Attorney tells jury at start of trial in Brooklyn federal court that Keith Raniere ‘took advantage of them emotionally and sexually’

The former self-help guru Keith Raniere was a “predator” who preyed on young women, including a 15-year-old girl, and turned them into sex slaves as part of a cult-like organization, a federal prosecutor told a jury at the start of his trial in New York on Tuesday.

“The defendant took advantage of them emotionally and sexually,” the assistant US attorney Tanya Hajjar said in US district court in Brooklyn.

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“He sold himself as the smartest, most ethical person in the world … He compared himself to Einstein and to Gandhi.”

Far from being a guru, prosecutors allege, Raniereused “shame and humiliation to break people down” and exploited his followers trust for “sex, power and control”.

Raniere, who is 58 and is known to followers as “Vanguard”, is accused of recruiting women to join his group, Nxivm, and then exercising total control over them – forcing them to have sex with him, restricting their diets and even having them branded with his initials.

“No one could challenge his authority,” Hajjar told jurors as Raniere listened from the defense table, wearing a blue shirt and gray sweater with his formerly shoulder-length hair cut short.

Raniere has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, possessing child abuse images and other crimes. Some of his alleged “slaves”, as well as members of his inner circle who pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors, are expected to testify over the course of the trial, which could last up to six weeks.

While prosecutors have not said who will take the witness stand, the former Smallville star Allison Mack and Seagram liquor heiress Clare Bronfman have pleaded guilty to playing supporting roles in the scheme, as well as three other women accused of involvement in Raniere’s alleged crimes.

Prosecutors said on Tuesday that Raniere’s victims included three Mexican sisters, one of whom, named Camila, was only 15. The government plans to introduce explicit photographs of the youngest sister seized from Raniere’s computer as evidence.

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Nxivm (pronounced nexium), which started under another name in 1998, was based in Albany, New York, and at one time operated numerous self-improvement centers across North and Central America.

In 2015, prosecutors say, 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 Raniere standing alone at the top as the only man.

The slaves were required to submit “collateral” to win acceptance that could then be used as blackmail material: nude photos, rights to their financial assets or damaging information about friends and relatives, prosecutors said.

Raniere was flanked by four attorneys as prosecutors unveiled one of the pieces of evidence in the case – a Mexican family who had come to live at Nxivm’s headquarters in upstate New York.

The court heard that Raniere had offered to tutor the family’s three daughters but had instead forced them into sexual relationships. One of the daughters, known as “Virgin Camila” was 15 when Raniere, then 45, began a relationship. The court heard he had taken photographs of her private parts and kept them as “souvenirs”.

“The photographs didn’t just serve his sexual needs, he used them to blackmail,” Hajjar told the court. The Mexican women were then recruited into DOS, where Raniere was able to control their schedules and diet.

Women, including many young actors, who had joined Nxivm for self-empowerment, were instead coerced into pledging a “lifetime commitment and obedience” to Raniere, who kept them in line by demanding “collateral” in the form of explicit photographs, prosecutors said.

“They believed they were joining a women’s empowerment group that would make them stronger and more successful,” Hajjar told the court. Instead they were turned into “DOS slaves” who were forced to pledge sexual obedience to Raniere. When some were later branded with a symbol, they did not not know they were being branded with Raniere’s initials.

In the defence’s opening statements, the attorney Marc Agnifilo told the court he had ask jurors to look beyond the “labels and jargon” of self-help and to understand that Raniere’s teaching was liberating for many.

Agnifilo said 17,000 people took Nxivm self-improvement courses since 2003 when it was founded and many reported “they’d got a lot out of it”. If Raniere had been hard on some of his followers it was because “that’s what they wanted”.

The first witness in the case, named “Sylvie”, described how Bronfman recruited her to the group at age 18. She said she initially joined the group because she believed she could become a better showjumper.

Only later was she groomed into Raniere’s inner sanctum of female slaves, she said, describing how she posed nude for a photo in 2015 at the behest of her female “slave master”, Monica Duran.

“Your first assignment is to seduce Keith Raniere,” she was told.

Raniere is the lone defendant in the case. In the past several weeks, five senior members of the group changed their pleas to guilty after prosecutors added child exploitation charges against him earlier this year based on evidence Raniere had allegedly had sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Members, some of whom have claimed they were blackmailed to participate with nude photos, include Lauren Salzman, a key Nxivm executive who confessed in her guilty plea to holding a Mexican woman hostage for two years, and Bronfman, who tapped her fortune to bankroll Nxivm. Bronfman reached a deal with prosecutors last month.

Another potential witness is India Oxenberg, the daughter of Catherine Oxenberg of Dynasty fame. Before the trial got under way, Catherine Oxenberg called on Raniere to change his plea.

“My one reservation about the trial is that these victims are going to have testify and it is going to be terribly traumatic for them,” she said . “If Keith had any decency, he would plead out.”