S35 E2: Little Dictator | Allison after NXIVM

Summary

S35 E2: “Little Dictator”

Podcast: Allison after NXIVM (from Uncover)
Host: CBC (Narrator: Natalie Robomed)
Date: November 10, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode digs deep into the pivotal years when Allison Mack—once known to millions as Chloe Sullivan on Smallville—became entirely enmeshed in NXIVM, the so-called self-help group that turned out to be a high-control cult led by Keith Raniere. With raw, candid interviews from Allison herself and those close to her, the episode traces her move from TV stardom to the heart of NXIVM’s operations in Albany, New York, examining how her vulnerabilities and ambition were weaponized by Raniere. The story edges closer to the inception of DOS (“Dominus Obsequious Sororium”) and the master-slave dynamic that would lead to Allison's public downfall and criminal conviction.

Topics tackled include identity, influence, manipulation, indoctrination, family perspective, survivor's guilt, and the insidious nature of cultic control.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Allison’s Transition to Albany and NXIVM’s Core (01:05–04:42)

• Career Crossroads: After Smallville ended, Allison felt both adrift and in need of self-reinvention. The idea that she needed to “let go of [her] brownstone” in Brooklyn and move to Albany came from inside NXIVM.
  • Quote (02:36): “The day that I did that, I got shingles... I think it was my body being like, what are you doing?” — Allison Mack
• Self-Doubt as Entrée: Allison felt compelled by the belief that she was “fucked up and needed to be fixed,” positioning NXIVM as the solution to her perceived flaws—especially fears around narcissism and inauthenticity.

Cult Indoctrination: Identity and the Performer’s Dilemma (06:01–08:37)

• Exploiting Insecurities: Keith Raniere weaponized Allison’s deepest self-doubt—that actors are inauthentic, disconnected, or self-absorbed. Her “stripe path” in NXIVM was always framed as a journey to eradicate these supposedly toxic traits.
  • Quote (07:48): “Keith and Nancy told me I was a narcissist, that I had, like, narcissist personality disorder. And I was like, appalled.” — Allison Mack
• Early Sexualization: Allison’s early career exposed her to adult behaviors and expectations; she recalls learning to relate to men in a sexualized way from a very young age, something NXIVM presented as “fixable.”

Family Perspective: Mindy Mack’s Account (09:27–13:01)

• Mother’s Alarm: Allison’s mother, Mindy, describes her daughter’s rapid and total immersion into NXIVM, and how Allison quickly became “unbearably arrogant.”
  • Quote (10:23): “She didn’t fuss around on the periphery for very long … she became unbearably arrogant.” — Mindy Mack
• Appeal of Jeunesse: Both Allison and her mother valued aspects of the Jeunesse program, especially building empathy. Mindy notes that she still uses some techniques in her marriage.
  • Quote (12:44): “There was a lot of building empathy. Try on the other person. … It’s great for marriage.” — Mindy Mack

Gender Roles and the Seeds of DOS (13:01–16:11)

• Questionable “Feminism”: Jeunesse was marketed as empowering but drilled retrograde ideas—women are undisciplined, must restrict indulgences, should make men feel safe, and that monogamy is tantamount to ownership.
  • Quote (13:35): “Women are so indulgent of their bodies, so … restrict your calories, you know, so you’re not just impulsively eating or indulging your emotions all the time.” — Allison Mack
• Programmed Acceptance of Polyamory: When Allison first learns of Raniere’s polyamorous relationships, the Jeunesse framework makes her more accepting or rationalizing of the situation.

Control, Sickness, and Allison’s New Role (16:22–19:48)

• Pam Caffrides’ Illness: Pam’s cancer became a central point for NXIVM, giving Keith both a crisis and an opportunity to exert further control over his “inner circle.”
• Roles Within the Community: Keith analogized NXIVM roles to Tibetan Buddhism—Allison, the public emissary, was expected to recruit and embody NXIVM in the outside world.
  • Quote (19:27): “My role … was to spread the message and to bring new people in and represent what NXIVIAN is in the public eye.” — Allison Mack

The Source: Allison’s Power, Ambition, and “Little Dictator” (20:30–22:13)

• Launching ‘The Source’: At Keith’s behest, Allison leads NXIVM’s acting program, leveraging her industry status to draw in new talent and enhance the group’s legitimacy.
• Aggressive Leadership Tendency: Allison admits an aggressive, “dictatorial” side, especially as NXIVM’s top ranks increasingly empowered her to oversee other women.
  • Quote (21:14): “I call it the little dictator … and that part of my personality came out with my slaves. And that is a part of myself that I have to contend with … and that’s where I went to prison for that.” — Allison Mack

Grooming, Deepening Dependence, and Traumatic Background (22:54–27:54)

• Vulnerabilities and Abuse History: A candid conversation with her friend Danny leads Allison to revisit early experiences of sexual exploitation—on set and within trusted relationships.
  • Quote (25:25): “When I was 14, a director was flirting with me … I totally internalized it. … I was a kid.” — Allison Mack
• Mother’s Perspective on Abuse: Mindy regrets not intervening more forcefully during signs of inappropriate adult behavior in Allison’s early career.

