By Dianne Lipson
Dani testified all day on May 29.
In a previous post, “Dani: Raniere’s Insane Jealousy and Obsessive Behavior Over Ben Myers Touching Her” I described her morning testimony, which largely consisted of her explaining some of the thousands of emails she and Keith exchanged during the years she was being punished following her 2006 brief affair with Nxivm member Ben Myers.
In the afternoon, Assistant US Attorney Moira Penza went back to the emails.
Unlike Keith, who was only pretending to be a monk, Dani was actually living a monk-like existence – after her brief fling with Ben.
[They had seven encounters. The big thing they hit on much of the day was Keith incessant demand for details about her relationship with Ben. Again and again: Did he put his hands between your legs? Did you orgasm? One question after another. And every time she answered, he asked 10 more questions. Have you ever had an orgasm with Ben? By the way Dani answered Keith – no -she never had an orgasm with Ben.
Keith told her that she should think that this monk-like existence is the best and happiest alternative and the remedy for her breach. She should be happy about it. It was the way she could undo the wrong of having an affair with Ben Myers.
Keith also ordered her to take down her Facebook. Which she did.
During her long period of being shunned by the Nxivm community – at Keith’s instructions, Dani wanted to go to a Nxivm party. She made a Mexican bread which was going to be served there. She thought if she didn’t go, people might think it was funny because she was the one who made the bread.
She was not allowed to do anything without Keith’s permission.
She tied to get Keith’s permission to attend but Keith did not answer her multiple emails. She did end up going to the party. Keith made this into bad thing, a horrible thing. She did not have his permission.
Keith wanted her completely isolated.
She was also not allowed to go to volleyball. But Keith lied to her brother, Fluffy, implying that Daniela could go if she wanted. Keith said it was Dani who chose not to go.
All through the morning and well into the afternoon, Dani was extremely composed, very believable- up to about 3 pm. That’s when she started to become emotional. [More on that later.]
Keith told Dani, “What you feel for Ben isn’t real. You just like the attention you get from him. It’s almost like worshiping.“
Keith talked about the fact that Dani was no longer pure. Although she lost her virginity to Keith [which was good] She lost her “moral virginity” by caring for somebody else [which was horrible].
Fluffy never said he knew about Keith having sex with all three of his sisters – Dani, Cami and Mariana. But he acted very strange around Keith, very resentful. Dani suspected that Fluffy knew, but Dani said she never told him.
Before she had been shunned, Dani had been documenting Keith’s life at Flintlock. Somehow some of the documentation about Keith was lost. Keith accused Dani. He said, “because of what you did we lost 18 months of documentation about me that will never be recoverable.”
She never got paid for her work.
She was 23 in 2008. She had been in ESP since she was 16. Dani did not want to be a monk.
At one point Dani wrote Keith an email where she said, “I no longer see the same way. I’m thinking about creating a life for myself. I would like to sustain myself, but I can’t because of these restraints [Keith imposed]. I don’t want to keep doing this. My life has no value. I’m caught in an impossible cycle. I want to work. I want to make money; become self-sufficient. I want to go to school. I don’t miss you [Keith] anymore. I almost feel I want to break away…. I’m the wrong person for this. I’m not ethical enough. I want to go back to before I met you.”
She also wrote, “I don’t want to have a romantic relationship with you or anybody else.”
In retrospect, Daniela said this email showed she was having a moment of lucidity.
“I knew what I wanted. And it wasn’t Keith. I was moving on,” she said.
Keith’s response to this was “you need to repair and restore your feeling about me. This is the biggest mistake of your life. You’re too comfortable. … You need more pain.”
At one point, Keith wrote her, “I need your WHOLE life. This is the only way to me.”
[He is the truth, the light and the way].
He told her, “I do not have the strength to carry you anymore. This is a last ditch effort to help you.”
Daniela felt that with this email that Keith cut her legs off. He would not let her go.
Keith said in this email that he [the Vanguard] might be leaving [Nxivm].
Dani was wondering how he could ask for her whole life and yet he was contemplating leaving. It was confusing.
At one point, Daniela was on a fast and she broke the fast and told Keith. In his reply email, Keith called her “Tubby.”
She had to look it up. She promised not to eat anymore. He always wanted to know,“how much did you eat? What is your weight?” At one point she was taking Benadryl for a rash.
Keith said her rash was caused by her not healing her ethical breach.
Even though she was not allowed to see Keith, he asked for naked pictures. She gave them. This was progress Keith said in his emails. He wanted photos of her vagina. She emailed them to him. But he wasn’t satisfied. He wanted a picture of both her face and her vagina in the same picture. Dani would not do that because it would be identifiable as her.
Keith said he wanted these pictures because it’s about her being totally vulnerable. He said, “I wish you loved me enough to give me all the pictures.”
