8.Sylvie — Direct (Part 2)

SYLVIE: Good afternoon.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Well, I think -- I may have already said this right before lunch, I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself, but he is very touchy-feely and he was kissing a lot of the women on the lips, so that definitely stood out to me. And there were -- yeah, there were women there -- there were a lot of women there, to be -- like, I don't really know if I've said -- what else I've already said, but those were the things that really stood out to me.

SYLVIE: No. Not at that time, no. I mean, there were women in particular that I think that he was closer to, but I didn't have any background information on that at all.

SYLVIE: Marianna -- Marianna.

SYLVIE: Yes (indicating).

SYLVIE: He's wearing a -- I think I would call it grainy brown jumper.

SYLVIE: I stayed up to -- I would say it was about three months because I left in the middle of December for a family party.

SYLVIE: Yes. I had spoken to Clare before I left about me coming back but leaving for this party for sure.

SYLVIE: I went to Brussels for my -- I think it was my uncle's either 60th or 70th -- it must be 60th because he's not that old.

SYLVIE: Yes. I had a return flight and it was for between Christmas and New Year.

SYLVIE: Yes. So I had proposed to Clare -- by that point, I think Clare had been happy with my work and I had proven myself to a certain extent, and I proposed to her that she -- that I bring my horse over from England and that she help pay for that and that I would somehow work it off. There was a proposal that I would work for her that would include her training me as a rider with my own horse at her property.

SYLVIE: Because if I had my own horse, I felt like it guaranteed me the opportunity to compete because it was my horse and I didn't need to be dependent on her for her, you know, giving me the ride on one of her own, so it was much more likely that I could continue my path as trying to become a professional rider.

SYLVIE: No.

SYLVIE: I went to the airport to get the flight and I was asked questions at the -- the bit that you always get asked about where that sort of -- who packed your bags and that kind of thing, and I think they asked me my intentions on staying, and I didn't feel comfortable going without a visa and so I didn't get on the plane.

SYLVIE: I went back home. I think my dad probably took me. We went back and I told Clare what had happened and --

SYLVIE: I feel like she was disappointed because it was, like, not what was planned.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I think she was asking me, like, what happened specifically and I felt -- I sort of felt guilty about the fact that I didn't get on the plane, but I also hadn't felt comfortable about getting on the plane, so I felt in an awkward position.

SYLVIE: Yes. She, first of all, employed a lawyer to try and get me a professional athlete-type visa, but I didn't have enough athletic credentials or I wasn't professional enough to qualify for that one, so eventually we found another kind of visa that I was suitable for which was the J1 visa.

SYLVIE: It's used for people to -- they call it -- I think they called it a training visa and I went through an agricultural organization, it's called Communicating for Agriculture, I think, and basically it's like you're an apprentice with a professional and they train you and they provide you with housing and an allowance and you work for them and also train under them in your chosen field, which was a question for them and show jumping more specifically.

SYLVIE: Yes, definitely at that point, because my horse had also flown out there. So my horse flew out there I would say January or February, so yeah, that was a hundred percent my understanding.

SYLVIE: Well, we had --

SYLVIE: She had -- the plan that I understood is that we were either going to go to -- I think it was Florida, where there's a -- there's a long professional horse show, or there's one in Spruce Meadows, Calgary, that she had been to previous years multiple times before, and that was sort of the one on the schedule that we were aiming for, so I was hoping that I would be competing at Calgary or Spruce Meadows that year.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: It was March 20 -- no, 2006.

SYLVIE: Not long after getting there, things -- like, I don't really know how long into me being back it was, but things were really starting to fizzle out on the riding front for Clare, even more than they had before, so she wasn't coming to the stables so much and it was really just me and Katie a lot on our own. She was -- she taught me a bit with my horse Peggy, and so I had some training with her, but things had changed even more so than they had before and, yeah, she was doing some different weird things with the horses that I hadn't seen before, like some new practices in the way that she was riding, and she just wasn't coming as frequently.

SYLVIE: Well, I understood at that point that her -- that Vanguard or Keith Raniere was her train -- her horse-riding trainer at that point and was overseeing her training -- well, she didn't have a trainer, like he was her mentor I think she referred to him as, and so she started doing some different things with the horses that I hadn't say seen at the other professional place that I was riding. Like she was riding the horses bareback and doing a lot of things just very different to what I had seen before in the professional world.

SYLVIE: Not that I remember in that time, apart from if there was a party or something like a community party that would be held out there, but that was social and related to NXIVM.

SYLVIE: I don't believe so, not that I know of.

SYLVIE: No, but I mean the way that he was always presented to me, and I think to others, is that he was like one of the most intelligent men in the world and like that he had the highest IQ or scored the highest IQ on some kind of test, and that he had been an athlete and he had been a musician and he had been this, that and the other type thing, so he was presented as like extremely talented in everything really and able to teach anyone in anything.

SYLVIE: It was still weird to me, but -- but so many people kind of were reaffirming it all around me. The -- yeah, that I would kind of -- I was like, um, okay. You know, like trying to come to terms with that, I guess, because there wasn't anyone saying that that wasn't true, if that makes sense.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I became a coach during that time or if -- yeah, I think it was during that time, and I ended up taking another intensive class or -- I'm not sure if I called it intensive before, but it's the same, the training -- the five-day, I took the last 11 days, so yeah -- and I was taking ethos, so I became more and more involved I would say.

SYLVIE: Ethos is -- they're these weekly classes or they were held several times a week, or modules, sorry, where you would go and take -- they are not called classes, I keep calling them classes, but they are actually called modules. So you would take a module, but it would be like one module that was from the 16 day or from the 5 day, I think, more specifically.

SYLVIE: I knew that -- so Clare was trying to become a proctor at that time and because I was part of her organization, it was sort of important and encouraged that we all move up the Straight Path, and I wanted to help Clare become proctor, so that was a big motivation for me because, you know, I wanted to do a good job for her and do things that would earn me more opportunities. And so that was one of them, in my mind, like if I could become a coach that kind of gave me, you know, another -- another chance to show whether I was, like, committed and that I was committed to my grove with like different terms that were used and so that was a strong motivation for me.

SYLVIE: Well, the thing that was always talked about, at least that I remember, is that's when you could run your own business, that was one thing that was said, and also that you would be able to work with Vanguard is what I remember from that. Like you couldn't -- as a coach, you couldn't have say a business with Vanguard, that was what I understood.

SYLVIE: Yeah. So I don't remember specific conversation about her saying that she was quitting riding, or I don't remember how it went, but she kind of came less and less and less and then eventually she quit riding, so she quit show jumping completely.

SYLVIE: Well, I didn't really have -- I didn't have another life path honestly. I didn't have another career planned out, I didn't have anything else that I thought I was going to do with my life or that I had envisioned for myself, apart from being an elite equestrian rider at that time, and there's a lot that I don't remember from that time. It's like a really dark time in my life because I really don't think I knew, you know, like what to do and I don't have really have a sense of my future. I just felt -- yeah, I didn't really remember -- I just remember it was a very dark time for me.

SYLVIE: Well, for one, my horse was out there. I think my sister was out there by that point. I didn't really have -- I didn't have a community back home anymore with the horses, I didn't see any other way that I was going to become a show jumper, like I kind of like put all my eggs in one basket in this way. And also, I was only -- I think I was only a few months into my J1 visa, so it -- I just felt very dependent on Clare in many different ways and I just didn't see a future or like where I could go from there.

SYLVIE: Yes. So while things were kind of I guess phasing out or fizzling out with the horses, I had started to become -- I slipped back -- I say slipped back into, but I had become very anorexic and I had lost a lot of weight and maybe that's partly why I don't remember a lot from that time, but I was extremely underweight at that time and really all my thoughts were around sort of restricting food and not -- not eating properly and so I just was extremely low in many different ways.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I had a bout of anorexia sort of around sort of twelve -- eleven, twelve.

SYLVIE: No.

SYLVIE: I didn't weigh myself at the time. I'd say, from looking at pictures, around 120 pounds.

