Salzman, 66, once president of Nxivm, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in Brooklyn federal court, more than two years after she pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge. Prosecutors have said Salzman played a role in trying to intimidate and investigate Raniere’s perceived critics, which helped create a climate of fear in the organization. Her lawyers noted that she was the first of Raniere’s defendants to plead guilty and helped facilitate the guilty pleas of others.
Raniere was convicted of fraud, child sexual exploitation, sex trafficking and other charges in 2019 and was sentenced to life in prison. Salzman and his daughter, Lauren, were also charged and found guilty of conspiring with models shortly before Raniere’s trial.
“The conduct underlying the defendant’s conviction guarantees a substantial conviction,” U.S. Attorney Tanya Hajjar wrote in a pre-sentence court case.
Salzman’s lawyers, however, are requesting that he receive two years of confinement at home and not have jail time. They point out her serious health problems, her decision to plead guilty prematurely, and the fact that she is her elderly mother’s caregiver.
“His decision and genuine remorse for his wrongful conduct had ancillary advantages for the Court and the judiciary in general, because, after his conviction, others, most notably his daughter Lauren, left. realizing that it was possible to resign Raniere, despite many still remaining loyal to him, “Salzman’s lawyers write in his request.
Human potential
Salzman is a former nurse who specialized in a type of therapy called neurolinguistic programming when she met Raniere. Together, they started what they called a “school of human potential” and developed a curriculum “designed to help people achieve their life goals,” according to a court filed by their daughter’s lawyers. Nxivm members called Salzman “prefect” and Raniere “avant-garde.”
The classes, called “Executive Success Programs,” were costly, multi-day lessons, and prosecutors say Salzman pushed Nxivm members to take classes and incur debts. But prosecutors also allege that the classes Salzman helped Raniere develop “were designed to maintain power and control” over Nxivm members.
Salzman’s 20-year relationship with Raniere was intimate and entrepreneurial, her lawyers said, and since she severed ties with Raniere she realized that what she saw in her was a worker who was “capable of doing things that it was not something she would allow him to receive credit for. “
In a letter filed by Salzman’s attorneys at his court hearing, an anonymous person who filed Salzman said he believes Salzman was one of Raniere’s first victims.
“I used it to promote myself and made it work all the time to keep the company and the community together,” an excerpt from the letter printed on a defense document reads. “He kept her busy all the time and hid from her what she was doing while working hard.”
Allegations of abuse at DOS were the focus of prosecutors ’case against Raniere. DOS was set up as a women’s empowerment group to select women in Nxivm, and once the women agreed to join, they were pressured to give “guarantees” to ensure they kept the group’s details secret. Warranties may include explicit photos of themselves and even letters or statements that make false or embarrassing statements that, if published, could be harmful.
Once in the group, women were known as “slaves” who were forced to fulfill all the wishes of their “master.” Unbeknownst to many women, Raniere was the group’s “great teacher,” and women were often asked to have sex with him, to send him explicit photos, and some were even marked with a symbol that it included his initials.
Salzman’s attorneys point out that even prosecutors concede that Salzman “was not aware of his existence” until the details of DOS were publicly revealed.
Salzman’s lawyers say he accepts responsibility for “allowing the terrible crimes Raniere committed” even when he was unaware that crimes were being committed.
In fact, she herself feels the weight of responsibility for not becoming more aware of the enormity of what ‘Vanguard’ Raniere was doing at the head of Nxivm, an entity she had co-founded with him and which was the work of his life, “his lawyers said in a lawsuit.
The first to invoke
Salzman became the first defendant in the case to accept that many of the things Raniere had taught him were false and that the man he had thought and taught others was “infallible,” he was actually deeply defective and vicious for the basics, “Salzman’s lawyers wrote.
According to her lawyers, weighing heavily on Salzman was the fact that she introduced her daughter to Raniere and pushed her to take the classes that helped her design and become more involved in Nxivm and her community.
“Nancy deeply believes that the pain her daughter has been exposed to is entirely her fault and regrets her role in that daily debacle of her life,” Salzman’s lawyers wrote.