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The Current Transcript for July 11, 2019

Host: Katie Simpson

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: Did you ever tell him your age?

VOICE 2: I told the recruiter. I've mentioned it in front of him, yes.

VOICE 1: You're 14 years old.

VOICE 2: Yeah. He knew very well my age.

KATIE SIMPSON: He is Jeffrey Epstein, the registered sex offender who was secretly given a lenient punishment for exploiting girls. A deal critics say was cut because of his vast wealth and connections to powerful Americans. With new charges that he abused dozens of women and girls, we'll speak to the investigative editor of the newspaper that first shed light on these latest allegations. That's up first. Then.

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VOICE 1: A huge rock is in the middle of the freezer blocking it and it's pouring over the top. So unless they get someone with a nuclear bomb in there, they're not going to fix it.

VOICE 2: The army in there, they'll blow it out of there.

KS: A landslide has trapped thousands of salmon in BC's Fraser River Canyon preventing the fish from making it to their spawning ground. Puzzled officials aren't quite sure how to help but they may bring in helicopters to fly the fish to safety. We'll talk options with the incident commander of this unusual and urgent operation in half an hour. After that.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I couldn't sleep. I was so anxious. I mean, I pictured him like sending people to like assassinate me.

KS: A Canadian woman trapped in what she says was a cult shares her harrowing escape. We'll have part four of the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM. I'm Katie Simpson and this is the summer edition of The Current.

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Jeffrey Epstein case suggests a 'panoply of different powerful men covering for each other': Molly Jong-Fast

Guests: Casey Frank, Molly Jong-Fast

KS: A warning to our listeners out there that this first story begins with some disturbing details of an alleged sexual assault.

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JENNIFER ARAOZ: "Take your underwear off and get on top..." and I said I didn't want to. And he, you know, very forcefully kind of brought me into the table and I just did what I was... what he told me to do. I was really scared. I didn't necessarily think that he was going to rape me.

INTERVIEWER: Did he hold you there?

JENNIFER ARAOZ: Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: No question in your mind, he knew you did not want that to happen.

JENNIFER ARAOZ: Oh yeah.

KS: That's Jennifer Araoz on NBC's Today show yesterday alleging that multi-millionaire Jeffrey Epstein raped her when she was 15 years old. She is the latest woman to come forward with allegations of sexual assault against a powerful financier with connections to Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and U.S. President Donald Trump. Epstein is now charged with running a sex trafficking operation that allegedly lured girls as young as 14 to his mansions in New York and Florida. It's not the first time Epstein has faced allegations along these lines. And the case has raised new questions about a controversial plea deal he received back in 2008. For more I'm joined by Casey Frank the senior editor of investigations at the Miami Herald and we've reached him in Miami. Good morning.

CASEY FRANK: Good morning.

KS: I want to read you a quote that you've said about this investigation. You've said of Jeffrey Epstein saying it was quote "like lifting the sewer lid off." What do you mean by that?

CASEY FRANK: What I mean by that is that much of the aberrant, alleged aberrant behaviour of Mr. Epstein remained under wraps for more than a decade. It did so because he was able to hire a very powerful team of attorneys who are able to manipulate the justice system and dictate the terms of a non-prosecution agreement executed by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of South, of Florida. Mr. Alex Acosta and many of the actual details of what Mr. Epstein did only came out when Julie Brown, our investigative reporter, actually reached out to some of those victims and let them tell their stories.

KS: And the incredible work by your reporter Julie K. Brown, for those who may have not read that the investigative three part series, what did it find with respect to Mr. Epstein?

CASEY FRANK: Well what it found that he was essentially running a sexual pyramid scheme and that he would have recruiters go out to malls and shopping centres and parties and recruit young girls from the wrong side of the tracks to come to his waterfront mansion in Palm Beach and start ostensibly for the purpose of giving him massages. Those massages would turn in to acts of rape. He would then pay those girls to entice... Before each other young victim that they could entice to come to his mansion and the number of victims grew and grew and grew. What we actually discovered though was the full degree to which Mr. Epstein's lawyers apply pressure on the victims and the U.S. Attorney's Office to not only give him a lenient sentence but to keep the details of that agreement secret from the young women, which is a violation of something called the Crime Victims Rights Act which says victims of crime have the right to be consulted on any sort of plea deals, have the right to go to a court hearing when there is a plea in such a case and to raise objections if they choose to do so. The young girls in this case did not have the opportunity to do that. In fact, many of them only learned of the plea and the light sentence months later when they hired a lawyer to go to court.