SYLVIE: I think I got down to around 89 or 90 pounds.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I'd say, like, pretty much all the women that I interacted with seemed to have some kind of thing they were doing with food, whether it be a diet or a cleanse or eating a specific number of calories. Like I think Clare was raw vegan when I went and she would talk a lot about how she only needed 800 calories a day and that her body was very efficient, and then the other girl that I lived with seemed to have some kind of issue with like binge eating and potentially bulimia, although I never asked her directly. A lot of the women were very, very thin which really stood out to me, I guess from having an eating disorder in the past, like, that was like unnerving to me, but it was very normalized. So these people weren't saying they had a problem with food, it was just like it was normal, and so, yeah, it was -- it was unnerving to me and easy for me to, like, slip back into that kind of thinking.

SYLVIE: Yeah, there was a lot of people did something that was called the master cleanse, which is where you would like only drink water, I think lemon, and they had a bit of maple syrup in it and cayenne pepper, and then they would also take this herbal blend that would make you go to the bathroom. And so it was -- yeah, a lot of people were doing that frequently.

SYLVIE: I'm not sure if there's an official time period, but I remember people saying like ten days or, like, there were people doing various amounts of time, but I'm not sure if there's meant to be an official amount of days.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I mean, I -- yeah, we don't -- we didn't have the same packaging on food and people didn't speak in my house about how many calories someone should or shouldn't eat, like it just wasn't a thing. I don't remember it ever getting towards school, although it probably did at some point in biology, I'm not even sure, but I had not. For whatever reason, I hadn't come across what a calorie was.

SYLVIE: Yeah, definitely. For a while, I believed that you could only eat the number of calories that matched the number that you had burned on a machine at the gym because the girls that I worked with on the horses in the farm used to go to the gym as well and they would take me, or I would go with them, and so I thought if I ran and burned a hundred calories that I could eat a hundred calories. Like that was what I might say my allowance for the day, so I used to try and find -- I started eating bars that would match the number of calories that I had burnt and so, yeah, I didn't really understand what they were for.

SYLVIE: Yeah. Later on, I -- I used to -- I eventually ended up moving in with Clare and later on she would, at different times, when I had -- I had gained some weight back and I was a bit healthier, but I was still under 110 pounds and I had to check in my weight with her every day, and Keith, but part of it, especially with Clare, she would ask me what my weight was in the morning and then at different times she would be like, oh, I'm lighter than you today and would like make comments about things like that that was very I'd say triggering for me, or it was very uncomfortable for me, and -- yeah, so I found that unnerving.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I had started running as we quit the riding, so I guess that was like my new athletic outlet, in a way, and so then, yeah, I was running every day basically.

SYLVIE: Yeah, like, how did I get into it type thing?

SYLVIE: It was always held, when I went, at the same place which was I think it's called Silver Bay. It's like a YMCA-type hotel in the Adirondacks.

SYLVIE: The 26th of August, I think.

SYLVIE: Yeah, it was always sort of before and after that and that was specifically Vanguard day was his birthday.

SYLVIE: Well, people from all the different centers would come to celebrate Keith, so there were different -- like, tons of different activities going on all the time and in the evening there was always sort of entertainment or different kind of tribute ceremonies to Keith from the different centers, or there would be like performances of singers, but it was kind of all centered around the idea of a tribute to Keith and celebrating Keith's work.

SYLVIE: Yeah, it definitely -- I mean, it ranged from -- I think the cheapest way you could do it, if you signed up really far in advance, would be like 1,400 in rustic accommodation, and I think the most expensive could have been like -- I don't know, probably over 3,000 or more.

SYLVIE: Oh, yeah. So they were having a triathlon and me and Katie, who -- and Clare were going to train to do the triathlon. I hadn't done a triathlon before, but anyway, so that's how I got into running. I started running and I told Clare that I had done two miles in like 14 minutes, which was -- I didn't know that, but apparently that was quite fast for someone who doesn't run and --

SYLVIE: Yeah, so I was just going to say, so I think she must have told at least Pam, or Pam and Keith, because then it was suggested, like, that I come to volleyball and that Pam wanted to film me and they wanted to watch me run. And so, yeah, it became a thing, like, I was good at running.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I'm sorry, I use that word a lot. But things -- I say things were suggested to you because a lot of the time the language that was used was kind of like you might want to consider doing this, or -- yeah. So I would say there's sort of a lot of language where it wasn't you are being directly told to do something, but you were kind of suggested through, yeah, it might be good for you, or it might be a good idea if you did such and such, or you might want to consider doing blah-blah-blah, and so, yeah, that's where I would use the term suggested.

SYLVIE: I took them more as directives because I found that, if you didn't do those things, you might be told that you are not upholding yourself. That was a common phrase, or you would get some kind of feedback or further questioning on why you didn't want to do the thing.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I did run on the treadmill at volleyball. I went to ABC Fitness at night, which was where volleyball -- and I ran and I think Pam at least watched me. I'm not sure if she filmed me, I don't really remember, but, yeah, it was like kind of confirmed that running could be a good thing for me because I was good at it.

SYLVIE: I did, but I had like a panic attack in the water and I completely -- I didn't finish it, but -- I finished it, but I didn't finish the swim, so I didn't do very well in the triathlon after all.

SYLVIE: Well, there had been some kind of -- like, people saying that I was going to win it and stuff before, because I was able to run fast, and so I had felt -- I felt really nervous and a lot of pressure going into it just because I guess I'm a competitive person and I wanted to perform, but then when I failed in the water and I came out, I just felt really ashamed and I felt like -- I was embarrassed and I think Pamela said to me that she thought maybe it's because I was too skinny to be in the water because the water was cold and -- but, yeah, it was kind of -- I was just ashamed and I felt like there wasn't much comfort on the other side, so I was just embarrassed and I felt like a loser.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I'm not sure directly when, but around that time there were more interventions. Like Pam and Clare came to me and said that they were going to, like, yeah, make -- help me get better somehow, or do something. I don't really remember what the actual conversations were, but they started making me food and I think I went to stay at Sara's, which is Clare's sister Sara Bronfman, for a bit, and then I was staying with Clare. Like there was much more monitoring of me and what I was doing and I needed to start checking in my weight more regularly, which I think was every day, but I'm not sure at that point.

SYLVIE: In her room. She had a room in a house in Clifton Park, as well as the farm, and she actually was there way more than she was ever at the farm and she -- I was in her room with her on the floor.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I just had my stuff, like, in a little kind of circle around my bed.

SYLVIE: Yeah. Well, I was kind of lying about my weight to people quite a lot. I was -- like I say, I think really struggling with anorexia at that point and I was pretending I was heavier than I was, or I was doing things to manipulate the number on the scale, so, like drinking tons of water, holding all my possessions and things before I stood on the scale and then reporting that number versus the real number. I kept myself not knowing what the real number was a lot of the time. And then -- I was going to say it was suggested, but some -- somehow I ended up in -- I was told it was a good idea for me to take levels 2A and then level 2B, which are another type of ESP training, and in the first one is called anatomy of mind/body and I don't really remember that one so much, but the second one called breaches of ethics and in that one I had admitted that I had been lying about my weight to the head trainer which was Lauren Salzman.

SYLVIE: I think it's when you -- well, the words that I would say were used in ESP is like if you don't uphold yourself, so -- sorry. I'm just having a hard time thinking how I would describe what that means. I guess it's like not being the person you should be or something like that.

SYLVIE: Yeah, definitely, and there were people -- I think if you were a proctor, I think it was a proctor, you even had to -- you had to write like a breach plan, like how you were going to overcome your ethical breach. So it was definitely a thing that was talked about a lot.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I think at some point after I had admitted that I was lying about my weight at that time. I was called to Nancy's office, Nancy Salzman, and she told me that if I didn't get to a hundred pounds -- and I was given I think a two-week period, if I didn't do that, then I would have to leave the community.

SYLVIE: Yeah, definitely. I was extremely scared by that.

SYLVIE: Because I didn't really feel like I had anywhere else to go. I didn't have another -- like I say, I didn't have another life plan. I didn't really have any friends anywhere else, I didn't -- I felt so dependent on Clare and I didn't want to leave -- leave the community, so that was a huge motivator for me, yeah.

SYLVIE: No, not that I remember.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I needed to start checking in my weight to -- at that time, I think it was Nancy, Clare and Keith every day, and my -- a report of what I had eaten, and -- and so -- and my sister needed to come and watch me weigh myself each morning. So I basically just started eating as much as I possibly could because I was going to make sure that I hit that hundred pounds in that time.

SYLVIE: Yeah, it was around then.

SYLVIE: Keith and Clare primarily, but during that two-week period that I had to get to a hundred pounds, I also checked in with Nancy every day.

