'The Vow' of Total Obedience to the Government
My reflections after episodes two and three of HBO's 'The Vow'
The debate over how much oxygen to give The Vow is ongoing for me. So far, I’ve written a couple of fairly in-depth analyses on season one and the first episode of season two. I have notes and many thoughts on the second and third episodes, which aired recently and I will discuss some of them, but I’m not going to devote as much energy reviewing them as I’d originally planned. Based on the ratings, it would seem audiences have moved on or lost interest and, while I want people to be interested in the true story, I’m not upset about them missing HBO’s propaganda piece for the prosecution.
If you are new to my Substack, I am referring to the NXIVM situation and the “docu-series” called The Vow currently airing on HBO. If you are not new, thank you for keeping an open mind and looking beyond the salacious headlines and media coverage.
If you’d like to watch the candid reactions and reflections of several women who were part of NXIVM and DOS, you can watch our videos at The Dossier Project. We’ve been recording and posting them the day after each episode.
Obviously, it’s impossible to divorce myself completely from the content itself, but I have previously made an earnest effort to focus on facts and observable phenomena rather than persuade people with my subjective experience. Now, I’m going to share a little more of my personal thoughts and feelings, with the hope that those who are watching, or reading, might have a deeper sense of the complexity and nuanced humanity involved in this situation.
Imagine going through a messy breakup that resulted in mutual friends having to pick a side. Now imagine, years later, learning that your ex and all the people who ended up siding with him or her were making a documentary as it all went down. A documentary with a massive budget to fly its subjects around, house them in New York City, and pay for various therapies and “outside experts.” You had no idea at the time, but calls were being recorded, people were being followed by film crews, and the narrative of the documentary was completely informed by your ex’s perspective — what happened, why the relationship ended, who’s to blame, and who the victim is in the situation. How would you feel? Would you trust that person to tell your story accurately? Would you feel betrayed? Violated? Exploited? Angry? Confused? Afraid?
I have, and do, feel all of those things.
The whole situation still feels so surreal. I never could have imagined that what started out as gossip and rumors within a tight-knit community would become international news, and the subject of multiple documentaries, books, and podcasts, not to mention a federal trial. And even with all of those media products on the market, still only one story has been told. The story of what was actually happening in the “inner circle,” while people like Sarah, Mark, and Catherine conspired to destroy the company, has never been talked about or revealed. The only person who came close was Lauren Salzman, who co-operated with the government and was part of DOS, and a partner of Keith’s for 15 years. But as much as I love Lauren, and I truly do love Lauren, she was under tremendous pressure by her family, her attorneys, and the government to conform to a narrative in order to avoid prison time, which she managed to do. If she didn’t co-operate, she could have faced more than 40 years.
The question that haunts me most is, how did it come to this? Watching The Vow has actually shed some light on how it all went down, and it’s also helped me understand better how the narrative was crafted, who was behind it, and what made it snowball out of control. Still, there are many unanswered questions and, sadly, so many people with whom I wish I could go back in time and talk. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed anything. There’s no way I could have known how far our former friends would take things, but I still can’t help but wonder if a conversation could have made a difference. To be fair, I did speak with anyone who seemed earnestly seeking answers at the time, but with others, I kept a distance. More on that below, but first let’s talk a little about episodes two and three.
Reading Between the Lines
If you look past the creepy music and creative editing, there is a lot you can learn from The Vow that might not be immediately obvious if you get swept up in the story. Similar to how the first season was a masterclass in creating a victimhood narrative with so much smoke, no one could doubt there was fire, the second season exposes a number of the government’s tactics that bring a much darker reality to light.
Some questions that were not, but should have been raised by the filmmakers:
If NXIVM was a criminal organization, why were Mark and Sarah not implicated? Or any other members of the “inner circle” who were not charged?
Why did Moira choose to target Keith, Nancy, Allison, Clare, Lauren, and Kathy, when many others were seemingly similarly positioned?
What was Nancy charged with? Does she believe she committed crimes? Does she believe her daughter committed crimes?
What was the process of convincing Isabella that bad things were happening behind closed doors? What did they tell her and with what proof?
What specifically caused any of the “detractors” to change their minds about the organization and years of first-hand, positive experience?
And a question for the filmmakers:
What authority does a New York Post reporter, a “manipulation expert,” and random “former NXIVM members” have on anything? If Jehane and Karim had access to people, like me, who were actually there, why didn’t they include any of the hundreds of hours of our footage that would actually offer a balancing point of view?