KS: You used the word pressure. Not only pressure in in terms of dealing with the victims here but we know that there has been some pressure campaigns when it comes to journalists who've been investigating in and around this. And we've heard stories of, potential stories that were going to be run but there were killed by editors at various publications. What do you think made the story in your paper different?

CASEY FRANK: Well, the Miami Herald is not a Palm Beach paper. We're not sort of ingrained in the Society of Palm Beach and so there is really nobody locally who could apply any leverage on us not to run a story. And that's not to say I think that was done to any newspapers in the state of Florida. A number of publications did some very fine work prior to Julie Brown's on the case of Jeffrey Epstein, including The Daily Beast which reported extensively. But it is true that Mr. Epstein travelled in very high society circles and is my understanding that he was able to arm twist an editor or to add magazines to either kill or watered down stories that might have exposed some of his activities earlier on.

KS: The U.S. Secretary of Labour Alexander Acosta, who is part of obviously Donald Trump's cabinet here, he's facing a lot of criticism right now because of that secret plea deal that he did offer. What is the root of that criticism?

CASEY FRANK: Well the root is the fact that he served only 13 months in jail and during that 13 months was allowed to leave the jail for 10 hours a day, be picked up by his valet, taken to a downtown West Palm Beach office and entertained guests while local sheriff's deputies on his payroll guarded the door, essentially. But I think the thing that has earned him the most criticism is the secrecy that he allowed to be imposed on any sort of information about this about this plea deal. And we have examined e-mails, went back and forth between the various members of the Epstein legal team and members of Mr. Acosta's staff in the U.S. Attorney's Office, it's quite clear that the Epstein attorneys dictated the terms not only of the plea but insisted, demanded that the U.S. Attorney's Office not contact the victims prior to the case being disposed of in court.

KS: You know, people are really asking the question you know, how was that able to happen and how was Epstein able to sort of escape any sort of serious consequences? You described the conditions under which, you know that "sweetheart deal" that he was able to get. Is there any sort of explanation as to how this was all allowed to happen?

CASEY FRANK: Well I would say this; at his press conference yesterday Mr. Acosta said that these are hard cases to make and that may well be true. I'm not a prosecutor and ever have been one. And he also, I believe, said that he did not necessarily have great witnesses and that the times were different. I was alive in 2007-2008 when this happened. My recollection is they weren't that different. But if the facts are that the victims were deposed by Mr. Epstein's legal team and they were put through a brutal wringer. Their social media accounts were combed for any sort of embarrassing information, dumb things that kids sometimes post and any sort of problems in their past. And honestly, in depositions those kids were ripped to shreds by very capable, experienced adult attorneys. And Mr. Acosta, I think, has been criticized for not sort of standing up for those children a little bit more. Now Mr. Acosta has also said that his own legal team was victimized by private investigators who were hired by the Epstein legal team. They dug into the past looking for peccadilloes and things that they could use as leverage to get the prosecutors to ease up. They also applied pressure at the Washington level above Mr. Acosta's head to try to get the local prosecutors to ease up. So all kinds of levers were pressed in order to try to get Mr. Epstein a break, and honestly it worked. And I think what it maybe showed is that a defendant with unlimited resources has a better chance and perhaps the typical defendant that's sitting in a jail waiting for trial.

KS: There's certainly the story certainly is not over Mr. Frank. Thank you very much for your time today.

CASEY FRANK: Thank you.

KS: Casey Frank is the editor of investigations at the Miami Herald and we reached him in Miami. Alex Acosta has received a lot of criticism as you've just heard for how he handled the Jeffrey Epstein case. He's now the labour secretary in the Trump administration. But back in 2008 he was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida. Here he is explaining at a press conference yesterday why he decided to cut a deal that many have condemned as overly generous.