SYLVIE: Yeah, for a lot of years of like checking-in my food and my weight.

SYLVIE: Very rarely. Like, I would say the only times that that would happen is if I felt like I had a really strong legitimate excuse for not doing it, which would be like I once went to Spain with a boyfriend and I didn't want to take the computer just so that I could check-in, and a scale just so that I could check-in my weight. So I feel like that was a time where I didn't do it, but I almost can't remember when I didn't not do it, if that makes sense.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I went home. I think it was Christmas 2006. Yeah, it would have been Christmas 2006.

SYLVIE: A lot -- I felt like Clare was very anti that idea and so were others, like it was suggested that I get a lot of EM's because they thought it wasn't a good idea for me to go back. I think because I was so thin and it didn't look good. I'm not sure -- that was the impression that I got, anyway.

SYLVIE: I did, yeah.

SYLVIE: I honestly don't remember that much of that Christmas, but I think they were worried about -- well, they were definitely worried about me, but not a lot was said, and that was, I guess, quite common for how we dealt with difficult things at the time. So, yeah, it was a pretty dark Christmas, honestly.

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: I think it expired -- I think it expired at the end of September and then I was allowed to stay an extra month and so I stayed through October, like, as part of the visa or it expired in October and I stayed an extra month, but it was around that time of 2007.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: Well, I'm not -- I'm pretty sure it was even before I left there were discussions about getting me another visa and me coming back, so I think really I was kind of in limbo just waiting for that -- you know, like that was being done or directed by Clare for me and I was kind of, I guess -- I don't even remember what I was doing. I think the thing I remember that I was doing like Rosetta stone and trying to learn Spanish kind of -- like I really wasn't doing very much with my days. I think I was still running, but I don't really remember.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yeah, definitely -- well, and I'd say especially with me, a lot of the time, it was sort of presented to me that it was most upholding of me to be in Albany and that I would sort of lose myself in my indoctrination if I was back in England and, yeah, so it was almost like the best place for me was in Albany.

SYLVIE: Clare Bronfman.

SYLVIE: Right at that time or in general?

SYLVIE: Yes, Keith Raniere.

SYLVIE: I believe that it was taught in the ESP curriculum or, if not, it was said to me by Keith and Clare at different times that it's like what your family has kind of taught you, or the they use the word programming. I'd say Keith and Clare when I say "they," that it's your programming from your family.

SYLVIE: My -- my mom and dad and, like, they kind of programmed you with the way -- and that's -- you've become a certain kind of person because your family had programmed you, that's like your indoctrination.

SYLVIE: That's what I understood it to be, like you're just -- because another nickname that they had for me was Sylvie-bot, like I was a robot, and it was like I'm a robot of my indoctrination is the way that I understood it.

SYLVIE: Correct.

SYLVIE: Undo my indoctrina -- like I shouldn't be just living by my indoctrination, like that's a bad thing.

SYLVIE: For me specifically?

SYLVIE: Like getting married and having a family, like that was told -- that was, like, my indoctrination versus whereas it was presented to me that it was more upholding of me like when I talk about wanting to be an athlete, like that's not in my indoctrination, let's say, would be the way that Clare would speak to me about. It's like it's upholding for me to pursue my running versus like wanting to have a family.

SYLVIE: We talked about my indoctrination in the context of genus, from what I remember for sure, and about taking the genus tracks. Sorry, this is another ESP training.

SYLVIE: Yeah, Clare and -- and the defendant, or Keith Raniere, would call me Sylvie-bot.

SYLVIE: For a short period, at some time I remember him teasing me at volleyball and calling me -- I think it was the Spanish version of piggy, or something related to that, but it didn't last very long, but I remember him calling me something like that.

SYLVIE: Yes. So Clare and -- I believe she had lawyers -- visa lawyers that she was working with, she had a plan that we could create a company -- or she already had a company name or an LLC or something that was called Athletics, and that I could be made to look like an investor of that company and use the investor visa to come across to the States.

SYLVIE: Well, I didn't obviously at that point have the business credentials or the money to invest in any company, and so we talked about or she gave me the idea that she could buy my horse, like use money that would go into my account and sort of pretend to buy my horse, and then the money from that would go back out of my account into either the business or somewhere else, I'm not sure where it was going back to, but to make it look like I had invested that money into the company and therefore qualify for that visa.

SYLVIE: Yes, we did.

SYLVIE: So the money went from Clare's account into my account to make it look like she had bought Butterfly, my horse, or Peggy is what I would call her, and then the money went back out again and into -- I'm not even sure what account, but another account that was related to either her or Athletics.

SYLVIE: No. I sold my horse to someone else a few years later.

SYLVIE: Oh, sorry -- relinquish, does that mean not have ownership of my horse?

SYLVIE: No, I kept ownership of my horse throughout.

SYLVIE: No, 'cause the -- I think they put in an initial -- I say they, Clare and the lawyers put in an initial application that came back saying not -- like that basically there wasn't enough evidence to show that I qualified for the visa and so the idea was abandoned at that point.

SYLVIE: I wasn't really doing anything from what I remember. I mean, I was -- I think I still had an ESP coach. I'm pretty sure I was running. Like I said, I was trying to fill my days and I was living at my parents', from what I remember.

SYLVIE: Yes. After that visa, after that visa was abandoned, at some point then, I got a job in Bristol and I moved in with my sister in Bristol and I started working as an assistant on marketing, like, a personal assistant, marketing assistant for a company called EthosEnergy.

SYLVIE: Not then. I was sort of settled, trying to build a life back in the UK.

SYLVIE: Yes. Me and Clare started talking again about the idea of me coming back and she said -- she gave me the idea that she would help me get a visa to be a student, like, a student visa and doing a university degree which actually did appeal to me because I didn't have a degree and I hadn't finished school and I thought that would be a cool idea.

SYLVIE: No. I went -- I did come and visit and I did, I visited a university and I met, you know, for the interview at the university and was accepted through that, but the visa application got denied.

SYLVIE: Yes. I decided to move to London and I started working for Goldman Sachs.

SYLVIE: I started running for the running club in the UK in London and I started to build a new network of friends out there, like, dating. I got a boyfriend. Like, I just started to build my life in England, in London.

SYLVIE: Yes, I was still checking in every day and I still had a coach, I think. Yes, I'm sure I still had a coach, so I would speak to my coach once a week and things like that.

SYLVIE: Yes. Clare used to say things were, like, that she thought I had sort of lost myself in my indoctrination since I started working at Goldman's and I, but they didn't pick up the phone so often when I was doing my check-ins. I wasn't talking to them that frequently, but I did speak to Keith Raniere a few times during that time where he would talk to me about some things that later I thought became curriculum in the Jness Tracks. More specifically, he was talking to me about the idea that women sort of walk around with a checklist looking for a man that they want to marry and they're kind of, like, objectifying men in a certain way being, like, well, does he match this, that and the other, and I started thinking, oh, is that what I'm doing with my boyfriend and I was paranoid about that.

SYLVIE: Well, probably like whether they were, like, financially stable or -- I would imagine the things, I don't know. Like whether -- I'm not sure, really. I don't even know --

SYLVIE: Okay.

SYLVIE: Well, I'm pretty sure that he said it more in the way like this is what women do and I assume that meant me too, but I think it was, like, my understanding would have been that I'm just looking at a man as, like, a functional thing versus, like, a life partner. That's what I was -- thought he was alluding to, is, like, just looking at, like, can you provide for me, like, are you going to be a good dad for me to have, you know, are you going to provide me children, like, this kind of a thing.

SYLVIE: I'm not sure but I understood it to be a bad thing to do that at that point. I started to feel like, okay, that's a bad thing, I shouldn't do that.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes. I was, I was running and competing a lot in that year and I had done, for the Serpentine Club in London and I had gotten some, like, good -- I would say they were decent results. I got silver at the London championships. I had come in 19th in the national cross-country finals. So I was doing well. And I bumped into the defendant while running training early in the morning and we started having a conversation and he suggested that I have a go at becoming an elite runner, so I could quit Goldman's and give it a go, but I wasn't -- it was like a good last chance to do that essentially.

SYLVIE: No, I went to V Week. That was at V Week that I bumped into him.

SYLVIE: Silver Bay.

SYLVIE: Correct.

SYLVIE: Yes, that I would quit my job and that he could train me.