Raniere’s Sexual Manipulation as “Therapy” (28:01–32:10)

• NXIVM Logic Enabled Coercion: Keith positions a physically intimate relationship as necessary “experiential learning” needed to heal Allison’s supposedly broken sexuality.
  • Quote (29:39): “He said, we’re gonna have to be physically intimate because it’s an experiential problem that you’re having.” — Allison Mack
• Aftermath and Rationalization: Allison’s misgivings about the relationship were reframed—internally and by NXIVM doctrine—as evidence of her own brokenness.
  • Quote (31:35): “This is the safest man you could be with... So the fact that this feels weird, Allison, is just an indication of how dysfunctional you are.” — Allison Mack

The Birth of DOS: The Master/Slave Structure and Collateral (32:21–36:08)

• Recruitment for DOS: Keith describes a new secret women’s group to Allison—a “master/slave” organization where subordinates submit “collateral” to prove their loyalty and become obediently subservient, supposedly for maximum personal growth.
  • Quote (34:42): “It’s a lifetime commitment and it’s a master slave dynamic … you’re going to learn how to be completely humble and completely subversive.” — Allison Mack (explaining Keith’s words)
• Collateralization: The expectation to submit compromising secrets or materials (“collateral”) as a means of control was justified through philosophical parallels with non-attachment (e.g. Buddhism) and integrity.

DOS’s Foundation Meeting: Early Recruits and Rationalizations (36:10–37:25)

• Group Dynamics: The founding women, including Allison, Danny, Nikki, Loretta, and Cammie, meet to determine the structure of the new organization. All believed they were creating a group dedicated to overcoming fear and helping women grow.
  • Quote (37:13): “We all wanted to grow. We all wanted to get through our biggest fears and we all wanted to help other women do that.” — Allison Mack

The Real Purpose Behind DOS (37:25–38:08)

• Keith’s Motive: The establishment of DOS provided Keith with a new stable of subservient followers in the wake of Pam’s illness; the master/slave framework granted him absolute control under the guise of personal development.

Survivor’s Guilt and Parental Regret (38:08–38:17)

• Mother’s Lament: Mindy Mack voices anguish over not being able to save her daughter from the group’s grip, expressing regret and self-blame.
  • Quote (38:08): “I felt so angry with myself … she saved her kid and I didn’t.” — Mindy Mack

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Allison on Shingles After Moving (02:36):
  “The day that I did that, I got shingles ... I think it was my body being like, what are you doing?”
• On Early Sexualization (08:29):
  “The comfortable way for me to relate, especially to men in positions of authority, is through a sexualized lens.”
• On Her ‘Little Dictator’ Side (21:14):
  “That part of my personality came out with my slaves. And that is a part of myself that I have to contend with… that’s where I went to prison for that.”
• On Keith’s Manipulation (29:39):
  “He said, we’re gonna have to be physically intimate because it’s an experiential problem that you’re having.”
• Mindy’s Regret (38:08):
  “I felt so angry with myself... she saved her kid and I didn’t.”

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Segment Timestamps

• Allison’s Move to Albany & Mental State: 01:05–04:42
• NXIVM’s Appeal & Performative Identity: 06:01–08:37
• Family Perspective—Mindy Mack: 09:27–13:01
• Jeunesse & Gendered Indoctrination: 13:01–16:11
• Pam’s Illness & Allison’s New Role: 16:22–19:48
• Creation of 'The Source' & Little Dictator: 20:30–22:13
• Personal Vulnerabilities & Early Abuse: 22:54–27:54
• Keith’s Sexual Coercion: 28:01–32:10
• Birth of DOS—Master/Slave Dynamic: 32:21–36:08
• Founding Meeting of DOS: 36:10–37:25
• Mother’s Regret & Survivor’s Guilt: 38:08–38:17

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode is a deeply unsettling but illuminating account of how intelligent, ambitious women were persuaded, step by step, to surrender their autonomy in the name of growth, only to wind up serving a manipulative predator. Through Allison’s own voice and those of her family, the story provides a nuanced perspective on influence, shame, familial bonds, and the complicated quest for redemption. “Little Dictator” is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand not only the NXIVM story but also the psychological underpinnings of coercive control.

Transcript

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[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

This is a CBC podcast campsite media In 2011, after 10 seasons on air, Alice and Mac's TV show Smallville came to an end.