SOUNDCLIP

ALEXANDER ACOSTA: These cases, as I said, are hard. They require a prosecutor to ask whether a plea that guarantees jail time and guarantees registration to ask whether that plea vs. going to trial. How do you weigh those two if going to trial is viewed as the roll of the dice? The goal here was straightforward. Put Epstein behind bars, ensured he registered as a sexual offender, provide victims with the means to seek restitution and protect the public by putting them on notice that a sexual predator was in their midst.

KS: There were a lot of Americans watching that press conference and how Alex Acosta's answers go over could determine whether President Trump keeps him in his job or kicks him out. Molly Jong-Fast has been thinking and writing about what the Jeffrey Epstein scandal says about power, privilege and justice in America. She's a contributor to the Daily Beast and The Bulwark. And we've reached her in New York City. Good morning.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Good morning.

KS: What do you think of the press conference yesterday? What do you make of that?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: I mean, it was amazing because it was 53 minutes and he never apologized to the victims. Acosta never... he never said... and in fact, what was sort of amazing was he blamed them, in a certain way, for the lack of prosecution. He continu... He sort of said, "Well, they weren't so forthcoming and they were young." You know, and it was just a sort of insane Trumpian spectacle.

KS: You know he made this argument that, you know, he negotiated a plea deal because it would be guaranteed jail time, whereas going to trial could be a roll of the dice, risky. Do you think Americans are going be satisfied with that argument?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: No. But I don't know that that press conference was really for Americans. I think that press conference was for one person, and it was for Donald Trump. And it was a sort of "trying to save my job" the way Kavanaugh's press conference was a kind of "trying to save his job" press conference. I don't know if it was enough, because Epstein... you know, Trump is not... is a very low-information voter, so to speak. So he doesn't... he generally makes his decisions on how people look on camera, and whether or not they look presidential, or they look, you know, like people he wants to represent them. And one of the things when you watched Acosta was, even though he went on for a long time, and he was, he didn't ever apologize, he was a little bit aggressive, he didn't do the things, he didn't show compassion the way a normal person would. I don't think he had that the kind of rage that Trump likes his people to have. If you looked at that Kavanaugh, you know, Kavanaugh had that, did that testimony to sort of convince Trump to stick with him, and he got angry, and he yelled, and he cried and Trump loved that. And I thought that Acosta seemed more measured, and I'm not sure that Trump is going to stick with him.

KS: You know you mentioned Kavanaugh, and that of course was Brett Kavanaugh, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, and those very controversial hearings, and him defending his behaviour. Jeffrey Epstein's wealth and his political connections, you know, when you take a look at this deal he was able to get in 2008. How did that all play together?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: In some ways Epstein is a great metaphor for the problems that America has with #MeToo. We want to hold these powerful men accountable, but the system is set up in such a way that it's very hard to do that. And I mean if you think about it, we have a man in the White House who has 16 allegations of sexual assault. We are not a country that has been great at holding powerful men accountable. Even if there has been a lot of media that said that, we haven't ultimately been able to do it. And Epstein is a great example of that. You know, I think he got a pass. I think, some of this, I believe... He hired powerful lawyers who went and just did everything they could to intimidate witnesses. I mean, a great example of this is Dershowitz who has been also named, and who sued the people who named him. And so I think you're going to see this as a whole... This has been a sort of panoply of different powerful men covering for each other. What I think is interesting, and actually Jonathan Swan of Axis tweeted this and wrote about this and I was impressed by this — he said what we should do now, now that Epstein has been held accountable, we should find every man who enabled this. And find them and hold them accountable too.

KS: You talk about that lack of accountability and this may seem like a very strange question, but as you mentioned there have been a number of allegations made against U.S. President Donald Trump. For his part, he's denying them. But there have been so many women who have come forward to make claims of assault, inappropriate behaviour, and you know, we're seeing this here right now. Looking at what has happened over the past decade and concerns about the lack of accountability, my next question is about the lack of, sort of, consequences. This may seem strange, but you know a conversation that I've had with my mother is, you know, she's watching this as a Canadian, watching all the stuff that's going on in the United States. And we hear all these stories and all these things happen and she says, "But does it matter?" Are there any consequences for these kinds of things? I know that's a strange question, but does it matter?

