they can do things on a macro level, which is just given how powerful their little groups are. That's what I think. You know, like. I think I think one of the things that I've learned maturing and becoming an adult is like in the ways that I thought I had all the answers at 19 and maybe could really help. But like, you know, figuring out how to organize society now, as a 32 year old, I really realize that I actually have no idea about much at all, and I want to get some work in my lane, but that it gets as you get, you have a family like, then you have kids and you're like, It's hard for me to even get my kids to see something. How am I going to get the rest of the world to see something? That's what I think is just so wackadoo. It's like whenever I hear Scientology's top Scientologist talk, they're like, Well, we're going to do it for the betterment of humanity. We're going to save the world. I'm like, Save the world. I can't even get my kid to, like, pack her bag for science trips like, what are you talking about? That's what I think is like, kind of funny actually should put that on stand back. Yeah. By the way, you know, I'm interviewing on Monday, Christine. Of course I know I could. No, no, no. Besides, I do have Christine from The Sister Wives on Wednesday. I'm interviewing. On Monday, I'm interviewing Mike Rinder from Scientology. The second I don't have Mike Rinder is the one who did the television show with Leah Remini. He's got. Oh, OK. He just wrote a book. Oh yes, yes. I know what you're talking about a billion years. I forget that right now. But yeah, he's going to talk to me about what it's like to be in the sea org of Scientology. Oh my gosh. I mean, all this stuff is just so absolutely fascinating. I do think that this has been bad business, though the the years of that we have devoted to docu series and documentaries about cults has been bad business for co-leaders. Oh, yeah, well, it's not good for them, for sure, because I think people are more aware of the blueprint, which is great, which is great. You know, and I think I also think that it's not just co-leaders Kate, I think that like this, these kind of tactics and strategies of manipulation, they can be used on a smaller scale by honestly, just like narcissist people you can date who can try to ruin your life for a few years, like that's also what's useful about it. You know, a lot of us won't ever encounter a cult and after, you know, have watched The Vow HBO to resist. But I think a lot of us are going to encounter people who either, you know, try to ruin our lives for a little bit of time because of their own psychosis or try to ruin the lives of our daughters or whatever. And I think it's being aware of the strategies of master manipulators. Mm-Hmm. It's really is really scary, and I feel like we're just being armed with information now where we could be annoying. Like, I'm like, Listen, this guy you're dating is totally a Keith Ranieri would more like, OK, that's a little bit much. I'm telling you it started this way. And then next thing you know, right, you're going to have to go see him at Nancy Salesman's house, and she's going to have to make a frittata for him. And then you're upstairs, like, like reading through his manuals to give them cliff notes. I'm just telling you, you're almost there. Yeah. No, absolutely, absolutely. I'm sure all of our friends who had and toxic relationships are going to truly hate talking to each of us, respectively, as they try to get and support who one person you would if you were given the chance to talk to any of the members of this group, who would you love to talk to? Oh, I, I think I would love to talk to Nancy. I think I I think Nancy for me is the person who's just closest to the power and the most interesting. And I think that there's just still so much left to be like under like, there's just more to her story. Like if you like so many of these people kind of have closure now and are moving on with their lives. So, Nancy, be the most interesting for me to talk to you. I think Keith would just talk me in circles. What about you, Nancy, by the way, looks and acts and talks and has the mannerisms of my mother. So I have sometimes a hard time watching it because I'm like, Oh my God, that's Suzanne right there. Like, she looks so much like my mom. It's wild. I want to talk to Allison Mack. I want to be the first person she talks to. She's released, but yeah, as I said to Nippy and Sarah, she should charge whomever she should get her own, like she's going to have no money, that she should get some of her power back and sell her story. I mean, all these people can get a book deal, can can, I'm sure, sell their interviews and hopefully, you know, rebuild their lives after they have paid their debt to society. Don't you wanna read that awesome book? I would like to read Alison or Lauren Solomon's books. Have these books been written? No, I'm saying if they write the book, I