Former television star Catherine Oxenberg never believed in NXIVM, the Colonie-based organization she said tore a wedge between her and her daughter.

Barbara Bouchey still contends some good existed in NXIVM. This, despite being an organization that was secretive, vindictive and the product of a leader — her ex-boyfriend Keith Raniere — whom she called a sexual predator.

On Monday, both women expressed their beliefs on NXIVM to more than 140 guests in the Hearst Media Center at a forum called "NXIVM Exposed: A Pre-Trial Talk."

Also speaking was Michael Grygiel, an Albany-based media lawyer who represented Suzanna Andrews of Vanity Fair after she authored an expose on NXIVM.

"There are many people who aren't here today. It took a village to take NXIVM down," Bouchey, 59, said.

The forum came as Raniere, known as "Vanguard," faces a federal racketeering case and recently filed child pornography charges in Brooklyn. A criminal trial is scheduled to begin April 29 in Brooklyn, but it's unclear if the plea negotiations and additional charges filed against Raniere last week will delay that date.

Oxenberg, 57, who played the character of Amanda Carrington on the hit show "Dynasty" in the 1980s, said she and her daughter, India, went to a NXIVM seminar billed as a professional development seminar in 2011.

It was "not that at all," Oxenberg said. She found NXIVM's platform full of hyperbole and platitudes and its people to be pushy. But her daughter, hooked, insisted they take the classes, which they did. India became a NXIVM coach.

"It became her entire life," Oxenberg said.

Over time, the California-based Oxenberg and her daughter became distant. India lost her sense of humor. She relocated to the Albany area. One day, Oxenberg received a call from a former NXIVM member who told her that India was in danger.

Oxenberg learned India was interested in a secret club formed by Raniere known as "Dominus Obsequious Sororium," or DOS, which means "Master Over the Slave Women." Membership, it was later revealed, involved the practice of physical branding, among other things.

Oxenberg arranged an intervention for her daughter on her birthday. It failed.

"I couldn't get through to her at all. It was like there was nobody home. And I was in shock," Oxenberg said. "I did everything wrong. I said, 'You're in a cult and your brainwashed.' She said, 'No, I'm not.' It went nowhere. I said, 'Well, just tell me: Are you branded?' She actually told me the truth. She said she was. And my heart broke into a thousand pieces when she said it was 'character building.' I knew I'd lost her."

Oxenberg did not see her daughter for nearly a year. When Raniere and codefendants were later indicted, India began to wonder if NXIVM was all a lie, Oxenberg said.

Oxenberg said she and her daughter lived together again after Raniere's arrest but California fires have displaced them.

India is recovering, she said.

"We are in spirit back together and stronger and closer as a family," Oxenberg said.

The room erupted in applause.

Oxenberg signed copies at Monday's event of her book titled, "Captive: A Mother's Crusade To Save Her Daughter From a Terrifying Cult."

Bouchey, 59, a Troy native, was a successful financial planner who attended a NXIVM workshop in the late 1990s and ended up dating Raniere for eight years. She said she grew up with a fear of intimacy. She said when she was 40 and met Raniere, he was "intimate, gentle, kind, loving, affectionate" and helped her get over her intimacy fears.

"Yeah, what we now know was a sexual predator, a pedophile and someone who took advantage of women was not that way with me in the bedroom," she said.

Bouchey said she has since spoken to other women who were sexually involved with Raniere.

"Keith met you where you were at," she said. "He knew how to gauge you."

After leaving NXIVM, Bouchey said, Raniere quickly turned on her, unleashing false accusations and lawsuits at her.

Still Bouchey, more than once, defended what she believed were positive efforts within NXIVM. She said most people involved did not believe it was a cult. She compared NXIVM to the Catholic Church and its well-documented clergy-related child sexual abuse scandals.

She became part of the NXIVM inner circle and served on an executive board she now says was a "faux board."

Even though she was a financial planner and investment advisor to Clare and Sara Bronfman, the Seagrams' heiresses who have provided millions of dollars to NXIVM, Bouchey explained, she never saw any financial documents or tax returns for the group.

Bouchey said she thought she and Raniere had a monogamous relationship but later learned of his interest in other women — and underage girls.

She said a month before she left NXIVM, she saw a young girl — a child from Mexico — wrap her arms around Raniere and kiss him on the lips on a volleyball court.

"The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I thought the room was moving around me," Bouchey said.

Grygiel said NXIVM tried to implicate the Vanity Fair journalist and others by filing computer hacking claims, alleging reporters gained unauthorized access to NXIVM's website.

The claims were dismissed, he said.

"They couldn't sue for libel because everything was true," Grygiel said. "So they ran into court with this manufactured computer trespass claim to try to wreak havoc on a tremendously talented journalist ..." he said of reporter Suzanna Andrews.