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Well it's not a strange question, and it's a question that the American people are bumping up against again and again. And it it's the... Some of it is because we have this president who has all these allegations. And even the way it's covered, like, you'll see, there was just two weeks ago E. Jean Carroll came out with an allegation that the president raped her. Right, raped her. And E. Jean Carroll is a famous writer, who's written for a number of American magazines. And you saw the media coverage didn't really know what to do, they even said things like, they led with "The president denies..." and it's one of these situations where you have... more than a dozen women have come out against him. And I believe, actually, that eventually this does catch up. This will catch up. That we will eventually be in a more just society, where people will be punished for their crimes. Now whether or not Trump is punished, I can't speak to that. You know, he's the president, it's very complicated. But the one thing we should take some heart in is that Jeffrey Epstein is in jail today. He's in jail. He went from... He got off his private jet and he went right into the Manhattan Correctional Center. And if nothing else, that should be a sign to women that if you come forward, sooner or later, we will be able. I mean it's... The move... The you know.. The arc of... The moral arc of the universe bends towards justice — it's just, in America it takes a little longer.

KS: I think we're going to leave the conversation there. Ms. Jong-Fast, thank you very much for your time today.

MOLLY JONG-FAST: Thank you for having me.

KS: Molly Jong-Fast is a contributor to the Daily Beast and The Bulwark. She joined us from New York City. The CBC News is next. Then a landslide is blocking a section of BC's Fraser River and a race to save the salmon that are trapped behind it is considering some pretty wild ideas, including a salmon cannon. I'm Katie Simpson and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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Flying fish? Migrating salmon trapped in Fraser River Canyon could be helicoptered out, says biologist

Guests: Matthias Herborg

KS: I'm Katie Simpson and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

KS: Still to come, former members of NXIVM reveal what happened when they tried to leave the organization.

SOUNDCLIP

VOICE 1: I have law firms that have said to me they have never in their entire history of the law ever seen a more egregious, malicious lawsuit attack against an individual in their entire lifetimes.

KS: But first, saving Fraser River salmon.

[Music: Theme]

KS: An unusual rescue operation is underway in British Columbia's interior. Thousands of salmon are trapped in the Fraser River Canyon unable to get to their spawning grounds because of a landslide. Upwards of eight million sockeye are due to return this summer and that has representatives from federal, provincial and First Nations agencies scrambling to find a way to help the fish continue their migration. Matthias Herborg is an Incident Commander for the Big Bar Landslide with the integrated Incident Command Post and we reached him in Lillooet, BC. Hello.

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Hi Katie, how are you doing?

KS: I'm good, thanks. Can you explain exactly what's happening on the ground right now, and how these fish are trapped?

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Yeah. So in... The first step, post the landslide, is for us to make sure we can actually safely work down on the river. You have to understand the stretch of the Fraser Canyon is really remote, has very steep sites, and especially after a landslide we have a vertical cliff face which-- a section of it fell in the river about 125 by 60 metres section of land. And right now we have scaleer which have been working for about a week basically clearing the rest of the loose rock debris off that wall just to make sure that we can safely work at the bottom because there are still chunks the size of fridges and pickup trucks there, which are just sitting there and could fall down at any time. So the first step for us is to establish site safety. But in parallel, we are developing different options [for] how we can get the salmon past that barrier to make sure that as soon as we can properly work in that area we are ready to start that part of the operation.

KS: Do you know how many fish are there right now?

MATTHIAS HERBORG: We don't quite know how many fish there are. We had some counted in the waters upstream and downstream, which we did as soon as we found out about this incident. But Mother Nature has thrown us a curve ball with the floods in the rive. We had to take a lot of our sensors out. The very preliminary data we got, there were a few thousand arriving a day and only a small portion of them seem to be coming through. But this is very preliminary data and once, hopefully, the water is going to recede soon then we can get the sensors back in to count better.

KS: So you guys are working with, what I understand, you're working with geotechnical engineers on on some possible solutions here. What are the... can you outline the options you're looking at right now.