[Alison Mack]

It's funny, it almost sounded like you were saying goodbye. I forgot how well you know me. My heart and my head have been playing tug of war lately. But I made my decision.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Alison had played Chloe Sullivan for a decade, since she was a teenager. By the time the final episode hit screens, Alison was 28. She was at a critical juncture in her career and her life. She'd been living in Vancouver, shooting the show, and then in Brooklyn at a lovely little brownstone in Cobble Hill. But it was time to make a change.

[Alison Mack]

Somehow, Keith somebody, I can't even remember who, put it in my head that I needed to move to Albany full time and let go of my brownstone. And I remember being so sad because I loved my brownstone. It's so silly to say that, but I made my love for the brownstone bad. I was like, that's materialistic. That's like, you're not values oriented. You're superficial, you're shallow. You need to prove to yourself that you're not these things, that you're not shallow and superficial and materialistic. And the way you're going to do that is by letting go of the brownstone and moving to Albany full time.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

This was where the NXIVM true believers lived. Around the world, thousands of people took their courses and workshops about how to be a better husband or a better employee or live a more ethical life. But in Albany, you could learn directly from Keith in person how to live your best life or to become deeply indoctrinated. To make it official, Alison bought a small townhouse just outside of Albany on a street called General's Way.

[Alison Mack]

And the day that I did that, I got shingles. So fucking weird, right? My whole chest broke out in like these huge welts that looked like somebody had taken acid and just splatter painted it across my chest. And I think it was my body being like, what are you doing?

[Interviewer/Producer]

You know?

[Alison Mack]

But I was so hell bent on the Fact that I was fucked up and I was needed to be fixed and that this was the place I was going to get fixed. And the problems I've had in my past, they've been able to help me fix. So I need to come, I need to work through my narcissism. I need to not be superficial. I'm gonna go there and, you know, get, get fixed.

[Interviewer/Producer]

At this point, Alison had been attending NXIVM workshops for about five years. But it was here, at this home on General's Way, that Alison would ascend to the next tier of self improvement. Because Albany was the center of NXIVM where Keith Ranieri, Nancy Salzman and all the other NXIVM higher ups lived. These people were Alison's. She was now at the Nexus and this house became her home base. From here, she started teaching workshops, taking intensives and spending time with Keith.

[Alison Mack]

I was like, he's my teacher. I thought of him as my guru.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Keith lived a five minute walk away and Alison would often take strolls with Keith on these quiet tree lined streets. It's so suburban out here that there aren't even sidewalks, just lawns that curve straight into roads. This is where Keith would pound the pavement in sneakers and shorts, pontificating as he strode past mailboxes and manicured hedges, a sort of suburban Socrates. But Alison wasn't the only person Keith was taking walks with because actually many other NXIVM women were living in the same neighborhood.

[Alison Mack]

I knew that there were lots of women that were around him, but I thought he was like a feminist who was helping women. That was the perspective that I had of him.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

But of course, Keith wasn't just helping women. He was sleeping with them too. At various times, Keith actually lived with three women, all of whom were his girlfriends. Many of them had been with him for decades. One of them, Karen Unterreiner, he had met when she was only 18. NXIVM's leader was also the neighborhood's busiest tomcat, flitting from house to house. And unbeknownst to Alison, he was working on the next generation of his harem. From Campside Media and CBC, this is Alison after NXIVM from CBC's Uncover. I'm Natalie Bobomed. This is episode two, the Little Dictator. So how did Allison, this smart, accomplished actor, get so deep in Keith Ranieri's clutches? Well, it all comes back to the fact that she was a performer.

[Alison Mack]

I don't have a memory of myself in my life before getting arrested that didn't involve me Being an actor professionally, that was my life. Like, that was who I was.

[Interviewer/Producer]

And this is what's so interesting to me about how Allison got enmeshed in nxivm. It's that Keith both profited from the fact that she was an actor, someone famous who could lure other people in with her charisma and the pure sheen of success she emanated and also used it against her because one of the biggest accusations performers often face in their real lives, and I should know, I'm married to one, is that they are inauthentic. And this was exactly what Keith told Alison. From the very beginning.

[Alison Mack]

I had have insecurities around being performative. And I think a lot of that is just like I was trained from like a very young age to perform. You know, like, that's kind of what I did.

[Mindy Mack]

And.

[Alison Mack]

That was pointed out to me in the 16 day. Like, we know that you're inauthentic and we know that you're like, very self absorbed and you don't connect to people in a very honest way. And the Stripe path will help.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Alison's talking about one of the first NXIVM workshops she did, a 16 day long, intense seminar. The Striped Path was the name for the levels of progression within nxivm, which were delineated by different sash colors. You had to earn four stripes on your sash before moving on to the next color. Sash. Yes, sashes. When the NXIVM people were in their seminar rooms, he liked them to wear colored sashes designating their rank. And Alison's rank was not high.

[Alison Mack]

Keith and Nancy told me that I was a narcissist, that I had like, narcissist personality disorder. And I was like, appalled. You know, I was like, I don't.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Want to be that.

