My Statement at Nancy Salzman's Sentencing
My Statement at Nancy Salzman's Sentencing
September 8th, 2021
Your Honor.
I’m speaking to this court and to Nancy Salzman today with great sadness. My sadness is about the trail of carnage she has left behind her. Carnage I am not entirely sure she recognizes. If Keith Raniere was the sociopath behind all that has come out in this court (and much that has not), then Nancy Salzman was the ENFORCER of his fiefdom. Nancy Salzman has historically presented herself as the ultimate victim whenever she was called out for her abusive behavior. Her response would begin with rage and then devolve into ‘woe is me’ suffering. My hope is the court can see through these well practiced, strategic manipulations.
When I first came to NXIVM in 2004, it was Nancy who was tasked with ‘breaking me’. I was apparently an extremely difficult student with way too many questions and a lack of adequate respect for the great mind of Keith Raniere. Too much pride was my disease, according to the high ranks. So Nancy Salzman, the CEO was sent in to handle me… again and again. After one intensive, in a screaming match she took me to task with venomous rage for putting up a fight against the far superior knowledge of her great mentor. She leveraged my every weakness and vulnerability (which she had been carefully documenting - much as a therapist would). You see, Nancy Salzman promoted herself as someone who had a background in some form of psychotherapy. She called the NXIVM technology ‘paint by numbers psychology’. But she had zero formal training as a psychologist or psychiatrist. What she did have were skills gleaned from being a master trainer in Neuro-Linguistic Programming and extensive studies of trance induction by Milton Erickson. With these weapons, she crushed my increasingly destabilized psyche. The mechanisms of coercion she used could fill volumes. But, I’ll just call it what it was… emotional abuse and spiritual rape. For the next few months she told everyone around her. “I broke Mark Vicente” She said this with intoxicated glee. As though it was a really good thing.
Who says that? Who on earth says that with pride and excitement? What kind of psychopathology does a person need to have to think that is a good and wholesome statement… “I broke him…’
Yes Nancy, you broke me… and many many others. Congratulations. You did an exceedingly good job. You capitalized on my goodwill and desperate quest for growth… and you won. You now had a useful idiot for your organization. A boy scout you would NEVER tell the truth to. If only you had told me when I first came that your guru was fucking any woman with a BMI below 18%… I would have run for the hills! This sentiment is shared by many of us who defected. You lied to us about what was really going on!
As an eager student, exploring every vulnerability I could find… and listening to your voice for months and months in class, either in person or on the educational videos, I found myself dreaming about the concepts you were teaching. Always in your voice. Always you at the head of the class. I could hear you in my mind anytime I was faced with an ethical decision. I told you one day that you had become the voice of my conscience. You were thrilled by that idea! Giddy with self-absorbed power. In retrospect, you should have been terrified. Terrified that you, with all your foibles would represent the deepest part of my being. But you had no shame. You loved that kind of power.
When you wanted to entice me with the level 2 curriculum, I told you I simply could not afford to take it. But you had a plan. I would make a film for you. A film to exonerate and glorify your Lord and Master, in exchange for some Level 2 intensives. You had me sign a contract, then looked directly at me and said, “I own you now. You’re mine.”
Again… who says this? Someone clearly unaware of the moral and ethical implications of such a statement. Someone who thrills at power and control. Over the years, whenever I stepped out of line, you were sent in to deal with me. Hypnosis, confessional EM’s, chastising, feedback, withdrawal of privileges, threats… whatever. No behavior was off limits to protect your guru. Leading me further and further away from my dreams, but always insisting I was getting closer and closer. You squandered over a decade of my life. How cruel. What you did to me, I might one day find a way to forgive you for. But, what I find truly unforgivable, is what you did to my wife.
Beginning in 2010, as a part of the ridiculous band Simply Human, then on the development team for Exo/Eso and countless other pointless NXIVM endeavors, she was under a barrage of constant personalized coercive control from Raniere. By 2015, she saw serious issues going on with a number of high ranking members and Allison Mack, who was becoming dangerously unhinged. Again and again she tried to share her concerns with the upper ranks. Raniere tried to frame it as a dispute between two women. But it was not. This was a deep ethical concern she was having. Bonnie was pointing out heinous abuses of power in the upper ranks.
Finally, Nancy… you were brought in to deal with her. By this time, she had already endured 5 years of trauma and coercion, which you ignored because you were too consumed with leading a lamb to the slaughter. You told her you wanted to help her. She then opened her heart to you and shared what she was seeing. But you proceeded to turn everything around on her and accuse her of insidious things, including trying to grab power and control of your organization. My deeply sensitive wife… are you serious?
She was shattered, but like a soldier she couldn’t say what had happened. That would be dishonorable and she could be further punished. In multiple sessions, you tried to convince her she was the perpetrator. She was utterly confused. You were supposed to be a good person… a good leader. Finally after days of weeping and a complete emotional break I convinced her to tell me what happened. Her shock and trauma was profound. Your betrayal turned her world upside down.
Yet another person you had attacked and broken. Except this time it was the love of my life. That’s when you utterly lost me! You acted as her therapist and then raged at her with all your pent up hatred and malevolent projections. This was followed by the ‘wolf pack’ going after her. You know… Raniere’s concubines and enforcers. The high ranks pummeled her. Trying to wear her down. Trying to convince her she was the abusive one. That she was the evil one.
She was already suffering trauma from all the previous years, but these events of 2015-2016 deepened that trauma to an extreme degree (driving her to make the extraordinarily painful decision to escape NXIVM without me) You, Nancy were a prime perpetrator both directly and indirectly. You, of all people, surely knew better given your background as a purported therapist. To me, it’s that background that makes you so culpable. It renders your conduct over the years so cruel, because it’s not just a matter of; you should have known better… you DID know better and you did all these harmful things despite that.
Since your so called ‘helping sessions’, Bonnie hasn’t been able to get a full breath of air in her lungs. She’s lived with pain and heartbreak and trauma for years now. Ever present PTSD. You cannot even begin to imagine what it is like for someone so deeply empathic to be betrayed in the way you did her. And what it’s like for someone that sensitive to become the scapegoat of the whole organization, for YEARS. You, Raniere and the wolf pack designed a relentless and devastating campaign to destroy her, even creating a whole intensive to try and turn everyone against her. I will not forgive you for any of that. You have hurt a great woman. A soulful warrior. You represented yourself as the maternal figure of the organization but you turned out to be the abusive mother everyone was terrified of.
My wife was the canary in the coal mine. She tried to warn everyone something very bad was going on. She was fighting for all of us. You owe Bonnie deep gratitude for initiating the events that would bring the whole nightmarish thing to an end, and a deep and sincere apology for having abused her trust. You misused your skills as a therapist to take advantage of a severe power imbalance in ways that were utterly (and, in my view, intentionally) destructive. The magnitude of the trauma you inflicted on both Bonnie and I is so enormous that we are both still struggling to recover.
I do hope in your future you could actually use your skills to empower people… not destroy them. I’m not sure if prison would be helpful for you. You might just be inclined to suffer and feel sorry for yourself and not truly feel the damage. That would be a shame. But I believe in resurrection. I believe you need deprogramming (to use your terms) Perhaps you have already started that journey. You need to study malignant narcissism, coercive control and trauma bonding and you need to be curious about your own psychopathology. Why do you need attention so desperately, why do you need control, why do you need to crush people? Until then, you should definitely not be coaching or teaching anyone. Not with the hunger for power and vindictiveness you displayed during your rule of that evil empire. You should not be trusted with another’s psyche… or soul.
Thank you - your Honor.
Photo: Mark Vicente