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Yes. So our main option is, and you're right, we do have technical engineers, we have fish biologists from the province and federal agency, we have heavy First Nation input as well. So the idea is that... We had these big pieces of rock falling in the river creating a relatively deep gradient 5 to 5 and a half meter over on 19 meters distance, and that first step is we want to take some of the rock which is on the side and put it in the river to basically, rather than have big drops with fast water flows, break it up so there are little pools and ripples where the salmon can hide behind, zip around the next rock where there's a current and they have another resting spot. This is something that has been done for other landslides who have migratory fish quite successfully. So this is really the the main solution we are looking for and that will be an iterative process. We are currently increasing our monitoring program. More tools to count fish and detect fish movement. The other thing we are exploring in case this option doesn't work, or doesn't get us the migration we need, we are also in the process of designing a fish ladder to put in. So it's more the traditional thing if you have dams. So maybe you have an artificial structure which is a series of little jumps which the fish can easily pass, and then they get above it. And then as a backup we are also exploring options, either trap the fish and put them in a truck and put them around, or trap the fish and put them in a helicopter. Put them in a bucket underneath a helicopter and fly them above the slide. So we are exploring all these options, seeing how feasible they are, what the logistics are, safety, timelines and then, yeah. And then actively work through them.

KS: How likely is it that you're looking at the some of those more extreme options when you hear that you're going to bring in a helicopter to, sort of, trap them? Can you explain how that would work if you did have to use a helicopter here?

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Yes. So we would use regular methods that our biologists use frequently, like beach staining the salmon, bring them to shore and then we would have a bucket or a tow. We are looking at different options right now where you would put the fish in and then basically you would hook it up to the helicopter for 15 minute transport past the slide where we then put them back in the water. So don't think of the firefighting bucket that goes in the water, grabs bucket, flies above and dumps it from 500 meters above. It's a different operation but the basic principle is the same. So carefully put the fish in a tow, fly them above and then release them again into the water.

KS: A big question that people listening to this may have is, OK. You're hearing about these measures, the range of measures you're looking at to try and help these fish. What's at stake here? Why go to these lengths? How urgent is this mission?

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Well it's getting more urgent with every day because when we discovered the slide we were still at the early stages of of salmon runs. So for salmon Chinook runs, it's about over 80 percent of Fraser sockeye have to pass this barrier to get to their spawning ground, and about over 75 percent of all Fraser of sockeye have to get past this barrier to get to the spawning grounds. And you know if this fish can't make to the spawning grounds, eventually get desperate try to follow the alternative sites but spawning success is going to be likely very low. So there's a significant part. Those two species of salmon are, you know, potentially getting heavily impacted here. And as you all know Fraser River sockeye, Fraser The River chinook, they're very important, first of all, for additional and ceremonial fisheries for the for the First Nations up and down the Fraser watershed. There's also an important commercial fishery, there's an important recreational fishery. We also all know how important Chinook are for southern resident killer whales. So there's also the integral part that salmon plays in the whole ecosystem of BC as well, so.

KS: What exactly do you mean that there could be heavily impacted? You mean, they won't be able to spawn? They could die? What do you mean?

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Yes. So if the fish can't make it past their barrier they get more and more desperate and eventually they will try to find other areas to spawn. But the problem in this stretch of the river, and even if you go back back down a stretch, there's not a lot of suitable habitat. So we probably, if they couldn't get past, it would probably lose a lot of this response so they would probably just die or spawn unsuccessfully. And the reason why we don't know how bad it will be or could be is because we are trying to kind of stay ahead of this curve, so hopefully we can establish fish passage in the near future. And then the fish can start migrating through and then we're okay. But right now we just don't know how soon it could be.

KS: Matthias, we just have less than a minute here but I want to ask you how challenging are the conditions for your teams right now?.

MATTHIAS HERBORG: Very challenging. We are in a very remote part of the of the Fraser River Canyon. The only people who are at the site are sailors who are hanging off ropes, which you know, are 5000 metres long and those guys are my heroes. Otherwise, there's other section of the slope which are unstable. So right now you can't even get to the shoreline where where the slide happened. There's no road access. We're looking at [if we] could we put a road in there. Yeah it's a very remote part of of the canyon. So that definitely makes it very challenging and very rugged terrain.