[Alison Mack]

I don't want to have that. So I was like, what do I need to do to like, get myself around that? And so I was like, basically like, whatever Keith said, I was like, I'll do because I need to fix myself.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Keith had correctly identified Alison's deepest fear, that her malleable, flaky sense of self, her identity as an actor who could also be performative, was preventing her from having genuine connections with human beings. This struck a chord with Allison, particularly in her relationships with men.

[Alison Mack]

I was sexualized from such a young age that the comfortable way for me to relate, especially to men in positions of authority, is through a sexualized lens.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Like, what does that mean?

[Alison Mack]

Meaning I'll flirt, I'll touch arm, I'll make comments to feel Like I have some type of control or exchange value exchange in the dynamic, in the conversation. And that started when I was like, really little, you know, like just, oh, I can get you to pay attention to me and to listen to me if I make you feel somehow like you're like the coolest man in the room or if I make you think about sex while you're talking to me. And I think I was doing that before I even knew I was doing that. It was just a part of my training in how to interact with men.

[Interviewer/Producer]

NXIVM was presented as the panacea to Alison's problems.

[Mindy Mack]

In the first year, she was all in and she could not get enough.

[Interviewer/Producer]

That's Mindy Mack, Alison's mom. She's 74, wearing jeans and a floral patterned T shirt and a denim jacket decorated with a handful of pins, like a little gold cowboy boot and a star. Her face is lined, it seems, for many years of smiling very widely.

[Alison Mack]

Beautiful piano. Oh, thanks. They're my husband.

[Mindy Mack]

This is his little wall. That's him with Domingo. He's saying the LA Opera.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

It's a hot day in May and I'm sitting in a music room with Mindy at her home in Southern California. There's a gorgeous upright piano, a wall filled with memorabilia from her husband's opera career, and outside, a glistening blue swimming pool. Mindy has never spoken publicly about what happened with her daughter, but she watched it all right from the very beginning.

[Mindy Mack]

She didn't fuss around on the periphery for very long. She was brought in and she took every. She had endless resources because what does a 21 year old woman need with, you know, a million dollars or however much? But she slipped away while she was doing that. She became immersed and she had all the answers for all life's challenges. So she had the answer for everything. Keith says this and this. So she became unbearably arrogant. You know, John couldn't stand to be in the same room with her because she just had this level of arrogance about everything you say is like, you know, she responds with just a look.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

John is Alison's dad. The pair are on good terms now.

[Interviewer/Producer]

They're.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Around the time of Allison's arrest, he started exhibiting signs of cognitive decline and has since been diagnosed with dementia, which is why we aren't hearing from him for this podcast. Back then, Mindy wanted to figure out what was going on with her daughter, so she actually started taking the odd Nexium course with Alison, workshops that Alison would pay for.

[Mindy Mack]

I did it only because Alison was so Excited about it. And I wanted to know what Allison was jumping in with both feet.

[Interviewer/Producer]

One of the courses Mindy took with Allison was a women's program called, called Jeunesse.

[Alison Mack]

I really liked Jeunesse. I've always really wanted to help women. Like, I've always felt a really weird, ugly feeling of competition in my own heart towards women. And I have always hated that about myself and wanted to be like, how do I be a good female role model? How do I get other women to feel good in themselves? That was always very important to me. And yet it was always the thing that was hardest for me. You know, I couldn't manipulate women the same way that I can manipulate men. So I was very attracted to Jeunesse because I liked the female aspect of it. I liked feeling like I was going to help women. So I did a lot of weekend intensives with Jeunesse.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Allison started working with other women, putting on Jeunesse weekends all over the country.

[Alison Mack]

It's so confusing because, like, my mom came to the intensives, the Jeunesse intensives. She still says, so much of what I learned there has made my marriage better, has made it so that, like, I can have this relationship with my husband.

[Mindy Mack]

There was a lot of building empathy. Try on the other person. You'll be much more compassionate, you'll engage in a much more positive way if you can just have an experience of what it feels like to be that person. And it's great for marriage.

[Interviewer/Producer]

A lot of what Jeunesse preached was a sort of men are from Mars, women are from Venus ideology. At its best, it advocated having more empathy for what men were going through. Here's Nancy Salzman, Keith's second in command, talking about Jeunesse.

[Alison Mack]

Men have to grow up and they have to be responsible in the world.

[Mindy Mack]

And men are responsible for women, and.

[Alison Mack]

Women don't really get that that's the case.

[Interviewer/Producer]

But Jeunesse also had really strict ideas about what women were like and what men were like. One of those ideas was that women lacked discipline.

[Alison Mack]

Women are so indulgent of their bodies, so that's why women struggle with weight. So the best way to get through that issue is to restrict your calories, you know, so you're not just impulsively eating all the time or indulging your emotions all the time.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Back then, Alison thought she was part of a kick ass feminist group that was helping women introspect and be better. But a lot of Jeunesse's views were very retrograde. Not that she realized it at the time.