Keith said he needed her to be vulnerable in all areas of her life, vulnerable and humble and give up.
Dani was now being disciplined to the point where she could not leave her parents’ house without permission. The family felt it was their responsibility to “help her.”
Her computer, her music were taken away. Daniella was writing letters to Keith constantly.
She had “reality checks” where she had to write down what she was doing every 15 minutes. This Keith said was to keep her life centered.
“Every waking hour was about my ethical breach,” Dani testified.
Her parents did not know Dani had sex with Keith. Dani didn’t think they would believe her. She was hurt. She felt trapped. She was not acting normal. The constant harassment, being constantly told she was bad made her angry. She kept telling her parents “You don’t understand.”
Her parents were not on her side. Her parents were on Keith’s side. Keith told her parents about the money she had stolen [and returned before anyone noticed] years ago. [People thought this was her breach – stealing. Keith made her look like a thief to the community and hid from them the fact that he was an insane jealous maniac and control freak.]
Dani knew it was not the money she stole [and returned]. That hadn’t been brought up by Keith in his emails on how to cure her breach. This was about Ben and her and also her weight, which was still a focus. She was supposed to be 120 pounds.
Her parents supported Keith over their own daughter. {They may qualify as the world’s worst parents. He had sex with all three of their daughters, one was underage. All three had abortions. He put them on abusive diets. He tried to trick Dani and Mariana to have sex with him at the same time one Christmas Eve and caused both to cry. He had been punishing Dani for years because she dared to have honest affection for another man. True, the sisters did not tell their parents. Yet the parents, devoid of any instinct to know enough to protect their children, no intuition of the monster that preyed on their children, adored Keith, worshiped him. They felt he was truly helping their daughters.]
So Dani was too heavy. So what did her parents do to help Keith help Dani? They locked the refrigerator.
[Dani had no money so she could not buy food.]
Once her parents locked her out of the house. Dani hardly remembers what she did. They told her she needed a consequence for some bad action [bad, according to Keith]. It was winter and they locked her out. She walked around. She came back. They still didn’t want her back in. This went on for a couple of days that they locked her out of the house.
Dani kept saying on the witness stand, “It’s my parents.”
Now she became emotional, when she said this – “it’s my parents” and you could see the people in the courtroom becoming visibly moved.
Dani went on. She was cold, hungry, starving. She went to a laundromat to keep warm. A man thought she was homeless and gave her $5. She brought some food. She bought the cheapest food she could to make it last longer.
And Dani slept outside. She kept moving. She was afraid the police would pick her up and she would be put in jail. [She was illegally in the US – thanks to the help Keith and Kathy Russell provided.]
Yes, her parents locked her out of the house in the winter in the Albany area.
When they finally let her back in, she said she was grateful and sorry. She tried to say all the right things, but it was never sufficient. When she said she was sorry, her mom said her apology was not sincere.
Her mom said “there’s an apology and then there’s a sincere apology.”
One day it was arranged that she would apologize to Keith in person. Daniela was allowed to walk to 8 Hale – to his sex lair. Keith opened the door. She hadn’t seen him in years. She looked and looked at Keith and yet she just couldn’t apologize. She said nothing to him.
Eventually he closed the door and she left.
This confirmed to her family that she was horrible. This confirmed to everyone that she needed to be punished more. All her documents, her ID, all of her papers were taken. She had no documents. She was illegal in the US.
Dani told her parents she wanted to go back to Mexico and live a simple life.
But to do that, she needed someone to drive her. She couldn’t use a bus or a plane because of her status and no money. No one was willing to help her. She needed to be punished for her ethical breach. It was the one way to save her. Thank goodness for Keith, her parents felt. He will find a way to help Dani.
This set the stage for Dani’s confinement in her room.
25 commentsOn Dani’s Parents Join Keith in Giving Her More Insane, Brutal Punishment – ‘It’s My Parents’, Dani Cries!
“They may qualify as the world’s worst parents.”
That says it all right there .
There are worse parents. Much worse.
This is absolutely heartbreaking and horrific to read about. I hope Dani has been able to start a wonderful new life for herself in Mexico. She should also sue Keith and NXIVM (if that’s possible) for years of pay owed to her, and then some. What a monster Keith is. I hope he is put away for the rest of his life. Her parents aren’t much better.
How horrible…what is wrong with them? Absolutely infuriating to read this.
1. Her parents are absolutely disgusting people. I hope they are reading this and feel extreme shame and guilt. In their lifetimes they can probably never cure what they did to her. Horrible people. Parents are there to protect us. They did the opposite. 2. There are people at NXIVM that knew about this and did nothing. They are equally as bad if not worse. Mindless drones. They would have been the Nazis who stood by and did nothing if they lived then. Many people knew how bad Keith was and they did NOTHING. I hope for these people too, that they rot with their conscience. If they still have one. 3. Keith needs to get destroyed in jail – obliterated. I hope this story comes out of how he’s a pedophile, rapist coward who bullied women. And a couple of the bigger guys mess him up badly.
