Smallville actress Kristin Kreuk is under fire for allegedly luring women into a sex cult as “sex slaves.”
Kreuk, 35, confirmed she had been associated with the group but the accusations against her as a “slave” recruiter are completely untrue.
“When I was about 23, I took an Executive Success Programs/NXIVM ‘intensive,’ what I understood to be a self-help/personal growth course that helped me handle my previous shyness, which is why I continued with the program,” Kreuk wrote in a statement on Twitter. “I left about five years ago and had minimal contact with those who were still involved.”
— Kristin Kreuk (@MsKristinKreuk) March 29, 2018
“The accusations that I was in the “inner circle” or recruited women as “sex slaves” are blatantly false,” she continued, claiming she never saw or experienced any illegal activities while in the group.
Nxivm, pronounced Nexium, is advertised as self-improvement group but has been labeled as a cult due to its alleged strange rituals. It reportedly uses celebrities as recruiters, The New York Post reports.
“Allison was used, as was Kristin, as a lure to bring in other women because of their celebrity status,” said Frank Parlato, the group’s former publicist who originally broke the story about the “sex cult.”
The women involved in Nxivm were “forced to wear fake cow udders over their breasts while people called them derogatory names,” investigators told The AP.
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The AP reports that the followers of the cult are branded with the initials of its leader, Keith Raniere, who was arrested in Mexico Monday and charged with sex trafficking.
“During the branding ceremonies, slaves were required to be fully naked, and the master would order one slave to film while the other held down the slave being branded,” the complaint says.
A report by the New York Times said that it was considered an honor to be branded with the letters KR.
“Each woman was told to undress and lie on a massage table, while three others restrained her legs and shoulders. According to one of them, their ‘master,’ a top Nxivm official named Lauren Salzman, instructed them to say: ‘Master, please brand me, it would be an honor.’”
“A female doctor proceeded to use a cauterizing device to sear a two-inch-square symbol below each woman’s hip, a procedure that took 20 to 30 minutes,” the article continued, “For hours, muffled screams and the smell of burning tissue filled the room.”
The group allegedly started as much more civil and has since become more and more violent.
“Kreuk was also in the inner circle, but branding was a later addition to Raniere’s abuse of women,” Parlato said.
“Some 3,700 people have flocked” to Nxivm, according to Forbes. “Prompted by a potent word-of-mouth network, they include Sheila Johnson, co-founder of Black Entertainment Television; Antonia C. Novello, a former U.S. surgeon general; Stephen Cooper, acting chief executive of Enron; the Seagram fortune’s Edgar Bronfman Sr. and two of his daughters; and Ana Cristina Fox, daughter of the Mexican president.”
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Another Smallville actress has also been accused of being a part of Nxivm and staying connected to the cult as it furthered itself in abusive rituals. Allison Mack, 34, became a part of the “company” in 2005 or 2006 and worked her way up from a “slave” to a “slave master,” Parlato said.
Mack was reportedly with Raniere in Mexico when he was taken into custody and is expected to be arrested next, he said.
“I am deeply disturbed and embarrassed to have been associated with NXIVM,” Kreuk wrote on Twitter. “I hope that the investigation leads to justice for all of those affected.