[Alison Mack]

As I got deeper into the Jeunesse curriculum, it was more and more and more reinforced that it's the woman's job to make the men feel emotionally safe and vulnerable. And whatever you can do to help them feel comfortable and safe is your job as a woman and all this stuff.

[Interviewer/Producer]

One of the interesting aspects of Jeunesse was that it preached non monogamy or a specific sort of non monogamy.

[Alison Mack]

There's this backdrop of the Jeunesse curriculum which is saying that like, monogamy is equivalent to ownership. And if you believe that you own this person in their relationship and they're only beholden to you, then you aren't actually loving that person, you're just possessing them and you're objectifying them.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

This is actually similar to some Marxist ideas about monogamy. Engels wrote a whole treatise on how traditional monogamy and marriage subjugates women. The feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir was also famously non monogamous. But that's not what was really going on in Jeunesse. In fact, the whole thing, it seems to me, was just a philosophical smokescreen, a lot of bullshit laying the groundwork to cover for Keith's sexual misbehavior. Because all the while Alison was living in Albany, going on walks with Keith, he was having relationships with multiple women. One of Keith's long term girlfriends was a woman named Pam Caffrides. Pam was slim with long brown hair and a slightly upturned nose. She got involved with Keith way back in the 90s.

[Alison Mack]

I didn't know Keith was sleeping with all these people. I didn't know Keith had had all these relationships. I didn't know anything until Pam let it slip once that she was in a relationship with him and that at the same time he was in a relationship with Karen under Reiner. And I was like, what?

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Now, Allison wasn't involved with Keith at this point sexually, but Pam and Karen's relationships with Keith were presented to Allyson and as a form of polyamory. It was exactly the kind of relationship.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Janess's ideology had set Allison up to accept.

[Alison Mack]

And I was like, whoa, okay.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Still, Keith's relationship with Pam was of singular importance.

[Alison Mack]

Pam was like old but beautiful still and so amenable. Like anything that Keith wanted, she was like, can I be happy to do? And she had a lot of money and so anything that Keith needed, she would have.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

But in 2013, Pam got sick. She was diagnosed with cancer and given.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Three years to live.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

This sent Keith into a tailspin.

[Alison Mack]

He didn't want her to die. And he didn't want to be alone. He didn't want to be without a female presence. So he made her the center of our world. For those three years.

[Interviewer/Producer]

He demanded that Alison and other NXIVM members travel with Pam to Boston for her cancer treatment.

[Alison Mack]

When Pam got sick, you know, there was a circling of the wagons and, like, I was required to go to Boston and stay with her while she was sick. But then, like, I would take the train into the city if I had an audition or a meeting or I would go teach an intensive or, like, I would kind of come, come and go. But the pivot point of our lives was Pam's illness. And Keith got more and more and more controlling as Pam got more and more and more ill. It was in tandem.

[Interviewer/Producer]

But the lengths Keith would go to to replace Pam and exert control would shock Even some of NXIVM's most loyal follow.

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[Interviewer/Producer]

So Pam's sickness had a profound impact on nxivm and on Allison.

[Alison Mack]

Her illness was a central focus in the community at that time, and different people had different responsibilities and roles. So in Tibetan Buddhism, there are different types of monks. There's like, hermit monks whose their sole purpose in life is to meditate and raise the consciousness of the people in the whole world. So they sit in the mountains and they just meditate, like, that's it. They never leave. And then there are monks who are, like the emissaries for different countries, and their job is to go out and, like, spread the word and, like, interact with people who are not Buddhist and things like that. And so Keith likened to the NXIVM.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Community to that Some people in the NXIVM community were homebody caretakers whose role was to care for others.

[Alison Mack]

And my role, Alison, because I was so, like, out in the world and was to spread the message and to, like, be in the world and, like, bring new people in and represent what NXIVIAN is in the public eye and because that was my personality and my constitution, and so that was, like, my role.

[Interviewer/Producer]

So Alison's role. Her purpose was to go out and recruit.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Remember, one of the things that NXIVM specialized in were small, intimate self growth seminars, usually held in their cozy seminar centers around the world, from Guadalajara to Vancouver to Portland, Oregon to Albany, New York. And they could be on many different topics. How to be a moral person in the world or how to be a good partner. But after the group became popular in Vancouver and a lot of actors began signing up for its seminars, Keith thought NXIVM should offer a self help course on acting and Alison should lead it.

[Alison Mack]

Keith had come up with this curriculum for actors and artists which was called the Source, which was all about taking acting exercises and exercises involving the arts and utilizing them to help people build more compassion in their lives.

[Interviewer/Producer]

The source was NXIVM's answer to the Stellar ADLIS studio or the Meisner technique. At different times, Keith offered leadership of the Source, which was a position of influence and respect to several different female actors in nxivm. But Alison was the one put in charge, much to the chagrin of others. This was how Keith used her ability as an actor to promote nxivm.