“Where’s the Beef?”
When my lawyer first read the indictment and went meticulously through all the allegations, he asked if I remembered an old Wendy’s commercial that said, “Where’s the beef?” In his decades as a successful criminal trial attorney in New York City, he was trained to find the “meat” of a case, so he could defend his client against the government slaughter. In this case, however, he couldn’t find it. I understand that people are going to say, “Keith was convicted on all eight counts! He was found guilty by a jury of his peers!” People will call me brainwashed, bitter, delusional, in denial, whatever. But what most people don’t realize is that the government has infinite resources to win their case, and they are incentivized to win at all costs. Once they have committed to finding a crime, regardless of the truth, they will find it. And if they can’t find it, they will create it. Additionally, when you’re dealing with sex crime allegations, a community of well-intentioned people who believe in government, not to mention a media sh*t-storm that convicts the defendants before they ever enter a courtroom, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to get a fair trial.
For the record, I have read the transcripts. I know the allegations, and I understand that there is a lot that portrays Keith as having questionable moral character. I am not going to discuss or defend any of that here. What I will say is that considering he was sentenced to 120 years — life — in prison, you have to assume that he did things that are unfathomably horrific. You have to imagine that he had people around him who were similarly cruel and exploitative in their criminality. You have to believe that all the people who worked closely with him must have known what was going on and, once he was arrested, that victim after victim would come forward to share their tales of abuse and torture. However, this is not what happened. In fact, quite the opposite.
Let’s consider the lens of a docu-series that is focusing solely on Keith’s trial, and alleged criminal activity.
We are halfway through the second season and not a single crime has been described. There have been many grand conjectures of abuse, manipulation, and even words like “sex trafficking” thrown around, but no evidence of a specific crime. Two people have testified (Mark and Sylvie) and neither detailed a crime in their testimony.
Moira Penza, the lead prosecutor of the case, has not yet discussed any specific crimes or what happened to justify such a high-profile federal investigation. Rather, she makes sweeping statements that liken Keith to a “crime boss” and how the organization was all about manipulation and indoctrination. But I have to ask, “Where’s the beef?”
At the end of the second episode, Nancy blames DOS for the downfall of the company and calls DOS a “sex cult.” This implies that she still doesn’t believe there was anything criminal about NXIVM and that she took a plea deal only to save herself, not because she believes she’s a criminal. After all, Nancy never references any actual crimes, committed by her or anyone else. She even states that the first thing her lawyer said to her was that she had to take a plea deal otherwise she would certainly go to jail, and that she had to convince her daughter to as well. She had to convince Lauren to take a deal, which is different than showing Lauren she committed crimes so she could take responsibility for her actions.
Nancy’s lawyers, as much as I disagree with what they advised, were smart. They knew what the government was capable of and what Nancy needed to do to protect herself. As Nancy said herself, she had no outside emotional support. She went from having 24/7 support from close friends and community members to having no one but her lawyers. Same with Lauren. Because the government used RICO, no one could talk to each other. Divide and conquer.
No, Really. Where’s the Beef?
In the third episode, when Isabella’s parents press her for details of the alleged “abuse” within NXIVM, she doesn’t answer with anything specific. She says that people would take on “penances” (a pre-set consequence for a failure); things like doing a one-minute plank, running a mile, or taking a cold shower. Eventually, she gets frustrated because her parents want to know what she did, but she doesn’t give an answer and walks away in frustration.
Isabella parrots things that others had told her about DOS, since Isabella was not a part of DOS, and things that apparently happened to other people. She mentions that she’s “broken in other ways” now, but doesn’t offer any explanation as to why or what caused her “brokenness.” To me, this is very sad. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to transform your life in such a dramatic way in such a short amount of time. Yes, she was finally free from the shackles of Tourettes, but that also meant learning to socialize and function in the world in a whole new way. It would not be easy and then to have people tell you horrible things about the people who helped you. So, I guess I’ll say, I feel for Isabella. And I think it’s a shame that the filmmakers chose to film her during a time when she was trying to make sense of a co-ordinated hate campaign against people she trusted and who helped her transform her life for the better.
The editors of The Vow have a habit of finding archival footage that communicates something a subject says about Keith, but in the most transparent and literal way possible. There is a section where Nancy is reflecting on how she became afraid of Keith and he got very controlling. The worst example the filmmakers could find, from 20 years of footage, to demonstrate Keith being “controlling” with Nancy was a clip where he tells her not to interrupt him when he’s talking. You might watch it and think he’s being a bit of an asshole, but it’s a far cry from being abusive or even mean.
