Twelve years ago, Smallville star Allison Mack attended a “women’s empowerment” seminar run by a group called Nxivm. When the seminar ended, the 23-year-old Mack accepted an invitation to fly back to Albany, N.Y., to meet Keith Raniere, the group’s leader, who told her Nxivm could help her with her acting career, report The Hollywood Reporter.
Flash forward to April 2018, when Mack, now 35, and Raniere, 57, were indicted on three felony counts of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor. Prosecutors say that Mack ran a brutal, coercive sex cult within the Nxivm structure called DOS, which stands for Dominus Obsequious Sororium, or Master Over Slave Women. This secretive group’s members—who, after joining, were referred to as have taken “The Vow”—required its subjects to hand over compromising pictures or secrets, as a form of insurance against breaking with the group. Mack allegedly occupied the second-most-senior position in DOS, just below Raniere, as a “master” who recruited “slaves” that were held down by other slaves and branded with a hot cauterizing pen. This was done forcefully and without consent, and also without telling the victims the nature of the scar that would form: Mack’s and Raniere’s initials: K, R, A and M.
So, how did a Mack go from Hollywood starlet to sex cult seductress?
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