want to read it. Yes. Yes, yes, 100 percent, I want to read it. OK, before you go. Just really quick. Are you tapped in a way? No, I have to say this. I will never read Claire Brockman's book. I don't care about her. OK, we're Claire on this podcast. I agree, and I'm to be honest, I'm not very intrigued by her. She was just always the rich heiress. But I'm curious if you if you have any thoughts on the lost women of Nexium theory that Keith poisoned women. I do think is. I do think he did. Mm-Hmm. I do think he did. I think it was like a reverse experiment. I think it was a perverse experiment. I think he was like, I want to see how much power I can have over people. I don't think he was like no other reason for I don't think he is like lamenting the camps I'm going to. I don't think it was like, I'm going to, you know, let's just get rid of them because they're wasted space. I think it was like experimentation. I think he had a fascination and an obsession with all forms of power, which included the Nazis. And I think he was like, You know, how much power can I get? How can people be so reliant on me? And I think he like there. There are elements of. What was his name, the present, the the Dr Joseph Joseph Momoh? What's the name, the Nazi? The doctor who did all the experiments, I think there is an element to to that where he like he just had a fascination with how how much humans can be reliant on one person. And I think he was doing like I think he was doing experiments on them. I'm not going to retell this because I think I want our listeners to be able to go watch. But there's a scene where Nancy describes, you know, the morning, essentially that Pam died, and it is probably the most horrific, one of the most horrific scenes I've ever ever heard about when she has to make Keith breakfast anyway. Everyone, you need to go watch the Valley season two. It's just you just watch the first couple of episodes. If you're already in Nexium, you know, aficionados while you're doing dishes and while you're doing it while you're doing whatever you do, you got to give it to episodes and then it gets really, really juicy. Kate, where can our listeners find you and what do you have coming up on reality life with Kate Casey? Well, first of all, I have to say it was Dr. Joseph Mengele. He was the infamous Nazi doctor who performed medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camps. That's what it was. I think he he was like doing something like that come into my episodes. I've got LeVar Bonaparte from Southern Hospitality on Bravo, which is a new show that's out. I've got Christine Brown from Sister Wives, which is a must listen to episode that's going to be Friday of next week. I've got Mike Mike Rinder, who left Scientology Sea org. She was the one who was in charge of wrangling Tom Cruise all the time, so he's got like the Tom Cruise story part. So don't miss that episode as well. You can listen to my episodes wherever you listen to podcasts and make sure that you click Subscribe. So those episodes pop up and you know, a new episode is up and fresh, and you can find me on social media at Cakey. Kate Casey on Twitter. KKK on Instagram. It's Kate Casey on Tik Tok. And then I've got two other things. I've got bonus episodes on my Patreon at Patreon dot com backslash Casey and I just had one where I riffed about Barbara Walters and how she was a horrible reporter, and I am glad that people are seeing the light now and then. Also, my must watch list, which I put out every Monday, is a list of what to watch an unscripted television, which is reality shows, documentaries and docu series so you can go to Kate Casey dot Substack dot com, but that's free and in your email box every Monday. I'm a huge fan of all of the above loyal patrons. Subscriber Your patron is great. I love your patron because it has like these short episodes and you know exactly what you're going to get. So whether it's like someone giving you the details on some sort of like you talked about running into a local housewife husband and a housewife at a Terry Dubrow that turned pro say about turning around you and your situation happened. I mean, it's so juicy. He started very nice. And then he's like bragging to me about his house sale. And then Heather's just sitting there and doesn't even acknowledge me. And then as the waiter come over and she's like, Terry, your food's ready. Didn't even like and we're like a couple of booths away. That's honestly one of the weirdest Lazarus like I've ever heard. Absolutely insane. Everyone, you have to go watch. Season two of The Vow on HBO Max. Kate, thank you so much for coming on again. I just appreciate so much and everyone go listen to Casey's podcast. Really like Casey, it is so good, and her patron is amazing, too. That's all for now, folks. Don't forget, give us a five star review. Hit us up on Instagram at pharmacologists, and we will see you next week. Live every Wednesday.