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Personal life

NXIVM controversy

In November 2017, Kreuk and her Smallville co-star Allison Mack were linked to a multi-level marketing organization known as NXIVM, which was founded by Keith Raniere. Upon accusations that Mack and Raniere engaged in sex trafficking, as well as branding female members of the organization, it was reported that both Mack and Kreuk were within NXIVM's "inner circle" and actively recruiting women into the group. In March 2018, following Raniere's arrest, Kreuk disclosed on her Twitter account that she had joined the group in 2005, but had left it by 2012, and was not in contact with any members of the group, nor had she witnessed any illegal activities.[35]

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^{March 29, 2018 11:57 pm | Updated: March 30, 2018 12:04 am}

Kristin Kreuk breaks silence on involvement in ‘Smallville’ co-star’s alleged sex trafficking cult

By Brent Furdyk ETCanada.com

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Due to the notoriety of the cult (also known as DOS), it emerged that Mack joined the group alongside fellow Smallville star Kristin Kreuk, who took to Twitter on Thursday to break her silence about her involvement in the group, refuting rumours that she was involved in recruiting young women in the cult.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/DZfV3jMW0AAwyyP.jpg @ https://imgoat.com

https://tweetsave.com/mskristinkreuk/status/979486603184955393

According to Kreuk — now starring in CBC drama “Burden of Truth” — she was 23 when she took what she understood to be a “self-help/personal growth course that helped me handle my previous shyness, which is why I continued with the program.”

However, the Vancouver-born actress maintains that she “left about five years ago and had minimal contact with those were were still involved,” and says that “accusations that I was in the ‘inner circle’ or recruited women as ‘sex slaves’ are blatantly false.”

For the record, my dear friend [@]MsKristinKreuk was never in the inner circle of #NXIVM. She never recruited sex slaves and has been out since 2013 before shit got weird. She is a lovely person who should not be dragged into this mess. Thank you. #Cult #DOS #freedom #TRUTH

https://tweetsave.com/sarahjedmondson/status/979488130163269638

In fact, Kreuk says she is “horrified and disgusted by what has come out about DOS.”

Kreuk’s version of events has been backed up by actress Sarah Edmonson, who co-starred with Kreuk in Vancouver-shot teen drama Edgemont, who wrote on Twitter that Kreuk “never recruited sex slaves and has been out since 2013 before s**t got weird. She is a lovely person who should not be dragged into this mess.”

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Actress Allison Mack and NXIVM founder Keith Raniere indicted

Mack was previously identified as a co-conspirator in sex-slave club

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^{By Brendan J. Lyons Updated 6:15 pm, Friday, April 20, 2018}

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~~"Allison Mack recruited women to join what was purported to be a female mentorship group that was, in fact, created and led by Keith Raniere,” said U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue of the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn. “The victims were then exploited, both sexually and for their labor, to the defendants’ benefit. This office and our law enforcement partners are committed to prosecuting predators who victimize others through sex trafficking and forced labor.”

Mack, an actress who is best known for her role in the television series "Smallville," which ended in 2015, had initially been listed in a federal criminal complaint as Raniere's unidentified co-conspirator.

According to people familiar with NXIVM, Mack joined the organization about a decade ago, around the same time several other young actresses were pulled into its ranks, including Nicki Clyne, Grace Park and Kristin Kreuk, who recruited Mack. Kreuk left NXIVM several years ago — before the slave-sex club was allegedly formed by Raniere — and has denounced the practices made public recently.