Since this blog gets read by many who were in NXIVM and high up at that time, all of Dani’s words should make each of you feel ashamed. You recruited people into this “cult” and turned a blind eye to the evil happening. Each of you owes an apology to anyone you recruited. Willful blindness is not a good excuse. I’m ashamed I even took a course.
What Keith Raniere was doing to Dani was trying to break her down.
For almost two years Raniere was trying to break this young woman down.
AND DANI HAD A SPINE OF STEEL.
On the other hand whatever Raniere did to Allison Mack was child’s play.
How was Raniere torturing Allison Mack?
By not praising her every 15 minutes so Allison Mack’s fragile ego would not get bruised?
Was Allison Mack locked in a room for almost two years?
No.
Mack was free to come and go from Clifton Park.
Mack had access to her computer and cellphone and traveled around the world.
But Allison Mack is so fragile that if she is not subjected to constant praise then she is being tortured in her own self-centered egotistical world.
How dare someone not love Allison Mack 24/7.
After reading how Dani was abused I don’t want to hear about Allison Mack’s non-existent abuse.
Allison Mack chose of her own free will to be a sister-wife in a polygamous sex cult.
Allison Mack is a dimwit who swallowed every piece of idiocy that Raniere spouted. She would have done *ANYTHING* he told her to do, up to and including murder. She is Raniere’s version of Susan Atkins, the perfect cultist.
After reading how Dani was abused, I do not want to hear about Allison Mack’s nonexistent abuse.
Allison Mack chose her own will to be sister-wife in a polygamous sexual cult.
you want to see what you want to see shadow. You have not understood even how the cults work, after so many articles that Frank wrote about the way people submitted to the KAR trial as someone superior to themselves, you still think that these people in general especially women in the KAR’s intimate circle were indoctrinated mentally and emotionally, in reality they all had cages and mental straps made to fit each one, I wondered how it was possible that Daniela, Camilla and Mariana the three sisters were manipulated by KAR individually but each one being aware of the relationship of KAR with each of the other sisters, without forcing them to force them, without using the blackmail that was used in DOS, without threatening them with hurting them or any other option that we could say is an abuse or physical, I want to tell where the walls of her cell and the bars that imprison her are really, if even the door of her room was always open and was taken care of by his own family THAT even though they were also indoctrinated as all the followers of KAR were ignorant that their three daughters had sex with their beloved vanguard, tell me that I would not let Daniela not explode and tell the whole truth to everyone without caring consequences of the scandal, if that got his freedom you would not do it you or anyone who just wants to escape from his cage where he is held prisoner, tell me shadow and read the testimony of Daniella on how she came out on at least two occasions of the room without no one would notice and then return back to his prison, you can compare his behavior to a rebellious adolescent who does not obey his parents and does what he wants and then tell me if that is not the very core of the control that KAR exercises in all his followers.
“you want to see what you want to see shadow. You have not understood even how the cults work,” In college I ran into two cults.
I see the truth.
In college I encountered two cults. The Scientologists and the Moonies.
In each case it took me about one minute to figure out their scams.
No more pity for the likes of Allison Mack who is so empty of purpose that she can not figure out what a cult is.
I can understand the Mexican sisters who were still quite young and perhaps undereducated.
But Allison Mack was an adult when she joined and comes from California, a state infamous for its cults and fruits and nuts.
And Allison Mack is one of the nuttiest nuts ever produced by the Great State of California.
You see the Truth??? YOU?
Don’t make me laugh old man…
You probably never been to college and spend 90% of your time lying or changing the Truth…and you see the Truth?
You know Nothing , Nothing at all YET you go the long way about Allison.
All this despite that there is no mention of Allison by Dani and that up until now, we know Allison isn’t behind ANYTHING YOU SAID SHE WAS…
You are just a pathetic old loser who prefer to see HIS Truth than admitting is an obsessed moron why no clue about what happened in the cult but yet a ridiculous hate for a girl that he knows Nothing about…
A hate so violent that no matter how much the (real) Truth is rubbed in his face, he’ll refuse and pretend that she was the devil.
Like it or not, you are now a real minority over here, people read the court report and see that Allison isn’t what YOU created.
Only some rare morons still Believe that she is the devil, the mastermind or anything that you pretend she is.
And that, old man, is the Truth! the sad Truth for you.
Get help sicko…
If people didn’t know what happened to Dani, People probably Don’t know what happened to Allison either.
