BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CN) - A former member of the purported self-help group NXIVM’s executive board testified Monday that its ex-leader Keith Raniere tried to “break” women in the organization by putting them on very stringent diets.
Mark Vicente, a 53-year-old filmmaker, said he was a member of the Albany-based organization for 12 years and once served as its chief videographer before raising concerns about the group’s practices and eventually leaving in 2017.
Raniere, 58, was known as “Vanguard” within the organization, which is widely described as a cult. Raniere now faces federal charges including forced labor, sex trafficking, sexual exploitation of a child, wire fraud and violations of federal anti-racketeering law and is expected to be on trial for about six weeks.
Much of the case against Raniere revolves around a secretive group he’s alleged to have created within NXIVM (pronounced Nexium), called DOS, in which women were said to have been branded with his initials, served as slaves and forced to have sex with him.
Vicente is the second witness in the trial, following a woman named Sylvie who testified she was a member of DOS and was sexually assaulted by Raniere.
He told jurors Monday he started having serious doubts about the organization in 2015, around the same time prosecutors allege DOS was taking shape.
Prosecutors say women in DOS were on highly restricted diets, which Vicente described as one of his early red flags.
“I began to see a lot of the women just looking rake thin,” he said. “Skeletal.”
The women ate things like cucumbers and squash, Vicente said, to the extent that their fingers turned the colors of the food.
“My gravest concern back then was Allison Mack,” he said.
Mack, 36, is a Teen Choice award winner and former actress on “Smallville” who was indicted alongside Raniere and pleaded guilty last month to several charges. She’s accused of being a “first-line master” within DOS.
Vicente, who ranked high within NXIVM as a member of its executive board and at one point one of Raniere’s trusted companions, said he addressed the problem with Raniere on multiple occasions.
“She looks broken,” Vicente told jurors he’d said to Raniere.
“Well, I’m trying to break her,” Raniere reportedly responded. “She’s still getting her period.”
There was also a “club” of women gathering around Mack, said Vicente, and none of them looked healthy.
One of them was a woman named India, identified in court only by her first name but likely India Oxenberg, daughter of “Dynasty” actress Catherine Oxenberg, who has long been public about her efforts to get her daughter out of NXIVM. India was “in love” with Mack, Vicente testified.
Raniere was trying to break the women’s pride, Vicente understood. This typically would have been considered a good thing within NXIVM, which purported to encourage humility.
“But I couldn’t understand why somebody withering away was going to fix that,” Vicente said Monday.
On another occasion, possibly in April 2017, Vicente said he told Raniere, “I’m really worried about these women -- they look like zombies.”
Using what Vicente called a “practice of deflection,” Raniere allegedly responded: “You have to define what a zombie is.”
Vicente, who first took the stand last Wednesday, has largely served as a bird’s-eye view explainer of NXIVM and what he said were about 60 additional companies under its umbrella.
Raniere carefully cultivated a shadowy persona of untouchable intelligence, Vicente explained, assisted by his inner circle, which included his co-defendant Nancy Salzman, known within NXIVM as “Prefect.” She pleaded guilty in March to racketeering conspiracy charges.