Allison Mack Joined NXIVM 'To Become a Great Actress Again'
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Update, December 29, 2022: A year and a half after her sentencing, new information is still emerging about Allison Mack's role in the NXIVM cult. In an episode of the podcast Infamous: Inside America's Biggest Scandals, journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis unearthed a 2017 interview with Mack in which the actress revealed why she joined the cult. “I moved to Albany [NXIVM headquarters] to fill that emptiness and find the soul of myself again, if that makes sense, as it had fizzled,” she explained. “I asked Keith [Raniere] if he would help me become a great actress again because I felt like I was a fraud.” Mack also denied any wrongdoing, saying that Raniere was "not the head of a harem," and telling Grigoriadis, "I'm not recruiting young, nubile women to be his sex slaves,. You know, it's The Crucible, it's the McCarthy trials, it's just throwing accusations and spreading like wildfire." The actress' friends, she reveals, feared that she was "brainwashed" and involved with a cult.
Update, June 30, 2021: Sentencing guidelines called for a sentence of 14 to 17 years for Allison Mack, who received a sentence of 3 years in prison, 3 years of supervised release after serving her prison term, plus a fine of $20,000 dollars.
Since her 2018 arrest for her role in the brutal NXIVM cult, Smallville actress Allison Mack’s name has appeared in countless headlines, TV shows, and podcasts. She, however, remained silent despite the press, never publicly expressing remorse for her role in recruiting and enforcing punishment in the organization’s secret sex slave society, DOS. Three years later, just days before her sentencing, she released a statement apologizing for the first time.
“It is now of paramount importance to me to say, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry,” she wrote in a statement obtained by Variety. “I threw myself into the teachings of Keith Raniere with everything I had. I believed, whole-heartedly, that his mentorship was leading me to a better, more enlightened version of myself. I devoted my loyalty, my resources, and, ultimately, my life to him. This was the biggest mistake and greatest regret of my life.”
Allison Mack was arrested in April 2018 for crimes including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and forced labor conspiracy related to the NXIVM case. She pleaded guilty in April 2019 to the least salacious of those—racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges—in order to avoid trial, and has been on home-confinement, working for a catering business and obtaining an associate’s degree, ever since. Some of her co-conspirators including Seagram heiress Claire Bronfman and mastermind Keith Raniere have already been sentenced, while others such as Nancy and Lauren Salzman still await their sentences. The case has received much media attention following HBO’s docuseries on the cult called The Vow, as well as STARZ documentary Seduced: Inside The NXIVM Cult produced by survivor India Oxenberg.
Prior to her sentencing, Allison Mack submitted her own apology to the judge along with several letters from her loved ones testifying to her personal growth since her 2018 arrest and separation from Keith Raniere. Her lawyers asked for leniency in her sentence and no jail time due to her cooperation and providing the court with crucial evidence against Raniere. Working under Raniere within the organization, Mack enforced physical and sexual abuse, starvation, and branding of her DOS “slaves.”
“I have experienced overwhelming shame as I have worked to accept and understand all that went on and all that I chose,” she wrote in her letter to the judge. “There were times I was not sure I would make it through this alive, the pain was so crippling. That said, I know that coming out the other side, I am a better, kinder woman because of this. I know I cannot heal the pain my betrayal has caused to you and your loved ones, but I can promise you that your hurt has not gone unseen and acknowledging this has changed me to my core.”
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