And yet some people in the cult said that she was definately treated horribly…She might not have been confined (might, nobody know) but she was in an awful shape when she was arrested…He was Breaking Allison to the same level as Dani or the other victims.
You pathetic hate against her is even more pathetic when you try so hard to pretend you care about anyone else but your hate.
Everything is an excuse against Allison (for you).
Moron!
And Barbara Bouchey not only extols Keith’s virtues to all who will listen, especially while she stands online to get into the courtroom, but she has repeatedly maintained there are “good” parts to NXIVM and she has implied she wants to be the one to bring that to the world.
ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?
After hearing how this woman was tortured with the full complicty of her parents? In Nancy’s house, with Lauren as gate keeper and evety freaking NXIVM member who lived in the atea knew full well that Dani was being kept against her will and physically and psychologically tortured.
Yet some of you cry for compassion for Allison and others.
You revictimize the victim doing that.
I would rather they were thrown to the dogs for what they did to Dani.
The plea bargains were too gracious.
Barbara, don’t you dare offer up a defense to keep NXIVM going or extol sadist Keith’s virtues.
He’s scum, trash.
If you lie down with dogs you get fleas.
I lived there during much of that time. I did not know she was being held against her will. I was told she was reclusive and shy, and healing an ethical breach of stealing. I knew she was Keith’s book report writer. I did not know she was being confined. I just knew she wasn’t around a lot after a period of time. Breaks my heart into a thousand pieces. I wish I would have known. Once the shunning started in the community, something I was adamantly against, i started making plans to get away. I’m so sad :-(. If I had known, I don’t know what I would have done to help but it would have no been ok for me to know she was confined like this. I liked her mother. She barely spoke a lick of English but she seemed kind. Her dad was charming and sweet. Why would they have been ok with this? Kids get grounded for a week maybe. But adults? For years? That’s not right!
What are you going to do about Barb? You won’t even give up your name or the cult you were in. You’re an electronic version of a paper tiger. LOL
I hope Dani has cut her parents out of her life for good after how they betrayed her.
This is totally insane. There are clue phrases in this testimony that portrayed for me how Raniere’s teachings transcended in other people. For instance, I used to work for four years with people who were inducted by NXIVM. One phrase that drew my attention is “She tried to say all the right things, but it was never sufficient”. It’s true, their manipulative techniques make people experience continuosly low self-esteem. They go on and on and on challenging subordinates to recognize that all they do is rubbish, that flaws are everywhere and only they are able to see them, so subordinates need them for being “better” nevertheless all they will ever do is still rubbish, it is never sufficient. In work, for example, this negative circularity ends tying people to their jobs as they think they will never find something better. In may experience for instance, it took me 2 years and paying an external therapist to get rid of such strings and find something new in a safe different enviroment. At NXIVM or ESP, high ranks abuse of their little or great power to coerce, to blackmail. Dani’s testimony of course is a huge radical one and it depicts how far can they reach in abusive relationships. These people are disseminated around the world and many of them are still following Raniere’s evil rule of life in the underground. Very dangerous.
Her parents did not know Dani had sex with Keith. Dani didn’t think they would believe her. She was hurt. She felt trapped. She was not acting normal. The constant harassment, being constantly told she was bad made her angry. She kept telling her parents “You don’t understand.”
It is difficult to believe that Dani’s parents had no inkling or suspicion that KAR was having sex with their daughters. There must have been some changes in theiir daughters’ moods and behaviour that their parents chose to ignore.
If the parents genuinely didn’t know what was going on, I’m glad that Dani didn’t tell them. I fear that Dani’s fears would have become reality and that her parents would not have believed her, choosing to believe the Almighty Vanguard over her. I doubt that her sisters would have leapt to her defence either. To not be believed by her own parents would have been the worst act of betrayal. You can never forgive that.
Pyriel,
I agree with you that Dani’s parents should have had or did have a suspicion that something was wrong.
Keep in mind at some point while everything was going on Dani’s mother joined another cult like group.
I have the feeling that Dani’s parents are a lost cause and should never had any children.
Wow. Her parents should be brought up on child abuse/neglect. They deserve a cell next to that POS. What a nightmare. The only silver lining is this supports that she was held against her will.
Did her parents receive some kind of payment for their daughters? Kinda sounds like they pimped their children out.
Dani’s dad if I remember correctly was an mining executive and her siblings all went to private school. I do not believe though that her parents were even close to having Salinas or Bronfman money.
Dani went through a living hell. Daniela is an incredible strong individual.
Does anyone know the name of the cult that Dani’s mother joined after leaving NXIVM?
Thanks!
I can’t find the mention of it in any article. I know it’s mentioned somewhere.
Book of Knowledge
Thank you. It’s an odd Turkish cult run by a woman.
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