SYLVIE: I was -- well, yeah, he used to say that I could be an elite runner and that I could run, you know, with the best, with the best, like, I could make it to the elite standard. And I wanted to go to the Olympics and I made that clear.

SYLVIE: My running coach.

SYLVIE: Have I? No, I haven't seen him run.

SYLVIE: I planned -- I started to plan my quitting my job in London. So I planned to quit in February of 2012 which was, you know, after bonuses and all of that kind of thing.

SYLVIE: Well, I was going to quit. I, I asked Sara Bronfman whether I could work for her and whether she had a job for me and she did because I still wanted to try to earn money obviously to pay for myself so I could be, like, be a runner full time. So the plan was to run full time and train full time and support myself through work for Sara and I would come back and forth to the States to be trained by Keith Raniere but I was essentially still living in London.

SYLVIE: I think -- I mean, because I had always, I guess, seemed like chosen different paths to everyone else, I think they thought it was quite typical of me, but it wasn't looked upon as the most sensible idea because I was quite stable in my job, I was doing well with the running club, and this was, like, going out on a limb being trained on my own as a runner with Keith Raniere. It just -- it didn't make a massive amount of sense.

SYLVIE: Yes. Somewhere in that time, Clare spoke to me on the phone and said that I would need to quit running for the Serpentine Club in order to be trained by Keith and stop racing for them.

SYLVIE: I don't remember. I remember getting really upset on that phone call because I had -- I mean, I had become team captain for the ladies at the Serpentine Club, they supported me through so many different things, I trained with them, they were all my friends. So it was very -- that was really hard, but I wanted to be trained by Keith. I thought, you know, he's going to make me into an Olympian. So, yes, it was upsetting but I thought that was the sacrifice that I had to make.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: I went out to the States and I think it was supposed to be for, like, four or five weeks and I ended up staying a little bit longer to take part in the Freihofer which is a 5K race in Albany.

SYLVIE: In the race? Yes.

SYLVIE: Yeah, it was always presented by, I'd say, Pam and Keith and Clare that the Freihofer was, like, an important race and that it was a good chance to sort of be, like, a platform to show, I think it was called R-Tech which was Keith's, the name for Keith's running program, and so it was a way to show Keith's abilities in training runners.

SYLVIE: In Albany.

SYLVIE: In that time, I actually did a few times. So, yes, he came to a few of my training sessions.

SYLVIE: My running sessions?

SYLVIE: In that time, yes, I mean, yes. Do you mean --

SYLVIE: No. He was my running coach and much old -- more like an authority, older man.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: I think probably not until V Week because, actually, that year was the London Olympics and I was living in London and I really wanted to be at as many of the events as I could so I'm pretty sure I didn't come again until V Week.

SYLVIE: I ended up breaking up with my boyfriend at the time because, really, I -- yes, I broke up with my boyfriend and I started to become more separated from the Serpentine because he was really sort of my last contact in that community that I was spending any significant time with. So then we broke up and, yeah, then I really didn't have any connection to friends in London anymore.

SYLVIE: Yeah. From what I remember, yeah.

SYLVIE: To do more training.

SYLVIE: Yes. So, Jness had been going on for a while and that was, like, these -- it was like a women's organization where I think the point of it was, they called it -- I say "they," I'm talking about Jness, the organization -- called it distilling what it means to be a woman. So it's, like -- the question was, like, what are women separate from men and what I understood the point to be was for women to work out what they were uninfluenced by men.

SYLVIE: Well, I think it was supposed to be Pam and Nancy Salzman or one or two, both of them, or maybe Marianna, I'm not sure, but the curriculum I understood always came from Keith.

SYLVIE: Well, when Nancy Salzman would do the dispositions and things, she would -- her, and I knew from her assistant, that she would get what she would call a download from Keith and that would be what she used to write the disposition.

SYLVIE: It's basically the teaching. So it would be, like, a long kind of, like, a monologue or something. It could be up to an hour of them talking at you which is, like, talking -- basically, the lesson would be in this long speech.

SYLVIE: Nancy Salzman.

SYLVIE: Keith Raniere.

SYLVIE: Yes. I think that was after V Week in 2012 from what I remember, yeah.

SYLVIE: I think I first heard about it from Clare or Pam or really the whole -- I say the whole community but people in Albany. We're talking about a lot because it was a big effort from the salespeople to get everybody into the Jness Tracks, like to sell everyone on the idea.

SYLVIE: There were people in, in the ESP that were salespeople but I think when it came to me, that the people that would talk to me about getting into intensive were most typically Pam or Clare.

SYLVIE: They make money by people taking courses. So they would have meetings with people to persuade them to take different courses basically.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I think, I mean, I never did any of that so I'm not sure on the specifics of the structure, but I believe -- well, like, there were different ways that you could make money from what I understand. As a proctor, you made money by the people underneath you and people that you enrolled enrolling people. Like, you would earn commission off all of the sales and then there was a separate thing that was salespeople and then they -- there was something that they called, if you became a certain -- they're called field trainer. That was it. That's, like, if you, you called loads of people on lots of courses and then you trained other people how to sell other people and they started selling people underneath that. You know, like, it was a chain effect, I guess.

SYLVIE: Jness Tracks? Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes, it was a new thing where Jness was going to include men too so it was, like, men and women.

SYLVIE: There was always a lot of persuasion particularly for the first time because it would say, like, this is the only time that Vanguard is going to be teaching it himself directly and he's going to be there in the room and this will be your only chance to have it taught to you by him.

SYLVIE: Oh, first generation, yeah.

SYLVIE: On video, and then they would be called second generation and third generation, et cetera, et cetera.

SYLVIE: No. I mean, I didn't -- I didn't really like taking incentives in general. I definitely didn't like taking the first generation because they would always be extra long hours and it seemed like they were kind of figuring out what was happening while it was happening so sometimes people wouldn't get out of the training until 2 or 3 in the morning. Just the hours were, like, really, really long and especially at that time, I really wanted to focus on my running and being an athlete and it didn't make sense to me to be doing an intensive when, really, I was trying to become an athlete.

SYLVIE: Yes. I told Clare and Pam from what I remember that I didn't want to take it and then either one or both of them suggested I go for a walk with Keith.

SYLVIE: I did, yeah.

SYLVIE: I remember getting really upset on the walk because -- I don't really remember how the conversation started, but he was basically telling me why it was a good idea for me to do the Jness Tracks and he said things like, that I was always, that I was cold and that I would always be coldhearted, and that my children wouldn't love me or, like, those were the things that really I remember from it that really upset me and it was, like, I needed the Jness Tracks to make sure that that didn't happen.

SYLVIE: I'm not sure whether I did because obviously, I mean I was ashamed about that I didn't want to think of myself as being coldhearted and that my children wouldn't love me so that, like, wasn't something I wanted to talk about. I don't remember whether I even told anyone about it. I'm not sure.

SYLVIE: Not then. I didn't take the first generation but then I took the second generation.

SYLVIE: There was a lot of conversation about how, and we had different discussion groups and debriefs from what I remember, where it was, like, men are very -- and these were probably not the exact words from the training, but this is what I understood. Men were very obsessive about sex and that all that they thought about was sex and that's all they really wanted, whereas, women were really materialistic and self-absorbed and narcissistic. That's what I took away from it, and that all we wanted was stuff and be taken care of and not be responsible for anything. And for, like, men to be healthy or primitive men, they would have had sex with multiple people and had multiple partners and that was somehow kind of healthier or normal, whereas, women should be loyal to only one man or that's what's natural for them and if they go beyond that, it's more likely to be something spiteful or, in some way, yes, trying to get back at the man and it's not the normal thing for them.

SYLVIE: I don't really remember that specifically but I think that it was maybe discussed as, like, a pattern that women, like, try to do to try to get something.

SYLVIE: Yes. At some point, I think it was in 2013, but SOP Complete One came out and, again, it was a new training that was going to be taught by Keith.

SYLVIE: Society of Protectors.

SYLVIE: It was, like, the men's version of Jness from what I -- Jness was the women's organization. Society of Protectors was the men's organization and I think it was supposed to be men, like, being honorable or upholding their word or something like that and it was kind of like men becoming better men in some way.

SYLVIE: It was to teach women what it would be like to be a man, I think.

