Sarah was in the controversial cult NXIVM cult for 12 years (Picture: Trevor Brady Photography) Sarah Edmondson is a normal working mum. She spends her days rushing around after her sons Troy, 11, and seven-year-old Ace, taking them to baseball games and working on her podcast with her husband. However, a trace of her former life remains in the form of a pale white line on her left hip, beneath her bikini line.  It appeared on Sarah’s body as part of an ‘initiation’ into a secret women’s circle, where she was blindfolded, told to strip naked and branded with the logo of the controversial NXIVM cult. Led there under false pretences, she had been entrenched within the organisation (pronounced “Nexium”) for 12 years while it consumed her career, relationships and – crucially – her thought patterns. Sarah’s ordeal began when she was 28. Working as an actor, she was at a film festival when she met a member of NXIVM, who told her that the group – founded by Keith Raniere and Nancy Salzman – helped members reach their goals while living ethically and promoting world peace, through workshops on success and self-improvement. Sarah fell into the cult in her twenties. She didn’t realise how twisted it would become. (Credit: Marc Labrie Photography) Instantly, the idea appealed.  ‘I was wanting something more meaningful. Beer commercials and vampire TV shows weren’t going to fill my cup,’ she tells Metro over Zoom from her home in Atlanta, Georgia.  ‘Somehow, they made me feel like I was part of a very special club that was going to change the world.’  Sarah had no idea that the organisation behind closed doors was a secretive and dangerous cult that engaged in abuse, coercion and criminal activity – and one that would leave her physically scarred. On the first day of the five-day training session, held in a dingy conference room at a Holiday Inn in Vancouver, it amounted to little more than a few videos, where she was inducted into the special NXIVM handshake and told how to become successful in her career and personal life. ‘It was boring and tacky. I was wary about who they were and their credentials. Also they were wearing sashes of different colours [to denote ranks] which I thought was cheesy,’ Sarah remembers. Sarah with Mark Vicente, ex- NXIVM member and fellow whistleblower. (Picture: Supplied) She also found it ‘weird’ how the group worshipped its leader Keith, calling him ‘Vanguard’ and constantly referring to his genius.  But as the days wore on, Sarah was won over by the self-improvement aspects of the training and by day five admits she was a ‘zealot’.  ‘I was inspired by what the group promised to be and was excited to meet so many people in personal growth’, she explains.  With a price tag of $2,160 for Sarah and her then-boyfriend, it was more than a month’s rent at the time, but she threw herself in, implementing what she had learned, firing her agent and getting new representation.  ‘Everything that had been a sticking point in my life was flipped back as an opportunity for growth. I was told I had never pushed through my limitations, and that was true.’ Sarah began to feel more positive and motivated, and for the first time in years weaned herself off sleeping pills. Feeling encouraged, she enrolled in further training and started to see more acting jobs roll in.  When the cult organisers realised she was good at sales and recruitment, they asked Sarah to work for them. For every three people she brought in, she got a cut of the fee. Although NXIVM’s headquarters were in Albany, New York, Sarah established her own branch in Vancouver (Picture: Amy Luke/Getty Images) And it was good money – sometimes up to $20,000 a month, though much of it she ploughed back into further training (at a cost of up to $15,000 a course), unaware it was a pyramid scheme.  ‘I really thought I was helping people,’ Sarah remembers. ‘I have always been the kind of person to share what I found positive. I already ran a small women’s group of actors who helped each other meet their goals. This felt like a natural next step.’  Over the years, she excelled at NXIVM, whose headquarters were in Albany, New York, and established her own branch – a thriving centre in Vancouver. By 2009 it was bustling, with 80 students visiting a night.  Internationally, NXIVM was also booming, boasting celebrities such as Smallville actor Allison Mack and Nicki Clyne, from Battlestar Galactica, among its roster, and even hosting the Dalai Lama at one of its events. However, behind the scenes, disturbing practices were emerging. Some women in the inner circles were put on special diets or were criticised for eating, being told they were ‘indulgent’ if they were not under 100lb (just over seven stone). They were expected to practise daily acts of denial, forgoing sugar and caffeine and told to take cold showers as a penance.  Keith Raniere was the leader of NXIVM (Picture: Keith Raniere Conversations) Nancy Salzman was the co-founder of the organisation (Picture: AP) Sarah later realised it was grooming for Keith, who liked skinny women.  ‘Every time I came to Albany, I noticed a new health fad; raw food, then raw vegan, then juice fasts, then keto,’ she recalls. Elite members like her were also expected to be available on their phone at all times, practising relentless ‘readiness drills’.  ‘These started as small things that ramped up to extreme control. It got to the point that you had to keep your phone with you, ready to answer at any hour. At first it was exciting to be part of a network of communication across the world. Eventually, it was exhausting.’  