[Alison Mack]

I think it's part of what made me a good actor or at least made me able to survive in the industry as it is, which is incredibly cutthroat. I have a very fiery center that can be very like attack. I don't like confrontation, but if there's something I want, I'm very willing to go after it in a very aggressive way. And I call it the little dictator. When I was like five, playing with my brother and he wouldn't do what I wanted him to do, the dictator came out and I became very like, no, you'll do this. You know, like willful and firm. And that part of my personality came out with my slaves. And that is a part of myself that I have to contend with, you know, and that's where I went to prison for that.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Because there was somewhere else Allison would have to recruit women to, not just the Source or Jeunesse, another secret women's organization that Keith was setting up to cope with Pam's sickness. But first, Allison would have to take the next step in her relationship with Keith. It's 2015 and Alison is on a trip to Williamstown, Massachusetts to see a play. Williamstown is a picturesque little mountain town in the Berkshires, filled with tree lined streets and a quaint downtown. It's known for its theatrical play play series. Allison's here with a Mexican woman named Dani.

[Alison Mack]

Danny was one of my like, really, really good friends in Exian. She was really beautiful and really fashionable and stylish and really curious and interesting and sophisticated. And she had been to fashion school, and she liked to draw. And, like, there were all these crossovers in my things that I liked and things that she liked.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Dani's got brown hair, full lips, and dark eyes. She's always very well dressed, and lately she's taken to wearing a peculiar leather necklace, even on casual strolls like this one.

[Alison Mack]

We were walking together, and she said, are you happy with your life? And I said, yeah, like, actually, I'm feeling really good in my life. I was teaching the Source. I was, like, doing all these things. And she said, well, you know, are there any things that you feel like you would want to do, change, or want different? And I said, well, I struggle with my intimate relationships. Like, I think that there was some stuff that went on when I was a kid that, like, was inappropriate, but I can't really figure it out. And. And so it's hard for me to feel comfortable in sexual spaces. And she was like, have you talked to Keith about that? And I was like, that feels so inappropriate. I'm not going to talk to Keith about my sex life. Like, he's my teacher. You know, we own a business together, you know? And she was like, well, hasn't he helped you with everything else? And I was like, yeah. And she's like, well, why wouldn't he be able to help you with this? And I was like, okay, maybe you're right.

[Interviewer/Producer]

I want to pause for a minute. Alison told Danny that there was some stuff that happened when she was a kid that was inappropriate. And before we go any further, I need to tell you a little bit about this. It's very difficult to talk about, and Alison's still trying to understand it herself. I'll let her explain it in her own words.

[Alison Mack]

I experience different types of exploitation around myself and my sexuality in different occasions. Yeah. As I was growing up from a very young age, I had some stuff happening in a more personal space, not on set with people that I trusted. That was not cool. And also, I was on set in an environment in a world where women are always exploited.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Alison remembers one instance in particular.

[Alison Mack]

When I was 14, I was working on a TV show and a director was flirting with me. And the producers pulled me into the office with my mom and said that I was being inappropriate on set and that I needed to go, and if I wasn't in the classroom or working, I needed to be in my trailer. And now at the time, I totally internalized it. And I was like, oh, my God, I'm so bad and wrong. I had just gotten my period, y'.

[Interviewer/Producer]

All.

[Alison Mack]

Like, I was a kid.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Allison's mom remembers this, too.

[Mindy Mack]

Alison didn't understand what was happening because she wasn't savvy that way. And I think he had her sit on his lap or something like that. I mean, it was in front of the whole crew and everything. And, you know, it made her cry because she didn't ever want to do anything wrong. And so she felt like she had done something wrong in buying into what this director was doing. This is before me, too. Somebody should have pulled him aside and said, what you're doing is inappropriate. Leave her alone. She was the innocent.

[Interviewer/Producer]

When a child experiences sexually inappropriate behavior, these wires between sex and authority and power and autonomy all get crossed. It can be very difficult to untangle as an adult. It can lead victims to have difficulties in their intimate relationships, to sometimes be inappropriately sexual and also sexually naive, often in quick succession. Alison felt this.

[Alison Mack]

So I was not able to maintain a good relationship romantically. And I felt super detached from my sexuality to the point where it was like. People would tell me, like, oh, you're so sexy. Or I'd get hired to play these, like, sexy roles, and I'd just be like, what the. There was, like, this chasm of experience, you know, between my, I don't know, cardboard cutout.

[Mindy Mack]

That was.

[Alison Mack]

People were interacting with. Yeah, you're like. And then me. Yeah, exactly. And I was like, this feels there's something wrong. Like, this is not normal that I have so much shame around my sexuality, so much disconnect around my sexuality, so much fear around my sexuality. Like, what is that? I had kind of decided at that point there's something wrong with me, and I need to figure out what that is.

