In her new book, The Program, Toni Natalie describes her long and harrowing history with Keith Raniere, now infamous as the leader of NXIVM, a cult organization which engaged in sex trafficking, blackmail, and physical branding of its members, all while claiming to be a self-help group for professional women. Natalie met Raniere well before he went on to establish NXIVM, and, as both his business partner and his girlfriend, saw first-hand how manipulative and power-hungry he could be. She describes herself as Raniere’s “Patient Zero,” a kind of lab rat on whom Raniere developed his coercion techniques. And when she decided to end their relationship, she says, he made her life hell.

The Cut spoke to Natalie about her experiences with the man who would, in June 2019, be convicted of seven charges, including sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor. Raniere could face life in prison and is expected to be sentenced in early 2020.

I met Keith in the early ’90s, when he was running a company called Consumers Buyline. It was a membership-based organization with Multi-Level Marketing aspects to it, because Keith is, at heart, a frustrated Amway salesman, and it’s always been part of the businesses he ran. But it was a membership-based organization where people saved money on goods and services, and it worked really well, apart from the sociopath who was running it.

The company was extremely successful, and it was mostly men. He wasn’t doing the self-help thing then, so the draw was businesspeople, because the product was good, the membership was good, and with the marketing plan he had developed, people were earning a lot of money. But because Keith can’t leave anything alone, he created enough challenges within the company that 25 state attorneys generals and others came in [alleging he was operating an illegal pyramid scheme]. Consumers Buyline was making a lot of money, and Keith could have complied with different regulatory agencies, but no one tells Keith that he’s wrong, on any level.