SYLVIE: Well, because it didn't appeal to me. It sounded scary based on my little experience of what I had even in Jness One, I think it that all was in Jness One, the experience with the men giving you that direct teaching of how to be a man type thing. I assumed it was going to be that but way more intense because it was eight days. I had heard some kind of rumors about what might be involved in it and that freaked me out. And at the time, I was staying in Vancouver in my aunt and uncle's house and doing some coaching in Vancouver and also running stuff out there and I was having a really good time so I just didn't want to come back to Albany to take this training.

SYLVIE: Well, it had been presented, I think, in Jness specifically that women lacked character and the SOP Complete would teach us character.

SYLVIE: I think that was one of the examples of how women lacked character, like, we're impulsive and we can't uphold our words. If we say we're going to be on a diet, then we can't uphold the diet, we just eat and, like, we're not conscious of our actions and what we're doing and things like that.

SYLVIE: Well, no, partly because I had, I had anorexia and I still wasn't -- I was still very restrictive and controlling around food so I didn't have -- specifically with food, I definitely didn't have an issue with making sure I didn't eat more food than I should, let's say, whatever that means, but also I was an athlete. I was able to be very regimented in a lot of different ways. I didn't have any struggle with that personally.

SYLVIE: It's stands for exploration of meaning. And I think it's, like, where they -- I keep saying "they." I'm sorry if I'm not being clear, but the teaching from ESP or Vanguard or whoever would say they created that, I believe it's Vanguard, it was, the teaching was that you had these beliefs, like, two different beliefs that didn't match up, and the EM would meld these beliefs and that would be called an integration.

SYLVIE: I felt, like, in my personal experience, it was a lot of the time, if I didn't want to do something, that others would say it was upholding of me but if I didn't want to do it, it was suggested that I get an EM because that would somehow, you know, help. I thought it was to make me change my mind honestly.

SYLVIE: Yeah. If you work with an EMP, you could pay, I think the cheapest was $80 and the most expensive could be $250 or $300.

SYLVIE: That's someone who becomes a professional EM person, an EM'er, or I don't know what you call it.

SYLVIE: I think I had an EM. From what I remember, I had an EM with Dani Padilla.

SYLVIE: She was a Mexican lady that lived in the community and she was an EMP and a proctor.

SYLVIE: Well, I still wasn't agreeing to do it and then I got a call from Clare, I think, at the end of the first day of SOP Complete. So I believe it had already started. And I remember just, again, like, crying on the phone because I felt very bullied by her and I felt -- I think she said things, like, You're never really going to amount to anything. She was going very hard on me about taking this training and I was -- yeah, I just remember crying a lot and I think after that conversation, I still didn't say I would definitely do it. I think I told her I would look into changing my flights but I hadn't committed that I was going to be there but I ended up calling someone else.

SYLVIE: Nicki, Nicki Clyne. I called her and, just to console me somehow because I was upset and I thought that she would understand and yet, she seemed pretty understanding but she didn't really have anything to say to me, I don't think. She was doing SOP Complete herself so she was already in it but, yeah.

SYLVIE: I don't know because I think maybe Clare was going to pay for it again but I would say it was probably 5 or more grand, it might have been 8 grand, I'm not really -- 8,000 or 5,000. I'm not 100 percent sure.

SYLVIE: Not then. I changed my flights and I did come back but I didn't take the training. I took it later in the second time it was offered again.

SYLVIE: Yeah. It was very, I would use the word "regimented." I found it extremely stressful and scary. The whole way through, it's basically, yes, it's kind of, like, that section that I described from Jness but intensified a lot, and then there were different things thrown in that seemed, like, exercises in humiliation, of humiliating the women so that they can see where, like, sort of what they were doing wrong, let's say.

SYLVIE: Yes -- well, see there were different things that happened. There were videos, I think, too. That was just all part of the different humiliation exercises. Like, for instance, in the beginning, there was a girl in the training that got dressed up as a princess and she had to carry a princess wand because they said she was too princess-y. So she had Disney-like clothing put on her so that, to show that she was trying to be too flashy and be too much of a princess. And then at some point, they also did, like, a prize giving ceremony where they pretended the women were, like, cows in a county fair because, apparently, they had their boobs on show too much. So they were given like rosettes and prizes. It was prizes for their utter-type things as cows.

SYLVIE: Yes, although at the end of 2012, I got really sick and so things kind of started to fall apart in my running.

SYLVIE: I was staying -- I think, Vancouver was 2013 although I'm not 100 percent sure, sorry about that -- but I had a place in London for a certain amount of time. I don't remember exactly when I moved out, but then I started to stay a lot more with Clare State-side. So, yes, I had been going back and forth but for the majority of that time, I had, I still had a place in London and all my stuff there.

SYLVIE: I was on the tourist visa waiver.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I think Clare suggested flying through different airports that weren't JFK because it seemed it was harder to get through immigration at JFK. So I flew through Charlotte pretty frequently or I think I flew through Chicago and maybe also Atlanta at different times but definitely through Charlotte.

SYLVIE: Well, I had made a comment that I wanted to, that I thought maybe I wanted to be a triathlete to, to Keith and Clare, I think, and they had mentioned or I think it was Keith that mentioned that triathletes have to train so much more than runners and even up to sort of six hours a day or something like that, and I took that as, like, verbatim so I started training six hours a day minimum, like, cardio and, yeah.

SYLVIE: I sent my training schedule and my results of my schedule every day to Keith and to Clare.

SYLVIE: Not very often but they did. Clare ran Athletics Goals Lab which I was a member of and so in my understanding, she was the go-between between me and Keith, essentially, for my training and that she was to oversee my training so she directed me more through Athletics Goals Lab.

SYLVIE: Not really. I never got a running program or anything like that.

SYLVIE: I was given specific sessions I needed to do by Keith and that was running, that was -- I had to run for as long as I could at 12.1 miles an hour on a treadmill which is a 4:59 per mile pace and then there was another pace which I think was 11.3 or 11.8 or something like that. So I was given these two different paces and told that I needed to extend that time as long as I could.

SYLVIE: Yeah, every time that I did it. I used to run on the treadmill in Clare's basement and she was often upstairs working so I would come up. I needed to report my times every time I did it and the point was to be increasing, but whenever I was sort of -- I was never -- I never reached a point where it was enough. So it never was, like, Oh, you've run long enough at this time. That never happened. So it was basically a failure every time and always looking at, like, Oh, where did you fail, and I felt like I was being told that it was an emotional issue most of the time because I was getting EMs on why I stopped when I stopped and things like that.

SYLVIE: Yeah, about why I stopped when I did speed work.

SYLVIE: I myself worked with people like Dani Padilla, I worked with Karen Unterreiner. I worked with Siobhan Hotaling, and I worked with, I think I worked with Lauren Salzman quite a few times. I worked with several people.

SYLVIE: She was a proctor and the head trainer and she lived in the community. She trained a lot of the incentives.

SYLVIE: I think she had known him since university from what I understood and she seems like, yes, a very devoted friend, I would describe her, of the defendant.

SYLVIE: Yes. I was, like I said, training, like, six, six or more hours a day of cardio and I started feeling very bad and it was very hard to complete the sessions, but by that point, I had, I really thought that it could be in my head. A lot to do with, I think, the training I got in the ESP and I always thought it was some kind of an emotional failing, that I couldn't do what I was trying to do. So I was more focused on just trying to push through because I thought it was more an emotional issue so I was forcing my body very hard essentially. It got worse and worse and worse and then I ended up having an abscess. Eventually, I went to the doctor about it and he told me I was, like, on the verge of sepsis because I had got a really bad, intense infection.

SYLVIE: In my check-ins, I was writing about it, yeah, my check-ins to Keith and Clare. I was saying, like, I'm not feeling very good and, yes, I don't feel, I'm not doing well and I don't feel well.

SYLVIE: I don't remember anyone encouraging me to go to the doctor, not that I remember. I don't remember that being addressed specifically.

SYLVIE: No.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Correct.

SYLVIE: Yes. I'm explaining, because I was in a lot of pain and I didn't know why, so I'm explaining the pain in my bum.

SYLVIE: This is my training log that I would attach to all of the e-mails so that they could see exactly what I did and then there's a column that you can't see, but there was a column of notes about how I felt that came after the actual column on the very end.

SYLVIE: Now I can, yes.

SYLVIE: Yes. That would be where I would talk about how I was feeling and what was going on with me.

SYLVIE: Yes, how I was feeling basically.