[Interviewer/Producer]

The conversation with Danny planted a seed for Alison. So when Alison returned to Albany, she went to Keith.

[Alison Mack]

And so that's when I approached Keith and I said, you know, I feel like I really struggle with my sexuality. I think that there were things that happened when I was a kid that weren't okay. I can't feel myself connecting to my sexuality. I feel ashamed of my body and my sexuality. Like, I. I don't understand how I can get around this. And he was like, well, I can help you with that. And I said, yeah, well, Danny told me that you might be able to. And he said, but in order for me to help you with that, we're going to have to be physically Intimate, because it's an experiential problem that you're having.

[Interviewer/Producer]

This might sound strange, but for Alison, it's somehow tracked with NXIVM logic. Logic she'd been knee deep in for nine years at this point.

[Alison Mack]

One of the things in nxivm, like, one of the things they always said was, like, you can have a theoretical understanding or you can have a visceral understanding. And a visceral understanding is true learning, and a theoretical understanding is just like knowledge. The example that they always said was, like, you can read a book about skiing, but that doesn't mean that when you get to the top of a mountain, you're going to know how to ski. You don't know how to ski until you get on skis and you go down a mountain. And so that was consistent. That logic fit with what he was saying. Right?

[Interviewer/Producer]

And now Keith is telling her that he can help her with a physical solution. So that night he came over to her apartment. It was winter, cold out. Keith walked into Alison's little living room again, he repeated the same thing.

[Alison Mack]

He said, we're gonna have to be physically intimate because it's an experiential problem that you're having. And so I can't just theoretically help you through it. Like, you have to have the experience of going through it. And I was like, okay, you know, I'll try that. And that was how the physical relationship started with us.

[Interviewer/Producer]

As it was happening, Alison thought, this is fucking weird.

[Alison Mack]

Like, this is very weird. But I was also like, he's gonna help me. He's my teacher and he's gonna help me. And that was sort of what was happening in my brain was I was like, he's gonna help me.

[Interviewer/Producer]

On some level, Allison felt that this was wrong, but she convinced herself to push through it. Because even during the very act, Keith was justifying it as therapeutic.

[Alison Mack]

He called it energy work. So when he was sleeping with you, he would say, I'm moving energy through your body, like tantric kind of a thing, you know?

[Interviewer/Producer]

Afterwards, he went over what had just happened with Alison.

[Alison Mack]

It's like going over the experience and capitulating what that was and what that meant and how that was working in my emotional and energy body. What was that like? Where did you feel that? How did you. What did you think it was like dissecting it, you know, like a dissection of the experience. Right. Which is linking certain ideas and concepts that he has that he wants to. The experience for me, right? So then the next time I have that Experience. And I feel that in my body. I think, oh, that's him pushing that energy through my body.

[Interviewer/Producer]

This is so sick, so insidious, justifying coercive sex as therapy. But what's even worse is that the curriculum of NXIVM had Alison beating herself up for even questioning this.

[Alison Mack]

In my head I'm going, this is weird. And then in my head I'm also saying, but that's just how dysfunctional you are, because this is the safest man that you could be with. And this is a person that just wants to take care and love you. And he doesn't even want anything from you. He just wants to make sure that you're okay. He wants to help you. So the fact that this feels weird, Allison, is just an indication of how dysfunctional you like. You're just really messed up and really broken.

[Interviewer/Producer]

After that night, Allison reached out to Danny, the woman she'd spoken to in Williamstown, who had suggested she go to Keith for help in the first place.

[Alison Mack]

And I was like, I don't know, it just feels really weird. And Danny was like, well, why? What does it mean? And she would em me about the discomfort that I was having in my sexual relationship with him.

[Interviewer/Producer]

About a week after Keith and Alison had sex for the first time, Alison met up with Keith for a walk.

[Alison Mack]

And he said, I have a new curriculum that I'm developing that I think you might be interested in. And I was like, okay, cool. I'm always up for new curriculum, you know? And he was like, it's really intense. It's only for women, and it's only for, like a very select group of women. And I was like, oh, okay. And he was like, have you noticed anything different about anybody in our community recently? Any of the women in our community recently? And I noticed that Danny was wearing this weird fucking necklace and Nikki had lost a fuck ton of weight.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Nikki is Nikki Klein, a Canadian actress. She's got blonde hair, big blue doe eyes, and a sort of round moon shaped face. She's best known for playing Callie Henderson on the TV show Battlestar Galactica. She's another NXIVM follower, another actress, and as Alison had noticed, had recently lost.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

A lot of weight.