Mack was with Raniere in Mexico when he was taken into custody on March 25 by Mexican federal police officers, who arrested Raniere at the request of U.S. law enforcement authorities.~~

[3]:

How to lose $100 million

From September 2010: A bizarre guru, menacing detectives, a mess of lawsuits: a tale of two heiresses of the legendary Bronfman dynasty

^{by Nicholas Köhler Sep 9, 2010}

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~~It can be difficult to disentangle the facts of Raniere’s life from the sometimes cringeinducing hagiography presented on NXIVM websites. The son of a New York City adman and a mother who taught ballroom dancing, he grew up in the bedroom community of Suffern, N.Y. His father, James, has said he exhibited early athletic gifts, tying the New York high school record for the 100-yard dash and becoming East Coast judo champ at 12. Home movies show a young boy in martial-arts garb dominating his opponents with quiet, unfussy aggression. He arrived in the Albany area at 16 or so—about the time his mother died—to attend the well-regarded Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.~~

~~More than one NXIVM apostate or former business associate has wound up in court, and then filed for bankruptcy. When Toni Natalie, a Raniere intimate, left NXIVM in 1999, Raniere sent her passages of John Milton’s Paradise Lost-a seminal NXIVM text— with notations comparing himself to Jesus and Natalie to Lucifer. “I was the chosen one,” she says. “I was brought in to bear the child that would change the world.” Natalie later filed for bankruptcy—Raniere was a creditor, in an ordeal that lasted over eight years and which a judge ultimately complained “smacks of a jilted fellow’s attempt at revenge, with many attempts at tripping her up along the way.” Critics say NXIVM’s workshops, which cost US$6,000 for a 16-day “intensive,” use 14-hour days, warm rooms and protein-poor meals to push newcomers into a psychologically pliable state. They point to the handful of people who have suffered breakdowns while pursuing the NXIVM curriculum, including an Alaskan who in 2003 paddled a canoe to the centre of a lake and drowned herself. “I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off,” she wrote before her death. Yet even former Nexians with good reason to distance themselves from the group say such reports fail to reflect how effective Raniere’s program can be in raising self-esteem and erasing anxieties, and stress that good, intelligent people often stay with the program. Says a former member who admits she spent US$90,000 on workshops over 10 years: “I will never regret it.”

Yet, in an eerie echo of Consumers’ Buyline, high-ranking Nexians can earn over US$100,000 a year enrolling new recruits, former members say. Those high rollers increasingly live outside Albany, where bad press has led to the group’s decline in numberes there. Focus has now shifted to NXIVM’s outposts in Mexico and in Vancouver, where it has made inroads recruiting TV actors, including Smallville cast members Allison Mack and Kristin Kreuk, and Battlestar Galáctica’s Nicki Clyne. Vancouver boasts 133 active members. NXIVM’s success there is puzzling given the amount of negative reporting on the group available online.

Former Nexians, meanwhile, say Raniere has become increasingly eccentric. Five years ago, he invited a Mexican family to Albany, where they worked as videographers and documented his every move—whether he was pronouncing on some aspect of his philosophy or merely playing volleyball. A more professional crew of Nexian filmmakers has since taken over these duties. He is also said to encourage his lovers to remain thin, going so far as to prescribe foods; fat, he tells his intimates, disturbs his subtle energies.

It was chiefly his philandering that, 14 months ago, led to the mass defection of nine well-placed NXIVM members. One of those, Bouchey, is a one-time Raniere intimate who, as a former executive, is the highest-ranking Nexian to ever leave. For Raniere, hers is likely an unhappy departure. It was her deposition that contained the allegations he gambled away US$65 million of the Bronfmans’ money trading commodities—a loss so deep, according to the Bouchey deposition, that the sisters at one point had to borrow money against a trust they do not receive until Edgar’s death. Speaking to the Albany Times Union, Robert Crockett, one of the sisters’ attorneys, demurred, saying the two women, and not Raniere, made the commodities investments. Clare and Sara, meanwhile, are suing Yuri Plyam, Raniere’s former broker and their partner in the L.A. development project, for embezzling money (Plyam, in turn, has countersued).

Raniere does not appear to live lavishly. His home, a blue-beige townhouse in suburban Albany, is modest. He does not drive and apostates say he owns no fancy cars. He does not travel outside upstate New York or wear expensive suits. In the house next door lives Gaelen, a three-year-old boy whose upbringing he is said to oversee. Sources say that under his direction five nannies, each with a different mother tongue, arrive one after the other to care for the boy, who eats a diet of nuts and berries and is allowed no contact with other children.~~