This is an item of interest to us – an audio played in court on May 30 – where Keith “line-bends” Dani’s mother, Adriana, into wanting her own daughter to be punished.
The audio features Keith slowly convincing Dani’s mother to do what he wants – in this case confine her daughter in a room in solitary confinement for what wound up being almost two years.
The audio was played while Dani was on the witness stand under direct examination and she was asked questions about it.
In the audio, Keith doesn’t give direct orders. He doesn’t say what he wants. Instead, Keith tells Adriana [the mother] that Daniela had a unique and rare position [with him and his world-saving mission, Nxivm] but she did a lot of damage that can never be reversed. She was given great, magnificent responsibilities and extraordinary privileges which she took, but did not do what was necessary to uphold them. Daniela damaged other people too in a dishonorable way.
Dani is being shunned by the Nxivm community and is not seeing Keith. She is undergoing rigorous punishment and discipline – like not being allowed outside without her parents’ consent and having to write reports of what she’s doing every 15 minutes but, somehow, she is failing in everything she tries to do to atone for her grievous ethical breach.
Her parents do not know how grave her crime is, they only know it is a full and complete ethical breach. Keith is too noble to tell them specifics. He is too wise, too concerned, too caring to reveal the secret breach she committed. They only know that it was great and grave.
At this time, the rambunctious and rebellious Dani asked to train for the triathlon. [She is not allowed out without permission. She is in her early 20s.] Conversely, Dani, frustrated about being shunned and always punished, asked her mother to go back to Mexico to lead a simple life, without being punished every waking hour.
Dani’s parents were devotees of the great Raniere and so they knew enough to trust his judgment over their willful and capricious daughter. He was not only the smartest man in the world, but he was also the most ethical.
In the audio, which captures Keith at his best, he doesn’t give a direct order. He doesn’t say directly what he wants. He works in an extremely indirect and metaphoric way.
Keith said that Daniela is using going back to Mexico as a threat because everybody wants her to stay.
Keith said [paraphrasing], “If I were Dani’s parents, if Dani wanted to go to Mexico, I would not be making it easy for her to run away from her responsibilities. No matter what it took, I would let her know it’s not right. I would be doing my part to give her hard lessons. As parents, if she were to go back to Mexico, I would ask her to choose between doing the right thing and losing her parents. Sometimes, it has to be that strict. If Daniela goes to Mexico, unless there are severe sanctions, it would mean everything’s okay with what she has done.”
He said, “I know this is scary. I know this is hard, but you’ll feel better about it. You can’t, don’t, don’t get into Daniela’s games. Dani needs to feel that when she goes in the wrong direction and it is wrong, she shouldn’t be treated like a little baby. Sometimes you have to be very hard on people.”
His metaphor is also quite interesting. It was this: If you killed a child, you were in your car and you hit a child and killed it, would you want to go on a triathlon? Wouldn’t you want to make things right with that child’s parents?
Keith said the same thing about Dani’s desire to go to Mexico – if you kill a child, would you want to go on a vacation? Would you ask for a vacation, when you killed a child?
Moira Penza finally asked Dani, “Had you killed a child?”
Dani said, “No.”
Penza: “What did you do?”
Daniela said, “I kissed Ben Meyers”.
In the audio, Keith never tells her mother what ethical breach Dani committed. He doesn’t tell the truth. He uses this metaphor of killing a child.
He tells Dani’s mother that Dani is being manipulative. {Not him of course].
And Keith seemed to slowly convince the mother that it was best that Dani not leave the Albany area [not train for the triathlon either] and, instead, go into a room until she cured her [unknown to the parents] ethical breach, a breach that was in fact nothing more than that Dani had refused to be in Keith’s harem and that, horrifyingly, she had kissed another man. Kissed and, as she testified in court, let him touch with his hands her breasts and vagina.
At the end of the audio, Keith wished Daniela’s mother, “Good luck” and soon enough she supported the imprisonment of her daughter for almost two years.