Sarah was gaslit into believing everything the cult leaders said was true (PIcture: Trevor Brady Photography) Looking back, Sarah admits there were inklings that things didn’t add up from the beginning. Early on her stepmother had challenged her membership, saying that she’d read on the internet that NXIVM was a cult.  ‘I just thought she didn’t understand and didn’t know why she would trust the internet over my experience. Plus, we had been trained in how to deal with that question. ‘I’d reply – what is bad that is happening here? Personal development? Working on goals? Where is the cult? Now I know that cults use deception to hook people in and exploit them.  ‘It’s like with domestic violence – you are love bombed with flowers and romance. The abuse doesn’t come out until later.’  Although Sarah says she couldn’t understand the group worship of leader Keith, who claimed to be celibate, she convinced herself everything was okay, as she felt happy working with a group of trusted women. Sarah and her husband Nippy met soon after she joined the cult (Picture: Supplied) In 2013 she married senior NXIVM member Anthony Ames, known as Nippy, a former college quarterback and model, who worked as a teacher and a leader within the organisation, unaware of its darker side. ‘We were kind of a power couple and became the face of the organisation, even though we weren’t inside it,’ says Sarah. Four years later, in 2017, she took a vow of secrecy and was invited into an exclusive women’s group where she was told she could take her commitment to the next level.  ‘I was excited to be part of a sisterhood with higher ranking women that I respected,’ she explains.   As part of her initiation, Sarah was taken to Lauren Salzman’s home, where she met the sisters and was blindfolded. She was then taken to another address, where she and four other women (still blindfolded), were told to strip naked. It was there that the group were branded with with the infamous NXIVM logo. They were instructed to begin the process by saying: ‘Master, it would be an honour if you would brand me.’ Sarah admits that she didn’t feel she had a choice, as months before, Lauren, who she considered her best friend, had collected collateral: explicit naked pictures and confessional videos of her ‘s*** talking her loved ones’.  Sarah was ‘branded’ with NXIVM’s symbol (Picture: Supplied) On an examination table, she reluctantly helped hold down a woman, smelling her burning flesh through the medical mask she’d been given, before being branded herself. Sarah confesses she felt pumped to be part of the group at first, but as the adrenaline wore off she started to ask herself what she’d gotten into – but she couldn’t speak to Nippy about her fears, as she’d taken a vow of silence. It wasn’t until weeks later that she realised the mark – which she was told was a symbol of the four elements – bore Keith Raniere’s initials. Sarah was repulsed. The final straw came two months later when she discovered that Keith wasn’t in fact celibate, but was having sex with multiple women within the organisation, and he had plans to sleep with her too, as part of the secret women’s group – something she never did. ‘That was the line in my sand,’ she remembers. After telling Nippy about all she’d seen and been through, the couple left the cult and quickly become whistleblowers, working with the FBI and sharing their story in the press, using Sarah’s branding as evidence. ‘Nippy was enraged. He was so shocked that anyone could say branding was part of personal development,’ she remembers. ‘I was so frightened about being sued, it was a brutal time.’ Sarah and Nippy had a baby boy in 2015 (Picture: Supplied) After a six-week trial that ended on June 19, 2019, a jury convicted Keith Raniere of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking; attempted sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy; forced labour conspiracy; and wire fraud conspiracy, and was sentenced to 120 years in prison. The court heard how he had groomed members, coerced them into sex and forced them to have abortions. Sarah later found that the name NXIVM, which members had been told meant ‘place of learning’, was in fact a reference to the debt bondage system in the time of Julius Caesar. Meanwhile Nancy and Lauren both pleaded guilty to racketeering charges. Nancy was sentenced to three years in prison and Lauren was sentenced to probation.  Since leaving NXIVM, Sarah and Nippy have rebuilt their lives with their two children, but it took years before Sarah was ready to remove her branding. ‘I felt like I needed proof. People weren’t really able to understand what had happened to me until I showed them the brand – and then they were rightfully horrified,’ she remembers.  Sarah and Nippy now run a podcast together. (Pic: Chelsea Patricia Photography) Now living what Sarah describes as a ‘pretty normal all-American lifestyle full of work and sports activities’, she and Nippy want others to be aware of the tactics used to control them – be that within a cult or in everyday life. Together, they have written A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion, examining the forces of coercive control, love-bombing, gaslighting and manipulation that can affect all of us. They also run a podcast by the same name. ‘I never would have joined had I known about Keith and his harem of spiritual wives,’ admits Sarah. ‘We were told he was the smartest man in the world, but he was a sex addicted con artist. The whole thing was a fraud.’  A Little Bit Culty: Navigating Cults, Control and Coercion, by Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames, is available now