SYLVIE: I said: Feeling quite sicky (sic) and run down today. That was one day. The next day, I've said: Had a disrupted night's sleep again. My jaw is painful. Bum is painful too but better than last week. And then I said: Had disrupted sleep again. Waking up with pain. Had an amazing sleep last night. Pain severe in bum. Not sit. I'm not sure. I guess I'm saying I can't sit down, it hurts to sit down. And then: Woke up with pain and fear in the night.

SYLVIE: Yes. It says: Emotionally quite afraid about the pain in left bum. Realized --

SYLVIE: I think that -- choice points was, like, I would say in the teaching described as where you would kind of come to a crossroad, say, in a basic thing. You could decide to have the coffee or the cake if you're hungry or thirsty or whatever, and you would, the choice point would be, like, which do you decide and why.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: I think that's, like, how I relate to running and exercise or how I use it in a certain way.

SYLVIE: Yes. I said I was having a hard time, having a hard time forcing myself through my sessions and I think my results were really going downhill and you could probably see that if you went through all of the check-ins. I wasn't able to get as far as those 12.1 sessions. I just -- yes, everything was sort of going downhill massively.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: I think I had sent it a bit earlier without my training log attached so I was sending it five minutes later with my training log attached.

SYLVIE: Correct.

SYLVIE: Like hardly any exercise. I was trying it see if I could do less training.

SYLVIE: Well, I had been attempting to continue my six hours a day but I literally couldn't get through it, like, I felt so ill. So I think -- I'm not really sure what I meant specifically. I would have had the training log to match it but I was trying to do a lot less than that. I couldn't get through the sessions.

SYLVIE: I was doing, like, 10 to 12 miles running, maybe three hours on the bike, an hour on the cross-trainer, an hour or two hours in the pool. Like, that's how I would make it out. I would spread it across the running, the pool and the cross-trainer and the bike.

SYLVIE: Keith and Clare. They were the people that were basically overseeing it, yes.

SYLVIE: I did some of it in Albany because I was going back and forth. I was also doing it in London but sending the training log with this style of message every day.

SYLVIE: Yes, so they could see where I was fitness-wise and so we could record all of that data. I think I recorded the number of calories I ate, my heart rate, my -- I'm not sure if I had my temperature, but I used to record my temperature at some point and I had all of these different data points and I would put it in that spreadsheet for them and send it to them daily.

SYLVIE: No, not until I got the issue and then I went to the doctor.

SYLVIE: Yeah, so it's got --

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: My heart rate in there -- what heart rate when I was exercising?

SYLVIE: I didn't have that on here.

SYLVIE: No. I don't know whether I recorded my heart rate while I was exercising.

SYLVIE: I think I mentioned the 160 on the cross-trainer because it shows you on the screen when you hold the things, but I don't think I was wearing a heart rate monitor while exercising.

SYLVIE: Correct.

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: Yeah. Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I think I was sort of -- I was upset because if you had -- well, you saw in my previous check-ins and in that column, I had been talking about the pain and waking up in the night scared with the pain and things like that, and so, I don't know, it just felt a little bit like all of that was dismissed or not even read maybe because the comment was to keep exercising if it doesn't hurt. I just -- I didn't really feel like I was -- had the care from the people that were supposed to be my coaches.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Okay. So it says: RE doctor, he is happy that the abscess is getting bigger, as it gives them a better chance of being accurate when they cut into it and cause less overall damage. He thinks the pain I have had in the whole area may be an effect of the infection but we'll know more once we have healed this part. He said the reason why being an elite athlete is hard on the body is because you are stressing every system to its max and if you have a high stress temperament, you burn out in all areas, which I think is an accurate assessment of me. My body has hit burnout a few times. He thinks heal time will likely be four to six weeks with an open wound that will need monitoring and redressing by the nurse and probably more antibiotics. He said that with good management, the infection should not come back but they can. He thinks I just really need to back off for a while and take things steady.

SYLVIE: But, like, stop training so much and just let me body get better.

SYLVIE: I said: I also just wanted to share my process with you more, maybe so you can understand what is going on for me better. I have been pushing through and fighting myself for a long time ignoring my body to try to do what I thought was the right thing and really feeling like I am -- I am feeling -- really feeling like I am like a wound up ball of fear and tension for so long. I have always felt compelled to try to achieve something or be something and I'm now starting to consider that maybe I don't need to be the best at something to love myself and be okay with me. I feel quite out of touch with what I truly want. A lot of the time I feel like I'm trying to gain love or acceptance through results and being good at something. Not being able to train, not doing much on the work front, and generally not feeling like I'm achieving any external results anywhere has actually been quite freeing and scary at the same time. It is making me think about what do I really want outside of all of these things. I'm not sure the elite athlete part is the one I want, but I don't know whether I know what else I want. I know I want to have self-love, peace, and compassion and to have deep meaningful relationships, a family, and also to feel I am challenging myself physically because I do love movement and physical exertion and the beauty of sport and challenging myself emotionally and in the thought realm. I have been feeling very lonely on the path of training. I have a deep respect for it and the people that take it. It's a lonely ride and there are no shortcuts. If you want to get to the top, it takes many hours, days, weeks, years of singular dedication to the goal. I don't think I appreciated that before having this taster period of committing to it wholly.

SYLVIE: So that is an insight into my world right now and what I'm thinking. Everyone from ESP or not has suggested that before making any major decisions I get well, rest, heal, and take some objective time, which I think is a very good idea. I know that I needed a break before I threw the baby out with the bath water, so this has enforced a break before I broke myself.

SYLVIE: I really felt like what -- like I said, for a long time, I had been really lonely and really struggling to keep going with this and I just felt completely my own and I really was trying to get Clare to understand what it was like to be me because I didn't feel supported in that at all and I felt like she was always trying to channel me into continuing doing what I was doing and so I was trying to express how I felt.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: I felt like this was a -- quite a common response from her and I had somehow let her down and that if I was to quit being an athlete, that it was me going back in the robot perspective, like saying that I wanted a family or that potentially this isn't what I wanted was me being a robot, and so I just felt backed into a corner. Again, like, I just -- I feel like these kind of things wore me down over time and I became more and more apathetic about what I should be doing with my life.

SYLVIE: Yes. At that time, they drained the abscess and I had all these antibiotics and I think I had -- it was, like, a lot -- it was antibiotics over at least a couple of months or something, but I had a very high dose of antibiotics and the draining process, but it turned out that that didn't work and it turned into a fistula which is -- I don't know if you want the medical -- I don't even think I can give the medical explanation, but basically, it's like a channel in your body that shouldn't be there and I ended up having to have a surgery where they lay the wound open and it needs to heal from the inside out, which is like a six- to eight-week process of having the wound packed every day by a nurse.

SYLVIE: No. I carried on running and training.

SYLVIE: Because I felt like that's what I was supposed to be doing, that's what I needed to do to make sure I wasn't being a robot.

SYLVIE: Yeah, my daily check-ins carried on.

SYLVIE: I don't remember that. I mean, I continued following the program and they had my running program. I don't remember them saying you should stop running and rest.

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: No. I don't remember my doctor recommending a time frame, but I didn't want to travel because I was needing to go to the nurse every day to have this wound packed and so I was kind of pushing back on the idea from Clare that I should come back because I just -- I didn't want to sit on the plane seat with this wound and also the nurses in the U.K. were doing it, but she had suggested there was someone in the ESP community who used to be a nurse that could pack it for me, and so I think a couple of weeks left of the packing process, I -- with a couple weeks still left, I came back to the states and had this person in the ESP community pack it for me.

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: Correct. It had to be packed with a special fiber that would make it heal from the inside out.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I was still running, and I think at some point I think I got back on the bike, too, but I was definitely still running.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I was still checking in my training.

SYLVIE: Yeah.

SYLVIE: I would stay at Clare's house.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Correct.

SYLVIE: On and off, yeah.

SYLVIE: I remember the defendant -- or Keith Raniere joking with me about getting married for a visa way earlier on -- I think that was when I had been denied either the investor or student visa -- and at that time, I was like, No way, and kind of laughed it off because I -- I didn't want to just marry someone for the sake of a visa.

