

A motherless, 3-year-old boy is living in near-isolation at an upstate “cult” compound — as the heir of the group’s shady svengali, who feeds off the Seagram’s booze fortune, sources told The Post.

The fair-haired tyke’s true identity is shrouded in secrecy.

He was brought to Keith Raniere — the controversial leader of the Albany-based “behavior modification” group NXIVM that counts two Seagram heiresses among its devotees — by a longtime member who claimed that she was given guardianship when the child’s mother died, sources said.

The child is being raised as the “son” of Raniere, sources said. An alleged con man, Raniere has been accused by mental-health experts of using “brainwashing” and other mind-bending tactics on his followers.

The little boy has become the real-life “prototype” for what Raniere has publicly touted as a “revolutionary educational protocol” for children, the sources said.

On Raniere’s orders, the child is kept away from other kids — and much of the outside world — so he doesn’t pick up the bad habits of “parasites” and “subversives,” according to the sources.

NXIVM is bankrolled largely by Seagram’s liquor heiresses Clare and Sarah Bronfman, who have poured more than $100 million into its coffers, financial records show.

In 1998, Raniere started the group, which touts “intensive workshops” centering around his “Executive Success Program, or ESP.

Before NXIVM, Raniere was investigated for fraud in 23 states and heavily fined for operating an alleged pyramid scheme.

Now, he has an international network of devotees called “Espians,” who bow in his presence and call him “Vanguard.” He and his closest associates live in several condos they own in a non-descript complex outside of the capital. They also own several other homes in the area.

NXIVM has been derided as “a cult” both by Edgar Bronfman, Sr., the Seagram’s sisters’ dad, and in court documents filed on behalf of Barbara Bouchey, their longtime financial adviser who defected from the group last year.

The Bouchey court filing alleged that Raniere’s dream was “to have our own country, our own currency and market, our own way of doings things.”

He was also hell-bent on producing an heir, according to another former follower.

Toni Natalie, who bolted from NXIVM a decade ago, has said Raniere had designated her “the chosen one” to have his baby.

“I was supposed to bear the child who would change the world,” Natalie has said. She never did have Raniere’s child.

The 3-year-old boy is referred to as “the youngest Espian” and has been living with NXIVM nearly since birth, according to those who’ve met the child.

He was brought into the fold by longtime Raniere acolytes Barbara Jeske and Kristin Keeffe, who drove “about 10 hours to the Detroit or Ann Arbor area to get him,” sources said.

Jeske later told NXIVM members that the baby’s mother had died. One member said she was told the mom died in a car accident. Two other sources said they were told she died in childbirth.

“The story was that his grandparents couldn’t keep him, and asked Barbara to raise him,” said a source who was at a meeting where Jeske announced the boy’s arrival.

Jeske’s, mother, Ruth, confirmed that a “close friend” of Barbara’s — whose name she said she didn’t know — gave her daughter the boy.

“Barb got him,” Ruth said. “But now the woman, Kristin, is raising him as the son of Keith Raniere.”

In a court deposition involving a lawsuit against the group but unrelated to the child, Barbara Jeske said the boy was “adopted” and that she got him “from a friend of mine from the distant past.” She said she “wasn’t sure” who in the group actually adopted the child.

The child spends several hours a day being tutored in different languages — including English, Spanish, Russian and Hindi — by a team of multilingual nannies, said insiders.

It’s the same curriculum for Raniere’s soon-to-open school, the Rainbow Cultural Garden, described on the Bronfman sisters’ charity Web site as “a revolutionary child development program promoting children’s cultural, linguistic, emotional, physical and problem-solving potential.”

Saratoga Springs resident John Tighe — who regularly blogs about NXIVM at saratogaindecline.blogspot.com — recently posted a letter he claimed is from Bronfman lawyer Pamela Nichols, who warned him to stop writing about “Kristin Keeffe’s son.”

The boy, Nichols wrote, has “a very normal life free from any unwarranted outside interference.”

Nichols, Keeffe and Barbara Jeske didn’t return calls. Raniere couldn’t be reached.

jeane.macintosh@nypost.com

