By The Daily Wire. In the first episode of A&E’s “Cults and Extreme Belief” series, a former high-ranking member of the notorious NXIVM “philosophical society,” who was initiated into its secret “sex slave” sorority, tells her story, bringing more dark details about the cult to light.

The cult has again come under heightened public scrutiny after the arrest of the cult’s alleged leaders Keith Raniere (whom his followers call “Vanguard”) and “Smallville” star Allison Mack, who allegedly headed up the secret sorority. Authorities ramped up pressure on the group following the publication of an expose by The New York Times in October 2017, which included allegations from actress Sarah Edmondson. . .

After The New York Times broke the story open, Edmondson wrote a detailed account published by Vice in November in which she recounted her nightmarish experiences in the cult, which began with an innocuous invite to a self-help group that got increasingly controlling and twisted the deeper into the indoctrination program followers like Edmondson went.

Edmondson said that sometime in 2011 or 2012, NXIVM implemented its Human Pain program, an eight-day “level two” training program that introduced the ideas of “collateral and penance,” which required you to do certain predetermined acts of penance for failing to meet goals. “For women, penance was largely about calories. I remember there was one woman I saw once on a 300-calorie diet, because of some breach she had done,” Edmondson says. “She was only eating mashed frozen zucchini and tomato stew.”

Things took a darker, more overtly sexual turn when the actress was asked to take nude photos as “collateral” by the daughter of the president of the company, Lauren Salzman, who was also Edmondson’s “confidante” and the godmother of her son. Salzman told the actress that she was going to introduce her to a new program exclusively for women. This was the horrific inner group for which Mack allegedly helped recruit and oversaw, and for which Raniere indoctrinated the women to become his “submissive” sex slaves. After 10 eight-day training sessions, Edmondson received her “tattoo.” (Read more from “More Disturbing Details Come to Light About ‘Sex Cult’ Tied to Actress, Clinton” HERE)

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Sex Cult Members Detail Leader’s Forced Kisses, Branding

By Fox News. . .Fellow former member Mark Vicente, also interviewed in the episode, goes to explain that the leader persuaded female members that they needed to have sex with him “for their growth,” and notes that some even signed lifelong pledges to own sleep with him for the rest of their lives. Raniere also cajoled each member into “kissing him on the lips” as part of the indoctrination process.

Scam artist and chieftain of the cult, the now 57-year-old Raniere developed NXIVM as a “self-help course” in 1998, and went on make millions – offering followers a unique opportunity to develop the mechanisms necessary to make a mark on the world.

Raniere was arrested in Mexico in March, charged with sex trafficking, sexual assault, forced branding, blackmail and baiting clients into other forms of self-destruction including mandatory near-starvation diets. (Read more from “Sex Cult Members Detail Leader’s Forced Kisses, Branding” HERE)

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