Cult deprogrammer Rick Alan Ross testified at the sex trafficking trial against the self-help company’s founder Keith Raniere Wednesday.
After more than 14 years of defending himself in lawsuits brought forward by a self-help company accused of sex trafficking and racketeering, cult deprogrammer Rick Alan Ross saw NXIVM founder Keith Raniere sitting at the defendant’s side of a criminal courtroom for the first time Wednesday.
Ross is the founder of the Cult Education Institute, an organization that aims to help families reconnect with members who have become involved in what he calls authoritarian groups. Ross says he’s worked on more than 500 cult interventions since he started the institute three decades ago, including several students of NXIVM, a self-help company Raniere founded in 1998. In the 15 years since Ross first learned about NXIVM, the company has sued him in two states and allegedly hired private investigators to track him, and pose as potential clients. On Wednesday he testified about the legal battles and spying at the group leader’s “sex cult” trial.
Ross testified the bizarre saga stems from a series of cult interventions he was hired to facilitate in 2002. He said Morris and Rochelle Sutton, wealthy owners of a children’s clothing company in New Jersey, hired him to investigate their family members’ involvement in NXIVM, which marketed itself as executive success coaching at the time.
Ross said he hadn’t heard of NXIVM before the Sutton family asked for his help. After meeting with their daughter Stephanie Franco and son Michael Sutton, Ross said he immediately had concerns about the group’s philosophy and structure, which he thought was “eerily similar” to Scientology.
“My feeling was that this was a destructive program, that it was hurting people and it had the potential to hurt more people,” Ross testified.
In his conversations with the Sutton family, Ross said Franco expressed her own concerns about NXIVM and agreed to leave, while her brother Michael decided to stay. Ross said he recommended that the Suttons hire mental health experts to review Franco’s course material as a way to help her brother judge things for himself.
The Suttons took this advice, and had Franco’s notes examined by a forensic psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist, Ross testified. When those findings were published on Ross’s website, Ross said they all became embroiled in legal conflict and surveillance instigated by NXIVM, which lasted until the case was finally dismissed by a federal judge in December 2017.
Other experts who reviewed NXIVM’s material were quick to point out manipulation and thought reform tactics. John Hochman of the University of California reviewed the 16-day course, identifying elements he thought were coercive and cult-like. In his review Hochman pointed to the long hours, secrecy, inability to seek feedback from friends and family, paramilitary rituals and regalia, daily contact with superiors, and unsubstantiated extravagant claims as points of concern.
Psychologist Paul Martin—no relation to the former Canadian prime minister—also audited one of the introductory “intensives”: “This appears nothing short of a religion, a system that has answers to the problems of life,” he wrote in a highly critical report. Martin went on to compare NXIVM material to Robert Jay Lifton’s seminal work on thought reform. All three expert reviews are still available online, despite more than a decade of challenges from NXIVM.
NXIVM alleged the former student who passed on her notes, Stephanie Franco, the doctors who examined the course material, and Ross all violated a non-disclosure agreement signed by all students. The $20-million suit claimed the company suffered irreparable harm because of the breach. Ross was accused of defamation and violating trade secret and copyright laws, but he refused to take the information off his website.
Ross testified that NXIVM also hired a private investigation firm to pose as a family seeking an intervention. “It was all fake, the mother was acting,” he said on the witness stand.
“I had no idea to what extent I was being surveilled,” Ross said in March 2019, days after NXIVM president Nancy Salzman admitted guilt in her effort to doctor videos submitted as evidence in their civil trial against Ross.
“Did you know they have all your banking info and phone records?” Hardin asked, according to Ross. Hardin confirmed the phone call to VICE, but declined an interview.
“He started reciting portions of a bank statement,”