[Alison Mack]

And he was like, yeah, they're a part of this curriculum. And I was like, huh, okay. And he was like, it's very serious and it's a life. It takes a lifetime, lifelong commitment. And it's really basically designed to make it. You push through all of your greatest fears so that you can become the strongest and most empowered version of yourself. So because usually people will only work on whatever it is that they're most comfortable working on. They never actually get to the root of their biggest fear. Whereas with this, you are bound to somebody whose job it is to push you into your greatest fear so that you will actually grow through that and not just dance around it. And I was like, that sounds great. I want to work through my greatest fears. I want to be the strongest version of myself. I want to be pushed as hard as I can be pushed. And so he was like, okay, well, it's a lifetime commitment and it's a master slave dynamic because you're going to learn how to be completely humble and completely subversive because that was the other thing. Women are self absorbed and, and they don't consider other people. And so this is going to put you in a position where you're 100% considering your master all the time.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Alison's narcissism, her performative self centeredness. Keith says this will finally be the thing to rid her of all that.

[Alison Mack]

He's like, so if you're interested, if you want to do that, like, the first thing that you need to do is offer me collateral so that I know that you won't break your commitment to us and to this. And I was like, okay, so like, I am going to keep my word to you. And if I don't, the collateral is you can have my car for a weekend or like you collateralize at the bank, you know what I mean? You give something in exchange for your word. So that concept was already in my head. I had already collateralized my word for different things and intensives and stuff.

[Interviewer/Producer]

So Allison prepares collateral.

[Alison Mack]

And then it became like, well, the collateral is another way to elicit your greatest attachments. Like, what are you most afraid of destroying? What are you most afraid of losing? Oh, that points to your most, your greatest attachments, you know, and ultimately, like, you want to have no attachments.

[Interviewer/Producer]

This is a very common idea across religion and philosophy. In Buddhism, it's known as non attachment, the practice of letting go of our attachment to material possessions, relationships, even emotions. Ascetics have long practiced renouncing material possessions. Think of monks and yogis. It's a similar kind of thing.

[Alison Mack]

So I came up with collateral that was like really intense.

[Interviewer/Producer]

It's to do with her family.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Allison doesn't want to disclose what exactly, but she hands over her collateral to Keith, and at his command, she begins calling him Master.

[Interviewer/Producer]

A short while later, Alison is sitting in Danny's living room In Clifton Park.

[Alison Mack]

Danny had this, like, cute little townhouse where everybody lived.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Alison's with Danny and three other women. Loretta, the woman who drove her to the volleyball game the first time she met Keith, Nikki and a woman named Cammie. They're here under Keith's instruction.

[Alison Mack]

He was like, you guys all need to meet and decide what this is going to be like. You need to decide how this is going to work and what this is going to look like.

[Interviewer/Producer]

Because Keith has an idea for an all female group, one where these women are going to be accountable to each other, move beyond their petty feminine traits, like being inconsistent or dramatic or performative or any of the other things that NXIVM's gendered programs taught women were these women would get deep.

[Alison Mack]

And ultimately we come down to this idea that, like, we all wanted to grow. We all wanted to get through our biggest fears and we all wanted to help other women do that. Like, that was like, the focus of it.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

This meeting is the creation of dos. It's short for Dominus Obsequious Sororium, a Latin phrase that loosely translates to lord over the obedient female companions. They're creating it in part because Pam is dying and this is Keith's plan to make up for losing her, his way of exerting control. It's an all female sorority run by Keith that will give him dozens more Pams, obedient, beautiful, loving women who will be completely subservient to Keith. But now Keith says these women have to go out and recruit other slaves.

[Mindy Mack]

I felt so angry with myself because Katherine, she worked and she saved her kid. She saved her kid and I didn't.

[Alison Mack]

It was this, like, insidious little pool of grooming and manipulation and brainwashing away from your own sense of what's right and what's not right. They burst in, they put me on the floor, face down, and they start.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Asking me, who's in there with me?

[Alison Mack]

And I called Keith's name.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

Tune in next week for an all new episode of Alison after nxivm. Or you can listen ahead to the full series now by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts or by subscribing to the CBC True Crime channel on YouTube links in the show description. You've been listening to Uncover Allison after NXIVM from CBC and Campside Media. It's hosted by me, Natalie Robomed. Our executive producers are myself and Vanessa Gregoriadis at Campside and Stephen Belber. Our senior producer is Lily Houston Smith. And our Associate producer is Emma Siminoff, sound design, mix and Engineering by Mark McAdam and Ewin Lai Trimuin. Thank you to Colin Campbell at cbc. Our story editor is Derek John and our senior producer is Kate Evans. Our coordinating producer is Emily Connell. Our executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tonya Springer is the Senior manager. Arif Nurani is the director. If you enjoyed Alison after nxivm, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.

[Alison Mack]

Thanks for listening.

[Narrator (Natalie Robomed)]

If you liked this show, Uncover Escaping nxivm is a powerful story of the beginning of the unraveling of Keith Ranieri's cult. Listen to Escaping NXIV at the link in the show notes or by scrolling to see season one of Uncover wherever you're listening right now. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.