It’s been reported that former Smallville actress Allison Mack, 35, is now the second in command at the controversial self-help group NXIVM (pronounced NEX-i-um) that is allegedly a sex cult. In an undated clip, she recorded a recruiting video for Jness, one of the sub-organizations within that caters to women’s empowerment. It is a testimonial that any girl can relate to, Allison as is seen telling the camera that after a breakup she felt “scared and lost and confused and am I going to be single forever? Am I ever going to have a relationship? What’s wrong with me?” Hey, we’ve all been there, right? But then things take a little bit of a weird turn where the self-help jargon comes in.
“Once I started the program I realized what I was looking for wasn’t a relationship, it was an experience about myself and in my life. And once I understand how to have that experience about myself and in my life for me, then I can have the relationship I want or not, but I’m okay in either circumstance,” she continued. Umm, what? No seriously, what is she talking about? “Going forward into my life from this place with that recognition I feel like the possibilities are endless and there’s no fear of shooting what I want for ideally, there’s not reason to settle because any way I look at it I’m going to be good, and that’s awesome,” she concluded her testimonial about Jness. It really doesn’t give us any insight into what the group did to make her have an “experience about myself,” but for people who are lost and looking for answers, maybe that sounded good?
In 2013 she gushed about Jness in a YouTube “Ask Allison” session where she shared how thankful she was to be devoted full-time to Jness and how it turned women’s lives around. “Working for Jness is the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most challenging because it consists of working with a group of people who are interdependent. No one is ever punished or told that they’re wrong or they’re bad,” she glowed while speaking from a peaceful leafy green backyard.
“Working for Jness is the most purposeful and satisfying thing I’ve ever done. Watching the women who are in Jness completely transform and evolve in a way that’s so pure it’s such a privilege. Seeing people’s life paths completely turn 180 degrees when in one moment they felt like this was all that they had and this was all that they could do and then they come through Jness and our community and it’s like a whole ‘nother life is born from their new experience of themselves,” she continued. “Working for Jness is grounding and satisfying and humbling and wonderful,” Allison added, making Jness sound like the greatest experience ever! But what does it DO??? She makes everything seem like rainbows and sunshine without many details about the group or what it does.
Allison and Nxivm have now come under fire as former members have come forward claim that there is a dominant and submissive, master to slave sorority in the organization that physically brands women with Allison and Nxivm founder Keith Raniere‘s initials, sometimes against their will. Sarah Edmondson told the New York Times in an Oct. 17 expose that in March of 2017, she and five other women were gathered for a ceremony where they were told they would be getting tattoos as admission. Instead, they were forcibly held down on a massage table while a female doctor used a cauterizing device to burn a two-inch brand onto their lower left hip. The agonizing procedure lasted up to 30 minutes and Sarah said, “I wept the whole time. I disassociated out of my body.” she told the paper.
The Times said that former members have depicted 57-year-old Raniere as someone who would brainwash women, have sex with them and put them on 500-800 calorie near-starvation diets because he liked his women super skinny. One of those women is reportedly India Oxenberg, the 26-year-old daughter of actress Catherine Oxenberg, 56. The star went public in October about her plight to try to rescue her daughter from the Albany, NY-based group after she learned that India had allegedly become rail thin, her hair was falling out and she hadn’t had her period in year.
The former Dynasty star met with prosecutors in the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman‘s office on Nov. 7 to see how she can help her daughter, who now says she is fine, refuses to leave the group and has cut off contact with her mom. “Our office met to hear her concerns,” a spokeswoman for Schneiderman said. While India is an adult and it’s up to her to leave the group, Schneiderman thinks the best case his prosecutors could have against NXIVM would be regarding the women’s claims that they were branded against their will.
HollywoodLifers, after watching Allison’s recruitment video, does she make Jness sound appealing? Or does it come across as super creepy?