On Keith Raniere & NXIVM 4: Matt Bywater, Confronting Raniere
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/12
Keith Raniere’s narcissistic tendencies were evident in his grandiose titles and manipulative control over NXIVM. Matt Bywater discusses how NXIVM’s structure ensured psychological harm, even for short-term members. He highlights the cult’s targeting of wealthy individuals like the Bronfmans and Oxenbergs for financial and social influence. Raniere’s misogyny, projection, and escalating abuse are explored, as well as the legal gaps that delayed justice. Survivors stress the importance of focusing on coercive control rather than sensationalist aspects. Bywater urges reporters to highlight these underlying mechanisms, which enable the broader exploitation within destructive cults like NXIVM.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do these titles like “grand master,” essentially, speak to the narcissistic tendencies of Keith Raniere? I reference the short-form of his crimes in a recent interview with mention of other characters.
Matt Bywater: Absolutely they do. Such titles reflect the grandiosity and god-like complex of narcissistic psychopaths like Keith Raniere. These personality types depend on the admiration and obedience of their followers as a sort of supply. In narcissism terminology, this is known as ‘narcissistic supply’.
Jacobsen: Are there any typical outcomes of those who stay in a short time versus those who stay in these cult systems or take part in their programs and then leave?
Bywater: Destructive cults like NXIVM are structured like a pyramid: the closer you get to the center, the more harm and abuse you will suffer.
However, there is risk to cult members even at the periphery of the cult. The entire NXIVM curriculum was designed to break people down and soften them up for abuse to come. I don’t know what has happened to those 17,000 NXIVM participants who came, took courses and left; I’m quite sure there have been no academic studies about ex-NXIVM members en masse.
But no doubt many of these people suffered psychologically in the long-term, perhaps in ways that they are not consciously aware of. There is a phenomenon called ‘cult hopping’ where cult members will either return to their cult or join a new one because they are not aware of what was done to them. We need more academic research and journalistic investigation into what has happened to these people.
Jacobsen: What do the women say in the video where they confronted Raniere? Please share a link if possible.
Bywater: Those women were part of what became known as the NXIVM 9. They confronted Keith Raniere with a list of systemic problems in the NXIVM company, which included the ethical issue of Raniere having sex with students. I am currently working on a YouTube video that will outline who were the NXIVM 9 and what happened to them. Here is the preliminary version:
At the same time that the NXIVM 9 confronted Raniere, two members of that group spoke alone with Raniere and recorded their discussion with him:
In it, Raniere comments that he has had people killed because of their beliefs. This was no doubt an attempt at intimidation, albeit veiled in that it could be interpreted as ‘my followers have been killed by others because of their allegiance to my dogma’.
Jacobsen: Why did raniere target individuals like the Oxenbergs, the Bronfmans?
Bywater: Destructive cults like NXIVM target wealthy and influential individuals. The Oxenbergs and the Bronfmans were targeted for their wealth and influence, simple as that. The Bronfman sisters Clare and Sara paid millions into NXIVM. Co-founder of NXIVM Nancy Salzman attempted to use their father Edgar Bronfman to recruit other celebrities, see here:
It is the ultimate irony that Raniere stubbornly held on to Catherine Oxenberg’s daughter India. Had he released her, the threat that Catherine posed to NXIVM would have dissipated. The future for NXIVM may have been very different. Catherine Oxenberg and her clout as a member of the royal family were significant in persuading the authorities to take criminal action against NXIVM.
Jacobsen: Do you then think aspects of a Raniere psychosocial dysfunction begins early and then becomes amplified over time as more crimes are accomplished?
Bywater: Certainly if you look at the path Raniere was going down, it was becoming darker and darker. Some people have referred to this as “negative epiphanies” or “maliphanies” where the individual getting away with each successive act of criminality and degrading themselves psychologically in the process. In popular culture, this is best depicted by the character Walter White in the TV show Breaking Bad. But with psychopaths, there’s also an escalation effect: the extreme emotional need that psychopaths have for violent levels of control and abuse is never satiated and only grows stronger over time.
Jacobsen: When he accuses women of using sex to control men, is this another manner in which to state that the psychology of Raniere is, in fact, projected onto victims of his groups, particularly the inner circle of DOS?
Bywater: Generally, this sort of misogyny is commonplace among male psychopaths. I could give anecdotal evidence from the examples of singer R Kelly and cult leader Larry Ray. It appears to originate from an insecure and/or abusive attachment with their mother, which results in the hatred towards women.
Now, with that misogynist worldview established, Raniere certainly attempted to project it on his followers, and he was successful in doing so.
Jacobsen: Why did it take so long for the teflon man to be taken to court for justice, proper?
Bywater:During the trial of Keith Raniere and his associates, judge Nicholas Garaufis specifically criticized the lack of judicial action taken against Raniere. As for why, no doubt there were systematic failings, particularly by the authorities in Albany who could have taken more decisive action in Raniere’s early days.
More broadly, there is a gap in our legal systems that I and many others are working to fix. Our legal systems are based on the notion that humans are rational individuals who act in their self-interest. We know that this is not always the case. So, when the NXIVM defectors (Mark Vicente, Catherine Oxenberg, Sarah Edmonson and others) went to the FBI, they were met with the response that legal action could not be taken against a group that people had consensually joined. What made the case of NXIVM different was how NXIVM was blatantly using blackmail and coercion. Then, finally, prosecutor Moira Penza identified a way to use sex and labor trafficking laws to prosecute NXIVM as a criminal enterprise. This model has been used to prosecute other destructive cults, for example the Larry Ray cult and the United Nation of Islam. This offers great hope for the future, because cults operate in a very similar manner to trafficking rings. Cult expert Steven Hassan has said that a trafficking ring is a commercial mind control cult.
Other necessary changes to the law that will stop the cult abuses include: expanding the doctrine of undue influence to apply beyond the restrictive area of wills and estates, and applying existing coercive control laws beyond romantic and family relationships to entire groups.
Very recently, an anti-Scientology activist met with a British member of parliament to discuss expanding coercive control laws to cover groups such as Scientology.
Jacobsen: What do the survivors of Raniere’s cult who are no longer unquestioningly loyal to him want others to know about him and their condition after it, e.g. the lessons?
Bywater: Without asking them directly, I’m sure they would want less attention on the sensationalist aspects like the sex cult stuff and the focus to be on the underlying problem of coercive control and psychological abuse that allowed the sexual abuse to occur in the first place.
Jacobsen: How can reporters stray from sensationalism around one truth, the sexual misconduct and such, and stick more to the comprehensive content on coercive control groups?
Bywater: I always emphasize that reporters focus on the underlying pattern of coercive control because it is this which enables the secondary abuses like the sexual abuse. No-one joins a sex cult. No-one knowingly joins a cult, period. There is a scene in The Vow where Mark Vicente eloquently underlines this truth.
Reports must resist more complex analyses of abusive groups from being subsumed by sensationalist news.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Matt.
Bywater: It’s a pleasure, as always.
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