In one scene Isabella calls Marc Elliot on video chat, and he doesn’t know he’s being recorded. Fun fact, I missed a video call from her around that time and now I’m glad I didn’t answer. I wonder if she thought to do that herself, or if the filmmakers thought it would make a good scene. In any case, Marc says that if women were being forcibly branded, as Isabella claims, that it would be illegal. Some might watch that and think, “Yeah, exactly! How can Marc not see that?” However, there were no criminal charges related to branding, and no charges of assault or battery, which would be the case if anyone was forced to physically do something against their will. So it’s not quite the “gotcha” moment it appears to be on the surface.
The way the filmmakers portray Marc Elliot is misleading and a missed opportunity. His story is groundbreaking, as are the stories of the other people who participated in the Tourettes study with Nancy Salzman. To the best of my knowledge, they got results that no other treatment for Tourettes has ever achieved. I know that the filmmakers interviewed other participants who had positive things to say and thought the “sex cult” narrative was BS, but they didn’t show those interviews. Having Moira at the end of the episode dismiss the entirety of the work as pop psychology is not only damaging to the truth, but it prevents the people suffering from severe Tourettes syndrome from having hope at healing and a new way of life. Even so, dozens of people reach out to Marc regularly because they see past the rhetoric and are willing to do anything to treat their Tourettes. Sadly, he can’t help them because of what the government has done to the company.
If you would like to learn more about the Tourettes study, as well as what NXIVM actually did, check out the documentary, My Tourette’s.
Note: The Vow did not get permission to use footage from the film, My Tourette’s, nor did they properly credit the film when footage was used.
Hindsight is 20/20
After Sarah Edmondson left, she sent me several very nasty text messages. From one day to the next, she lied to me about what she was doing, then expressed concern, then threatened me, then tried to sell me her Vitamix. It was strange. I didn’t respond to her erratic texts because, quite honestly, I was afraid and didn’t know what to make of it. I had heard that she and others were recording people. She likes to publicly claim that I was “told” not to talk to her, but it’s not true. She earned my distrust on her own.
When I interviewed with The Vow, the filmmakers kept wanting me to talk about how “betrayed” I felt by Sarah. In all honesty, I don’t think Sarah betrayed me. I never looked up to Sarah and I never felt particularly close to her. I feel like Sarah betrayed herself. For fifteen years, she dedicated her life to helping people grow and become better versions of themselves using NXIVM’s tools and methodology. She made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and built a life she could have only dreamed of when I met her as a struggling actor. The fact that she turned on people who had helped her achieve her dreams and with whom she had shared so many adventures and ups and downs cannot, ultimately, feel like something to celebrate. Sarah always joked about Nancy being like a second mom to her. Nancy spent hours upon hours mentoring and helping Sarah. And now, largely due to Sarah’s actions, Nancy, a woman in her 60s with health issues, is living in prison. I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I don’t know what it would take for me to justify something like that.
Everyone Has an Agenda
It’s true I have been critical of others’ agendas in this situation, as I think everyone should be. I’ll be the first to say that I have my own agenda. I want to exonerate my friends, who I know are innocent. In the process, I hope to improve the criminal justice system. I want to clear my own name, and I want the NXIVM tools to be available for people who want to use them to make positive changes in their lives. I’m not looking for money or fame. I value living with relative anonymity. I only want to clear my name so that the lies about me don’t prevent me from getting work or helping others. I don’t want to destroy anyone or exact revenge. It would be nice if the people responsible for causing so much destruction were held accountable or apologized, but I’d be just as happy if they moved on with their lives.
In my ideal world, there would be reconciliation. We would all be able to sit in the same room and share our grievances and resolve them in a way that is constructive and healing. I want there to be forgiveness and a plan for a future where something like this doesn’t happen to any other communities or groups of people. More than anything, the prejudice has been eye-opening for me. I have never been accused of wrongdoing, let alone charged with a crime, yet I am considered scum of the earth by many. People feel they have permission to treat me as if I am a criminal or worse, simply because of my affiliation and advocacy for due process and justice. No matter what people believe in the end, that is not as much my concern, as is the hate that we allow and propagate because we think others are beyond reproach. We view perceived differences and disagreements as threats to our personhood, and we thus act as if we are fighting for our lives. But what if, in all that fighting, we were to find that our supposed enemies were not our enemies at all, but former and future friends?