KS: Well I certainly wish you the best of luck. And I want to thank you for your time today. Thank you Katie. Matthias Herborg is a biologist with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And we reached him in Lillooet BC where he's part of a team of the Big Bar Landslide incident command post.

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Uncover: Escaping NXIVM – Episode 4

KS: You're listening to the summer edition of The Current. I'm Katie Simpson. This summer we are bringing you some of the best CBC podcasts. Today we continue with Uncover: Escaping NXIVM. In the first three episodes. We learned about how people were drawn into an organization that at first blush seemed to be about self-help and personal growth. But some began to have doubts about NXIVM and its charismatic leader. In this episode we hear from former members about what happened when they tried to leave. This is Uncover: Escaping NXIVM.

SOUNDCLIP

SE: Keith created his faux-women’s empowerment program within the structure of Nxivm to maintain loyalty and to feed his sex addiction.

JB: Things started to click…

[pause]

JB: When I started looking into Sarah’s story. I was surprised to discover that Sarah was not the first person to try and get out of NXIVM. Sarah knew what happened to others who stood up to Keith.

TN: Give me your shoes, and if you wouldn’t mind taking your shoes off…

JB: Their stories served as a cautionary tale…

TN: This is my war room, yes.

TN: Good morning!

Keith doesn't draw bad people to him. He draws really good people. You've interviewed these people, they're amazing. They're amazing. Nobody comes to ESP or NXIVM saying "Oh let me learn how to fuck people's life up." That's not what they do. They come because he presents so well this beautiful way of helping people make things better for other people. I think we're innately good in nature and we wanna do the right thing. People do things in a natural sense for betterment. It takes a while for them to realize that they've just been conned, so harshly.

JB: Can you just describe what this whole setup is?

JB: Here in her storage room between the washing machine and the free weights is a long desk with file folders, bankers boxes and a whiteboard the length of a car.

TN: I started off with moving paper, writing things down and I moved on to a whiteboard, and then I moved on to printing them and putting them in folders. Questions that I needed to get answered. And things that I felt were lies…

JB: This break up started in 1999, and it turned into a war with NXIVM.

Today Toni Natalie lives alone, with a large mutt named Ramona.

JB: Almost 20 years on, she doesn’t feel safe.

JB: Toni’s little green house backs onto the ravine. She told me she chose it for its almost 360 degree view. There's been a series of incidents over the years since she left Keith. Her house has been broken into, her dog was poisoned and died, a private investigator was monitoring her home and business. She believes Keith’s was behind these things — though that’s never been proven.

[Sound: Ramona likes to bark]

JB: Toni became one of the first people to speak to the media about Keith and NXIVM.

JB: It’s so weird that like for you coming to have this meeting, and then you all just watch a movie for two hours [laughing]

JB: “The Contender” is about a politician who, out of principle, refuses to address false rumours about her personal life spread by her political opponents.

JB: So in this case, Keith has cast himself as the principled politician… and Barbara and Susan are his opponents spreading nasty rumours about him.

JB: Sarah tells me she bought the idea that these rumours weren’t even worth addressing. She was told Susan was difficult and Barbara was crazy. They were suppressives, trying to harm the company.

[pause]

KR: Just imagine being in a life struggle with someone… you’re wrestling, back and forth. Back and forth...

KR: Do you kill your opponent…

KR: Or if you hesitate, they’re going to stab you.

KR: Do you hesitate?

[pause]

JB: Sarah Edmondson was worried she could be next….

JB: I have heard from several former members of NXIVM that they were afraid of the way Clare went after adversaries. It’s something the FBI has investigated as well. The FBI says Clare maintained a list of critics and their supposed crimes against Keith. They say she orchestrated abusive litigation meant to intimidate and attack perceived enemies and critics of Raniere. We’ve tried to ask Clare Bronfman and her lawyers about this directly, but we’ve not heard back. In a statement, her lawyer says the government is overreaching in its case.

