This post goes with @migratorypatterns, who has been doing a great job exposing this cult

https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/In-Raniere-s-shadows-3341644.php

Women who have had sex with Keith Raniere say it was billed as a spiritual experience, a transfer of his godlike energy.

One said Raniere told her their union would make her see a blue light.

Another recalled him explaining a threesome would cure the pain of childhood molestation — that she could then start to view sex as just sex.

Today, two women who had sex with him when they were just girls, the sister of a third underage partner of Raniere's, and some of Raniere's former adult lovers have come forward to tell their stories.

One woman, whose name is being withheld for this story, was just a girl in 1990, a 12-year-old with feathered bangs and long blond hair who was trying to adjust to a new life following her parents' divorce and a move from the country to Clifton Park. Her mother was a saleswoman for Raniere's members-only buying club, Consumers' Buyline Inc., and was trying to raise two daughters.

She recalled her mother saying Raniere was "an Einstein." Consumers' Buyline, which Raniere ran through the first half of the 1990s after he left a job as a computer programmer for the state Division of Parole, was the kind of place where managers kept late hours and the culture was informal. Raniere would call staff meetings to deliver sometimes tearful, emotional messages. He frequently showed a film about a man who plants seeds in the desert to build a forest. He suggested he was that type of noble cultivator of people.

The girl was a seedling, a kid who thought of boys as schoolyard playmates. She hadn't even started a seventh-grader's crush on New Kids on the Block.

When Raniere offered free tutoring, the girl's mother jumped at the opportunity. At the same time, that girl has recalled today, one of Raniere's longtime girlfriends, Pamela Cafritz, hired her to walk a dog twice a day.

Cafritz encouraged the girl's visits to the townhouse she and Raniere shared with other women. And Raniere showered the girl with attention. She said he urged her to talk about her life. He gave her a necklace — a heart with a stone in it.

The girl had braces and bright eyes, liked to climb trees and play with Matchbox cars. Raniere was almost 30 and dressed in business suits. He was spearheading a company that boasted of selling at least 250,000 memberships nationwide.

He was supposed to teach her Latin and algebra. Instead, she said, he told her she hugged like a child, her arms wrapped around him but her hips pushed away.

He taught her to hug the way adults do, pelvis-to-pelvis.

He took her virginity.

The girl liked being able to hang out with Raniere and the women around him. She thought sex was just part of fitting in

"They told me I was smart and took an interest in me; they let me spend every afternoon at their house," she said. "It was exciting to be somewhere where people wanted me. I was perfect picking — insecure at the time... To have someone that mature and that well thought of to be interested in me, it was flattering. I was young, inexperienced, overwhelmed, out of my league."

Even though the girl was several years shy of the legal age for sexual consent in New York, which is 17, Raniere continued to have sex with her not only in his townhouse but in empty offices, in an elevator and in a broom closet at the plaza that housed Consumers' Buyline, she said.

But after several months and about 60 sexual encounters with Raniere, she said, her emotions had changed. She started skipping school and running away from home. He lived nearby, and as her uncertainty about the relationship grew, she didn't feel safe at home.

It wasn't until 1993, about two years after their relationship ended, that the woman reported the sex with Raniere to police.

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In 1984, when Raniere was living in apartments in Troy, he met Gina Melita, a 15-year-old from Cohoes who performed with him in an RPI theater group that included members of the community.

Melita was a precocious girl with an independent streak and a longing to find meaning. Before she met Raniere, she had explored being a born-again Christian. She kept journals and wrote poetry and thought school was holding her back from discovering what life was about.

She and Raniere, then 24, went to arcades together, where he liked to play Pac-Man and a game called Vanguard, in which destroying enemies increases the fuel in the player's tank. He described himself as a genius and judo champion. She thought it was cool to be with an older, smart guy who might help her graduate from high school early. He took her virginity in a dark room, her T-shirt left flecked with blood. She told him it was painful, yet a short time later, he wanted more. During their four-month relationship, he hounded the 135-pound girl to lose weight and urged her to keep their relationship secret from her mother.

She and Raniere, then 24, went to arcades together, where he liked to play Pac-Man and a game called Vanguard, in which destroying enemies increases the fuel in the player's tank. He described himself as a genius and judo champion. She thought it was cool to be with an older, smart guy who might help her graduate from high school early. He took her virginity in a dark room, her T-shirt left flecked with blood. She told him it was painful, yet a short time later, he wanted more. During their four-month relationship, he hounded the 135-pound girl to lose weight and urged her to keep their relationship secret from her mother.

After a while, she said she told Raniere she wanted to break off the relationship but he told her they should keep having sex. Even as a 15-year-old, she said, she realized Raniere didn't care about her.

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Before Melita left Raniere's life, though, she had introduced him to a 15-year old friend from Cohoes High School named Gina Hutchinson, another girl from a broken family in the working-class town.

Hutchinson isn't here to tell her story. She died in 2002, when she was 33. She went to a Buddhist monastery in Woodstock and for reasons that remain unknown, shot herself in the head.

Her sister, Heidi Hutchinson, is left to speak for her.

It was the Christmas season of 1984 and around the time of Gina's 16th birthday when Heidi discovered Gina was having sex with Raniere. Heidi was home from college and Raniere crawled through the window of her sister's bedroom

After Gina, who was raised as a Mormon, revealed the details of their relationship, Heidi confronted Raniere. Heidi said Raniere told her she did not understand her sister's soul was much older than her biological age. He explained Gina was a Buddhist goddess meant to be with him.

Raniere convinced Gina to drop out of school and be tutored by him, her sister recalled. The Hutchinson family assumed they would marry

Gina, a good listener who would introduce herself to strangers at bus stops and who had a burning curiosity about spiritual things, worked at Consumers' Buyline, continuing at least a friendship with Raniere for many years. Heidi doesn't know exactly how long her sister's sexual relationship with Raniere lasted.

Gina studied religion and anthropology at the University at Albany and found mentors among her male professors, which her sister said Raniere didn't like. And in those times Gina tried to break away, Heidi said, one of the women in Raniere's inner circle would call repeatedly, urging her to return.

When Gina killed herself, she was found with a Buddha medal in her pocket. Only a few days earlier, she had sent a friend a card that said "Never stop believing." ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

These are just 3 girls, who have spoken out, one being told by her sister

How many more were there?