SYLVIE: Yeah, I knew that people had done it and so I did know that that was something that had happened, but I didn't want to just, like, marry a random person for a visa.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: So I met John, my husband -- my now husband. I met him for the first time probably in 2008, so I already knew him, and -- and then we both started working on a project called The Knife -- well, I was already working on it and he started working on it and -- sorry. I thought you were about to ask me something. But anyway, so we were working on this project within the community called The Knife and we were -- I was in London, I think, at that time and we were spending hours a day on Skype basically -- whoops, I'm not even talking into the mic -- we were spending, like, hours a day on Skype working on this project, and -- with him and several others, but he kind of headed up the group that I was working in, so I got to know him really well and I was, like, flirting with him a lot through message and things and I was taking a real liking to him.

SYLVIE: Yes. I started to kind of scheme in my head that he is someone that I would marry though I would -- that sounded really weird but it is sort of weird. I mean, he was someone that I wanted to build a relationship with and if I was going to get married and develop a life in America, he was the person I would want to do that with.

SYLVIE: Yes, we are married now.

SYLVIE: He's in the courtroom with my dad. I can see my dad but I think he might be sat behind you.

SYLVIE: Yes, we did. I mean, at the moment, he's been staying in the States working on a green card or equivalent for the UK but, yes, the whole time we've been married.

SYLVIE: I thought -- in my head, I thought the only way that I was going to be able to get married without it being seen as me being still being the rover is if I got it, like, kind of approved by Keith first and present it to Keith and Clare in a way that they would accept. So I told Clare that I had this idea that I wanted to do this with John and that I was going to speak to Keith about it. And so I met -- I asked Keith if I could meet with him to speak to him about it.

SYLVIE: In, I think it's Pamela, either him or Pamela's car outside of the house. I think he was living in Clifton Park.

SYLVIE: It's on Oregon Trail. I just don't remember what number it is.

SYLVIE: Yes, we met in the car. I don't remember why in the car but we did meet in the car.

SYLVIE: Yes. So I sort of told him what I wanted to do. I said I wanted to see if John would consider marrying me and that we would -- that I would, obviously, work on getting a green card but we would kind of develop a relationship and sort of do it backwards, I guess, and I wanted to see if John would consider that and what did he think.

SYLVIE: He suggested doing a business arrangement at least for the first two years and that it should be platonic. So he was talking about it a lot like that, but I didn't make any sort of commitments for doing anything in a specific way but I just remember at the end of the conversation, he like put his finger on my arm and saying, Oh, it's a shame, we could have had fun. And I remember laughing and thinking that was a creepy comment but sort of laughing it off.

SYLVIE: Yes. John had invited me down to New York for the weekend anyway so I thought this would be an opportunity to kind of make, like, present it to him and that's what I did basically, yeah.

SYLVIE: He said he would -- his exact words was he would consider it, but then we basically spent a month having sort of in-depth conversations about what we would want out of this situation, like, could we see ourselves having a future together, did we both want a family, basically seeing if we could arrange our relationship and do our relationship backwards in that way, getting married first and then developing the relationship from there.

SYLVIE: New York City.

SYLVIE: Yes, I had come down to have that discussion with him but then I ended up staying longer to talk, to have these conversations. Like, we decided this is something obviously we didn't want to just do. We needed to figure out whether we had, like, a match in intentions of what we really wanted.

SYLVIE: We did get married.

SYLVIE: The 7th of July of 2015.

SYLVIE: My mom, my sister and her husband, obviously, I was going to say John, but that one's obvious, his friends Mark and Ken, Clare was there and we had our friend Harjay take pictures.

SYLVIE: Yeah. At some point, she pulled me aside and said, You're acting -- it was almost, like, I was acting too happy and I was lost in the bubble or something, which is a phrase that was used in, I think, it's SOP Complete or Jness, like, women live in a bubble. And she used "in a bubble," like, we don't have to be responsible for anything, we live in fantasy land and everything gets taken care of. You're lost in the bubble or you're acting too happy or something like that, so I remember trying to tone it down.

SYLVIE: Yes. So Clare had said to me about not having sex with him, but then also my coach approached me. I was being coached by someone called Rosa Laura.

SYLVIE: Rosa Laura Junco. And she said to me, I think Keith suggested that you don't have sex for two years. I don't remember what the official explanation of why that was but I think that was to develop our relationship more or something but it should be two years specifically. So, yeah, it was, like, we were getting these messages about that we shouldn't be having sex.

SYLVIE: Yeah. So, we did, and I think from what I understood from -- well, from what John had shared with me, he wasn't -- we were planning on building our relationship first anyway. So we didn't have, like, specific expectations around that, but we would have just more naturally allowed things to develop, I think, or at least that's what I would have planned on doing, but now we had this, like, weird rule which we decided to stick to which was two years. At that time we decided to stick to it.

SYLVIE: Yeah, we said we would be -- I don't know how to say that word. Monogamous?

SYLVIE: Yes. Basically, we wouldn't be -- we wouldn't have relationships with other people. We were still committed to our relationship between us. That was definitely one of them. And we -- I mean, we had written a whole contract about where we would spend time, you know, that we would spend half the time in Albany, half the time in New York City. It contained a whole bunch of different things in it, but we had written that up before we got married.

SYLVIE: Yes. So it was supposed to be that I would spend time in New York City and then he would also spend time in Albany because he lived in New York City and at that time, I had been staying at Clare's in Albany and my sister was up in Clifton Park too and the whole community was in Clifton Park, however, I didn't want to live in New York full time, I don't remember why, but we agreed. We got a place in a community called Twin Lakes in Clifton Park and he had his place in New York City and we were going to spend time in both.

SYLVIE: I didn't feel like it because comments were made to me at some point specifically by Lauren Salzman that I wasn't doing, that I hadn't been well, she said, since I've been with John and I felt like that was saying, like, somehow it was John's fault and she sort of started to think that in certain ways. And then also Clare had said to me how I was acting like a robot when I was spending a lot of time in New York City. So I just always felt the pressure to not come across as, like, too committed to John or something or I felt, like, I would get these comments about robot and indoctrination. So I wasn't acting like I didn't want to be married or something. It was weird.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: Yes. So I was in the Jness room and I think I was going through all of that time just trying to figure out how to be a wife without being told I was acting too much like a wife or something, and I was just having a hard time figuring all of that out and I was approached by Monica.

SYLVIE: Duran. And she said to me, like, you seem really unhappy, like -- yeah, she was just talking to me about that, and I was, like, thinking, oh, yes, I am quite unhappy. She said, Well, there's something that I have for you that's basically going to -- I don't remember her exact words, but I got the impression from whatever she said that she had this special project that could change everything for me and that it would help me be the person that I've always wanted to be and then different things like that that gave me some hope that there was something that was potentially for me that would make everything better.

SYLVIE: Well, it wasn't like we were super close then, but when I had been anorexic, when I was really anorexic, like, I needed people -- well, the way it was set up was that people were monitoring my meals within the community. Clare put Monica in charge of taking care of me and so me and Moni -- Monica became close during that time because she was almost like a big sister or a mother to me. She would cook meals for me. I went everywhere with her. She would take me to the salsa club. We went salsa dancing. She was really fun. Like, she was someone that I felt, yeah, that I could trust and that she was fun to be around and nice to me always.

SYLVIE: Yes, Moni. I used to call her "Moni."

SYLVIE: Yes, people that were close or knew her called her Moni.

SYLVIE: Yes. She told me that she had this special project and that it had nothing to do with the ESP or NXIVM but it was something that could really help me but if I wanted to hear what it was, she needed to give me some collateral.

SYLVIE: I was intrigued because I was, like, wow, this is a whole new thing that has nothing to do with the community or Keith or no one, it was, like, a new thing, and I'm pretty much sure she told me at that point, it's free. So I was, like, wow, this is not something to do with Nexium or anything of this structure.

SYLVIE: Yeah, that if I wanted to -- she couldn't tell me what it was unless I was willing to provide some collateral.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was either introduced in Jness or The Ethicist. So I had heard it, like, multiple times before so it wasn't a new thing to me.

SYLVIE: Yeah. It was, like, something that -- see, the way that I remember it being taught was that, say, if you had -- if I had agreed to cut your lawn, then I would give you the keys to my, I could give you the keys to my house and say if I don't cut your lawn, then you have my house. So it's kind of used to make you do the thing that you said you were going to do.

SYLVIE: So I -- she gave me some ideas about what the collateral should be and that it should be something that was, like, extremely embarrassing or, like, ruinous, like, something that you would never want somebody to know about you and if they did, then they would think completely differently about you and it could, like, destroy your relationship with them. So it should be something, like, so strong that, you know, not even your family would look at you the same way. That was the kind of thing that she said.