SD: Oh gosh! That I destroyed their business. That I tried to extort money from them. And that I was teaching their courses afterwards. That I refused to give them their materials back...

JB: : And is this part of the bankruptcy filing, or is this separate to the bankruptcy?

JB: Susan could not afford to hire a lawyer, so she took the work on herself. She tells me the bankruptcy case became a full time job for her. At the trial, Susan and her partner Kim were facing off against 3 high-powered lawyers.

JB: NXIVM lawyers filed motion after motion. They argued Susan and Kim were on a campaign of hate against the company. That she damaged NXIVM by talking to the press, and leaking that video of the NXIVM 9 meeting. They wanted her to pay damages.

JB: On the stand, because they are representing themselves, Susan’s partner is the one to ask her questions. Kim asks Susan: “Do you believe NXIVM will go to any lengths to destroy you?

SD: I believe that they will. I don't think that this is the last legal round with them. I left, I defected. And my understanding is if you do that and you have information that could possibly substantiate the illegal activity, that they'll go to the ends of the earth to destroy you.

JB: The audio quality is not great, but you can hear Susan’s frustration at this point.

when I was in NXIVM, I just believed them when they said, "Oh this person is a thief. This person is this, this person is that."

JB: And then Susan says: I believe I was lied to when I was in NXIVM, I just believed them when they said, "Oh this person is a thief. This person is this, this person is that." And they would make all kinds of allegations, and then lose the case. In his closing argument, Bob Crockett — one of NXIVM’s lawyers — provided a different view...

BOB CROCKETT: They blame Keith Raniere and NXIVM for their income problems. They claim Keith Raniere and NXIVM for their credit cards issues. These are capable women — one with a masters degree in psychology. One a former navy veteran. I mean these are capable women who have the ability to control their destinies. And instead, they have gone from caring, loving, nice people to being mean-spirited. They make allegations that NXIVM uses litigation to crush people and dissidents. That is untrue…..NXIVM doesn’t bring actions to crush dissidents. It just doesn’t happen. I just want to stand up for my client. And that is it is not an evil, manipulative organization. They make money. It is not a cult. It just makes money. It’s got a successful leader at its helm, who is a capable man. It’s now time for her to honour her agreements. Thank you, your honour.

[pause]

JB: And then when it comes to cautionary tales... there’s what happened to Barbara Bouchey.

JB: I meet Barbara in her hotel room in Manhattan. She sits proud and upright in a blue velvet chair, and looks a bit like a queen on her throne. Barbara was the highest ranking defector when she left NXIVM. She was Keith's girlfriend. She had been on the executive board, so she knew a lot about the company.

JB: Between the Bronfmans and NXIVM, Barbara’s had seven lawsuits filed against her. Just like in Susan’s case, NXIVM pointed to Barbara speaking out. They accused her of being involved in a malicious grassroots effort to destroy the company by going to local, national, and international media.

JB: Barbara won’t tell me where she lives… she’s worked hard to conceal her whereabouts because she is still afraid of NXIVM coming after her. She’s got a mailing address in one state, and a car registered in another. And presumably neither of those is the state where she lives.

JB: It’s more than the legal battles that keeps Barbara up at night. She says she learned that Keith might have had other plans to go after her…

JB: In 2014, Kristin Keeffe — one of the original so-called spiritual wives — defected from NXIVM. She is the mother of Keith’s son Gaelin. Kristin had been in charge of NXIVMs legal battles with Toni, Susan, and Barbara. When she left, Kristin went into hiding, and she called Barbara. Barbara recorded one of their conversations.

JB: Some of the stories Kristin told her are so bizarre they make your head spin. She said Clare Bronfman hired a company to dig up dirt on adversaries, including journalists and federal judges.

She says Keith worked closely with Clare. And the two of them lied in their court filings.

JB: And then there is this...

JB: The Mexican plot.

BB: I remember Toni calling me. We didn’t talk a lot. But every once in a while, maybe every three or four months, we’d have a chat. I remember this one time calling and saying are you getting calls from this Mexican journalist? And I said I’d gotten some, but I hadn’t actually connected with the person. She wanted me to come down. I said I’m not going to fucking Mexico. You know, what are they crazy?

