THE ISSUE:

The leader of a Colonie-based self-help outfit goes on trial for racketeering, sex trafficking, and other charges — in Brooklyn.

THE STAKES:

Will justice be done here, too?

As sordid testimony unfolded last week in a Brooklyn courtroom about a supposed self-help group based in Colonie, you might have wondered why the trial isn't happening here, and why it didn't occur years ago, when questions about NXIVM came to light.

Good question. Why NXIVM founder Keith Raniere is only now being tried in the federal Eastern District of New York, which includes Brooklyn, and not the Northern District, which covers the Capital Region, is a lingering mystery. Officials here didn't merely drop the ball; they never even picked it up.

That something was seriously wrong at NXIVM was apparent at least as early as 2012, when a Times Union series exposed Mr. Raniere's alleged abuse of young girls and claims that NXIVM was, as one expert put it, an "extreme cult," using relentless litigation funded by Seagram's heiress Clare Bronfman and other tactics to intimidate and punish critics. Ms. Bronfman is among five defendants who have already pleaded guilty. Mr. Raniere, 58, is on trial for sex trafficking, forced labor, wire fraud conspiracy and racketeering.

At all levels — federal, state and local — the government for years seems to have shrugged off NXIVM defectors whose stories were told by this newspaper and others. What response did we see from federal prosecutors in the Northern District, or from the FBI, the New York attorney general, district attorney offices in Albany and Saratoga counties, the New York State Police and the Internal Revenue Service? Even after a blog in Western New York reported that doctors had branded women with Mr. Raniere's initials as part of a "master-slave" club and had done unsanctioned brain activity experiments, the state Department of Health was slow to respond.

NXIVM seems to have come under serious scrutiny only after an actress in the "master-slave" club went public. Then it was no longer about allegedly abused kids and other ordinary people. It was about a celebrity.

Perhaps prosecutors, investigators and health authorities thought little could be done about consenting adults submitting to abuse and degradation by a known pyramid scheme operator. Maybe the statute of limitations had run out on some of the allegations.

But that doesn't explain why, in the face of allegations of past child sex crimes, there seemed to be little curiosity about whether such crimes might have been ongoing — as we now learn was allegedly the case. Instead, existing and potential clients were left to assume that perhaps NXIVM wasn't so bad after all.

There is an opportunity to make this right. For jurisdictional reasons, some of the charges against Mr. Raniere —including sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography — were dropped because there was no connection to the Eastern District.

Regardless of the outcome in Brooklyn, the criminal justice system here should pursue those matters. U.S. Attorney Grant Jaquith in particular has a chance to do what his predecessors failed to do — assure the victims of these alleged crimes that the system works for all, regardless of wealth, celebrity, or whatever it was that for too long tipped the scales of justice the wrong way.