SYLVIE: I was sort of, like, oh, wow, like, this must be, like, that could be a very special project or, like, a big deal because, I don't know, it just sounded quite extreme, but I was up for doing it. So I came up with an idea and I presented it to her that she told me -- and she took it away for a night and she came back the next day and was, like, Lauren told me it wasn't strong enough and I thought it was pretty extreme so I was surprised it wasn't strong enough.

SYLVIE: I think I presented at least one more idea that got, that I was told wasn't strong enough and then she gave me some more, like, direct ideas about what I should use. Like, I think she said, like, why don't you say, like, that you want to be a prostitute or that you are a prostitute or something like that. She gave me more specific ideas. And she suggested that I write it, like, in a letter to my parents, that I put it in a stamped addressed envelope so that all she would have to do is send it to my parents if I was ever to, you know, break the collateral.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I wrote a letter about, you know, that I was a prostitute and I made it, like, really detailed and very, reflecting really badly on me in the way that I saw it and it was addressed to my parents.

SYLVIE: Yes, she thought that was strong enough. So she invited me to meet her at her house and then when I got to her house, I needed to go upstairs, she asked me to go upstairs, and I had to provide a picture to go with the collateral.

SYLVIE: She asked me for it to be, like, a full frontal naked photo and she had set up a camera in her spare bedroom for me to do that.

SYLVIE: She said she was going to put it in a safe and I remember her saying she wasn't going to look at it because I was, like, wow, I was embarrassed, but she tried to minimize my feelings, like, no one's going to look at it, like, it's no big deal type of thing.

SYLVIE: Yes, I did, on her camera and gave her her camera back.

SYLVIE: Yeah, definitely.

SYLVIE: I thought I was in the project and the collateral would basically keep my mouth shut about it and do what I -- yes, so now I was Monica's slave and she was my master and the collateral was in place to keep that going.

SYLVIE: Yes. So at some point, I don't remember when exactly but she told me that the collateral needed to be made stronger month by month. I think it was, yes, it was month by month and that I would need to bring her new collateral that was, you know, more damaging and that it would need to basically make my commitment stronger and stronger.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: No.

SYLVIE: Yes.

SYLVIE: I wasn't really sure. My fears -- what my actual fears were, I'm not sure what she was talking about, but my --

SYLVIE: I wanted to be a better wife and a better partner. I felt really incapable of being just, like, honest with people about my feelings because I always felt like I needed to do what was pleasing to people so I was hoping to be a more honest, be able to, you know, be more myself with people, I guess.

SYLVIE: I don't really have a career anymore. Like, I don't -- I've really felt like I really didn't know what I was doing. I was working on The Knife. I was still doing work for Sarah. I was still kind of running but I didn't think I would ever make it as an elite athlete anymore and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have done -- I didn't feel like I had a proper career.

SYLVIE: In that first meeting?

SYLVIE: No.

SYLVIE: You're talking about -- I mean, I got assigned to do things.

SYLVIE: Okay. Yeah, I learned -- you're talking about branding, giving her a vow. So I learned about several other aspects over time but, yeah, not in that first meeting.

SYLVIE: So, yeah, Monica, and this may have been in that first meeting, I'm sorry, but Monica asked me to create a secret chat with her and Telegram so I needed to invite her to a secret chat in the messaging app Telegram.

SYLVIE: So it's an app that you download on your phone and they're encrypted messages. So it's encrypted end to end but then it also has another feature where you can make the chat secret which I'm not really sure exactly what that means, but basically it's even harder to get into it or to be able to see what's in it.

SYLVIE: Yes. So the secret chat was going to be used for communication from Monica to me and vice versa. And so, basically, there were things called readiness drills in the Master/Slave program where I needed to have my phone with me at all times. I was never allowed to not have my phone on me. She said there was no going dark which was something that you could do in a different organization called SOP. There was a concept of being ready and you had to respond to a drill on your phone, when you were asked whether you were ready, you had to say, yes, I was ready, but you could go dark in that organization in that I could say, I'm not going to have my phone with me today, I'm not reachable, whereas Monica told me in this, in the Master/Slave program, there is no going dark so you need to be available 24/7.

SYLVIE: Often, like, 3 in the morning. It was, like -- it was all times of the day or night but, definitely, it happened through the night several times and I had a loud buzzer thing for it to make sure I could hear it because if you were late in readiness, you had to do something called a penance.

SYLVIE: It's -- you do something that's physically painful to you to motivate you to do better next time or to make sure you didn't fail again.

SYLVIE: So after -- I think it was after two weeks, I'm not really sure of the time span, but Monica asked me to meet her because she told me she had her first assignment for me.

SYLVIE: Yes. And she said my assignment -- when we met in person, she told me that my assignment was to seduce Keith.

SYLVIE: I think I, like, almost thought of laughed in shock because I was, like, What do you mean, seduce him? And she went on to explain what she meant by that. And I was, like, Oh, God, like, this is not what I want to do, but my understanding was it was an assignment from my master and I didn't have a choice, so I was freaked out basically.

SYLVIE: Well, I thought I didn't have a choice. She told me that I was -- she was my master and that I needed to do whatever she said and I had given her this collateral so my understanding was that I had to do what my master said or my collateral would be released.

SYLVIE: She was, like, you know, how you would seduce any guy, like, that you wanted to date or something, just like how you would seduce them. So I didn't, I didn't -- I didn't want to do it anyway, but I was kind of just, like, Oh, God like what does that even mean.

SYLVIE: I didn't do anything for a little bit about it. I'm not sure how long it was but I just sort of didn't do anything and then she came to me and prompted me that I needed to start my assignment. And so, eventually, I sent Keith a What'sApp message saying something like, "Your glasses look hot" or "You look hot in your glasses" or something like that.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I don't remember what the initial exact response was but we were -- we were What'sApp'ing back and forth and he said something at some point along the lines of, what I remember to be, "You are going to have to do better than that."

SYLVIE: Well, I think at the time, I was kind of, like, oh, that's weird, it seems like he knows what I'm supposed to be doing. I thought it was a secret. I didn't know, I didn't know whether he knew that I was supposed to seduce him. I was hoping that maybe he didn't know that, that this was from Monica, and so I thought that was weird.

SYLVIE: In the end, they were literally just photos, like, of my vagina basically with not my face, like, nothing.

SYLVIE: Yeah. I think at times, he gave me actual poses that would be good to do, but, yeah.

SYLVIE: No. I thought it was part of my assignment, that I had to do it.

SYLVIE: Well, I was spending all this time in the bathroom trying to get, I don't know if you would call it a good picture, but, like, it was a freaky thing that I had to do in secret and, obviously, I lived with John, my husband. It was really affecting my psyche now having this weird side assignment that seemed to have turned quite dark. I was, like, very anxious and cagey. It was, like, an extremely weird, stressful time.

SYLVIE: Well, yeah, me and John were not having sex, so, yeah.

SYLVIE: I think it was a really long time. I don't know the -- what I call a long time. It must have been a few months because the date -- I mean, I can remember the time frame that it stopped because of an incident that happened with my dad.

SYLVIE: My dad contacted me on Facebook and said something like -- I think it started with him saying, like, You're going to have to get your own iCloud account, or something like that, because I didn't realize the iCloud accounts -- I knew that he had -- he had given me access to his iTunes library and that had somehow linked to iCloud account, and so when I was deleting these photos, it was creating a deleted photos file or something in the iCloud and he must have gone in there and he sent me another message saying, I found you medical pictures -- he called them medical pictures -- and so I was just, like, absolutely horrified.

SYLVIE: I begged him not to say anything to anyone and I, like, apologized because I -- I assumed he thought I was sending them to John and I definitely didn't go into details about what was happening with him, I didn't want to -- you know, I just begged him not to tell anyone basically and said, I'm so sorry, and then I stopped sending the pictures.

SYLVIE: Monica came to me and said -- sorry.

SYLVIE: Thanks.

SYLVIE: -- that I shouldn't have just stopped sending the pictures without permission and so I needed to ask Keith's permission to stop sending the pictures, and so I did ask his permission, and I'm pretty sure I explained what had happened with the photos of my dad, and I definitely told Monica about what had happened with my dad, and so he said I could stop sending the photos and the next thing would be in person.