BB: Yeah, yeah...

KK: The emails... they were serious as a fucking heart attack. He worked on this for years. Fucking years. This was like a three-plus year plot in the making.

JB: I've heard a lot of outlandish stories about this group. And sometimes it's hard to know which ones are true. But Barbara tells me that NXIVM did file a criminal charge against her, in Mexico, for extortion. And that just this summer, U.S. border guards detained her at the airport because of it.

JB: I have a ton of questions for Kristin about what she told Barbara on that phone call. But she is in hiding. I don't know where she is. I asked someone who does if she’d speak with us. And she said no.

One of Keith’s lawyers told me this story of a Mexico plot is a red herring.

JB: For Sarah, she had heard these stories as rumours or fragments. That she was certain leaving could be very dangerous. How does she avoid this fate?

JB: This is Peter Skolnik...

JB: And he offered legal advice to Sarah...

JB: If someone came to you from NXIVM and said I want to leave, and I don't want to have happen to me what happened to Susan or Toni or Barbara? What would what would be your advice to them what would you say to them?

JB: Sarah wasn’t just in NXIVM, she had to get out of DOS. Unlike Susan, Barbara, and Toni she had handed over collateral. She wasn’t even sure how Nippy would respond when he found out about DOS and the branding.

SE: No. Nippy doesn't know...

SE: I think, well I guess the first time I actually showed you... I showed you the brand because it was at your parents place, right?

NIPPY: And I wanted to punch a lot of things at that time.

SE: Yeah, he was really angry. And I was a... I was a wreck. I mean keep in mind that this had been unravelling for a couple of weeks even before I told Nip. And umm.. I hadn’t been sleeping. I was just a basket case.

NIPPY: Plus, it was also like we're sleeping in different beds, because we can't sleep at night, you know?

SE: I'm also having drills SOP and a DOS drills that wake me up every night.

SE: Not even just to respond, I have to spend sometimes an hour dealing with the thing.

NIPPY: And we’re like ok, what do we do? How do we get out of this?! This is when I’m scared, you know? I'm scared at this point ‘cause I know like getting out’s not gonna to be easy. We're going to have to deal with the Bronfman legality things, if this thing, worst case scenario. I know that playbook. I've seen it in action. And I know it's bullshit. So leaving was an easy decision. It was just how? Do I want to cowboy up, go up there with a baseball bat and take it to his head.

SE: The plan was that we were going to go to Albany anyway. And we already had our tickets and everything and, you know, also so my grandfather had just been admitted to hospital. And whenever anyone saw me they were like "you look awful what's going on?" I'm like "My grandfather is sick.” So my grandfather goes to hospital with stomach cancer. I realized that I'd been in a cult for 12 years (laughing, exasperated). It was like, I was a, I was just, I was a wreck. And we decided to do business as usual.

SE: I went back to the house and packed up the house.

SE: Packed up like this is the stuff I'm taking with me... this stuff put in New York City... the rest just give away or sell. I told the leasing agent we need to get out early.

SE: And that ten hour train ride was like one of the most stressful travel days of my life.

JB: As far as they could tell… no one in NXIVM had figured out what was going on. That two of their leaders had jumped ship. And Sarah and Nippy had no idea what would happen when they did.

NIPPY: and I’m just like [makes sound, big exhale] my heart is...

SE: Yeah, I don't think I've ever been in as much fight or flight.

JB: Next time on Escaping NXIVM:

SE: With Clare?

KS: That was Episode 4 of the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM. Last month, NXIVM's leader Keith Raniere was found guilty of all charges against him, including sex trafficking and racketeering. He'll be sentenced in September. Tomorrow, we'll bring you Episode 5. And if you missed any of the podcast, or want to listen again -- you can catch up on any episodes at CBC.ca/podcasting. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for the news. Then The Strumbellas return to the Q studio. They'll perform from their album "Rattlesnakes". And remember - you can always take The Current with you to go on the CBC Radio app. It lets you browse through past episodes of our show and start listening in just a few seconds. It's free from the App Store or Google Play. I'm Katie Simpson. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Theme]

July 11, 2019 episode transcript

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