The self-help guru accused of leading a ‘sex cult’ preyed on young women, including a 15-year-old girl, and turned them into sex slaves, prosecutors told a jury at the start of his trial in New York on Tuesday.
Keith Raniere, the founder of the group NXIVM, is accused of recruiting women to join the group and wielding total control over them – forcing them to have sex with him and branding them with his initials.
"The defendant took advantage of them emotionally and sexually," Assistant US Attorney Tanya Hajjar told a court in Brooklyn. "He sold himself as the smartest, most ethical person in the world… He compared himself to Einstein and to Gandhi."
"No one could challenge his authority," she told jurors as he listened in court, wearing a blue shirt and gray sweater with his formerly shoulder-length hair cut short.
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The prosecution told the court that Mr Raniere’s victims included three Mexican sisters, one of whom was only 15. Another sister was confined to a room for two years, Ms Hajjar said.
The jurors will be shown explicit photographs of the youngest sister seized from Mr Raniere’s computer as evidence.
The 58-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, child pornography and other crimes and faces life in prison if convicted.
His lawyer Marc Agnifilo gave the court a preview of his defence strategy on Tuesday, telling jurors that all the women had joined NXIVM voluntarily, painting Mr Raniere as merely a tough taskmaster rather than an abusive criminal mastermind.
"This is something these people signed up for," Mr Agnifilo said. "Control can be very bad. Control can also make Marines. Control can make gold medal winners."
A number of Mr Raniere’s alleged victims, who have been likened to sex "slaves", as well as members of his inner circle, are expected to testify at his trial, which could last up to six weeks.
The other five defendants in the case, including former "Smallville" star Allison Mack and Seagram liquor heiress Clare Bronfman, have already pleaded guilty to related crimes.
The trial caps a bizarre saga for Mr Raniere, who was arrested in March 2018 after fleeing to Mexico with Ms Bronfman.
NXIVM, which started under another name in 1998 and is pronounced "Nexium," was based in Albany, New York, and at one time operated numerous self-improvement centers across North and Central America.
In 2015, prosecutors say, Mr Raniere established a sorority within NXIVM known as DOS, an acronym for a Latin phrase that roughly means "master of the obedient female companions."
The subgroup included "slaves" who were expected to obey "masters" in a pyramid-like structure, with Mr Raniere standing alone at the top as the only man.
The slaves were required to submit "collateral" that could be used as blackmail material, such as nude photographs of themselves.
Mr Agnifilo told jurors on Tuesday that the collateral was used to confirm the women’s commitment but was never intended to be released.