Noah Goldberg
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Allison Mack, the “Smallville” actress who joined the NXIVM sex cult and recruited young women to join the sadistic group, was sentenced to three years in prison Wednesday as she cried in court.
“I renounce Keith Raniere and all of his teachings,” a weepy Mack said through a cracking voice at sentencing. Her hands shook as she read form her prepared speech. “I am sorry. … The guilt is permanent.”
Mack, 38, pleaded guilty in 2019 to racketeering charges of forced labor for her role in duping the women into joining the secret society within NXIVM.
“She is the Ghislaine Maxwell to Keith’s Jeffrey Epstein,” Jessica Joan, one of Mack’s victims, said in court as part of her victim impact statement to the judge. “Allison Mack is a predator and an evil human being.”
Joan, the only victim of Mack’s to show up in court to speak, said she considered Mack like the older sister she never had but quickly was groomed to “become a sex slave to her beloved Keith Raniere.”
“This demon of a woman tried to use my pain … against me,” Joan said. “She sought me out like a predator stalking its prey.”
She added: “Alison Mack is an evil sociopath, a menace to society and a danger to innocent human beings.”
Mack was one of eight top-level masters within DOS, a secret group within NXIVM known also as “The Vow.” The group was filled with “slaves” and “masters” and Keith Raniere was at the apex.
After pleading guilty and turning on Raniere a month before the sex cult leader’s 2019 trial, Mack provided “substantial assistance” to the feds, who asked that the judge in her case sentence her below the guidelines range, which calls for up to 17 1/2 years in prison.
She gave them emails, documents and even an audio recording in which Raniere came up with the brand of his initials that they forced the women in DOS to get.
“You were a slave as well as a master,” federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis concluded. “You were an essential accomplice … a willing and proactive ally (to Raniere.”
To climb the ladder and become a master, slaves had to recruit more slaves, prosecutors and victims said. The slaves were branded with Raniere’s initials in their pubic area, though they were not aware at the time that that is what they were being branded with.
Mack falsely told other women she recruited that they were joining a women’s empowerment group or sorority and purposefully concealed that Raniere was at the helm of DOS, according to the feds.
She forced the “slaves” to provide “collateral” to join the group, which included nude photos or “damaging confessions about themselves and loved ones,” according to prosecutors.
Mack directed two of her “slaves” to have sex with Raniere.
She directed Joan to seduce Raniere. Joan left the group instead of doing it.
“I give you permission to enjoy it,” Mack told Joan at the time.
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