Protecting right whales needs a more proactive approach: researcher

Guests: Jonathan Wilkinson, Regina Asmutis-Silvia

KS: Save the whales has become a rallying cry so worn out, it's now cliche, but the actual work is happening as we speak. Six North Atlantic right whales have been found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence so far this year and another three are tangled up in what appears to be fishing gear off the coast of New Brunswick. Every death is a devastating blow to the endangered species, just over 400 of them remain in the world. So rescuers are on a mission in the Gulf to save the trapped whales. And it's no easy feat. Take it from Wayne Ledwell. He runs the Whale Release and Strandings Group in Newfoundland and Labrador. Here are some of the challenges he says the New Brunswick rescuers are facing.

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VOICE: The biggest one is being able to find the animals. There is a lot of effort up in the Gulf by both Canadian and U.S. planes searching for right whales and the government, the DFO boats are out looking for these animals also. The next biggest one is that hopefully the weather cooperates because you can't work on these animals in windy weather or arctic swells. And then they also face what sort of animals are they dealing with. Usually in a whale that's swimming, it's trying to get away from you. And so you have to get close to that animal, close enough to be able to put a knife on a pole and be able to hopefully get up like side of the whale and make a cut. And a lot of times there's only one cut that you're going to get to make and then the animal is gone. This is I'm talking about moving whales like these whales are. I mean they moved all the way up from Florida, all the way up to the Gulf. So I mean they're on the go. You're there to do a job and the job is to get that gear off that animal as safe as possible.

KS: As those rescue teams hit the water, the government is implementing new measures to protect whales from collisions and entanglement. For more on that plan we spoke with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, Jonathan Wilkinson. We reached him yesterday in Vancouver. Minister, less than a week ago, you told CBC during an interview I want to quote something that you actually said to me during an interview last week. "To date there have not been any of the deaths that point toward fisheries gear. So the measures that we put into place at this point seem to be working." Has your thinking on this changed since we last spoke, given that there are three whales now entangled?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: So yes, you're right. There are three whales that seem to have fishing gear attached to them. It is still fair to say that there have been no deaths that have been attributed to fisheries related issues, but obviously we are concerned about the entanglements. And so one of the things that we will be or we are announcing today is a series of additional measures, but some of them relate to fisheries. So in areas where previously the closure of the area would only have been triggered by three whale sightings, we will be moving to simply one whale sighting, such that we will be getting more of the six gear fishery out of the water, if in fact we see any whales.

KS: Now, fair enough, you say that none of these these three whales they are still alive, but taking on the risk the people who are trying to rescue these whales and get them untangled, tis is a life threatening operation and it's very difficult. One of the whale rescue teams told CBC, they'd be lucky if they'd been able to untangle one of the three currently caught in the nets. Given tha,t do you believe the new regulatory measures are going to be enough going forward?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well I mean certainly it is fair to say that it's not simple to disentangle a North Atlantic right whale. They are very large creatures and very, very strong. And we certainly are not interested in seeing people put their lives at risk and being put into harm's way. That being said, we do have a marine mammal response program that has highly trained folks who are doing the work to try to help these whales, if in fact they can do that safely. That is ongoing at the present time. But as I say, I mean we are concerned, certainly about the entanglements. We are concerned about the deaths that have happened mainly thus far, it looks like from ship strikes. And so we are redoubling our efforts through a series of initiatives that we are announcing today that focus on slowdowns, further slowdowns with respect to shipping, expanding the areas within which the mandatory speed restrictions apply and doing a number of other things that we think are important in the context of ensuring that we are doing everything that we can in what is a very busy area, with respect to both transportation and with respect to the fishery, but doing everything we can to ensure that we are not having these kinds of incidents.

KS: I want to get back to the rescue operations that are underway and I want to ask you some questions about that. But before we get there, you spoke about the speed limits and the speed restrictions. On the Government of Canada's website, there's an entire section that's dedicated to what the government is doing to try to protect the North Atlantic right whale. And at the bottom of the website there is a section that says compliance update. And it says there have been 111 reported cases of people who may have not been in compliance or those speed restrictions between April and June of 2019, however of those 111 cases, no penalty was issued and nine cases were under review. Are you enforcing your own regulations?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: That is something that we are absolutely looking at and we will be ensuring going forward that we are in a position to ensure compliance, but I would also tell you that the vast vast vast majority of folks who are actually transiting through are doing so in compliance with the regulations. I mean there's a greater than 90 percent compliance. So that's important, but we obviously want it to be a hundred percent and that is what we are going to be ensuring that we are focused on going forward, such that we are achieving full compliance with the regulations.

KS: Yes but there are six dead right whales this year and it's all suspected that they are dead of ship strikes. So what are you going to do? What is the government going to do to ensure that there is compliance on this?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well I think you've got to be a little bit careful. Thus far there've been four necropsies of the six. Three of those were due to ship strikes. So I don't think it's fair at least at this point from a scientific perspective to say all six were the subject of ship strikes, but certainly three out of the four were. That is exactly why Minister Garneau acted very quickly after getting the results of the necropsy to require a slowdown in the shipping lanes, beyond what was done previously. It's why we are announcing a whole suite of additional measures and it is also why we are going to be stepping up efforts to ensure that we are enforcing these and making sure that people are in compliance.

KS: Do you find that there is support for the new measures or the continued measures? You've announced that you've been scaling up some of your measures to protect these whales. Are you finding that there is support from the commercial fishing industry for what your government has done?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well I mean I think the commercial fishing industry and the commercial transportation industry certainly are aware of the importance of this issue. Obviously some of the changes that we've made have required changes from them in terms of how they actually conduct their economic activities and so there have been times where there have been some disagreements about some of the measures, which have created some challenges for folks. We have tried to be thoughtful in terms of listening to what they had to say and to see if there are ways that we can still meet the biological ecological objectives of no whale deaths, but do so in a way that perhaps can be more sensitive to their interests. But at the end of the day, I think everybody recognizes that we must start from the baseline that we have to find a way to protect these endangered whales. We have to do it in ways that are thoughtful. We have to listen to folks if they have good ideas about how we can get to the same outcomes that can enable continued economic activity, but it may need to be done in slightly different ways than it has been historically.

KS: The last thing I do want to ask you about is that in 2017 there were a series of deaths and the government announced new measures to try and protect the right whale, the North Atlantic right whale. And in 2018, it appeared the these measures were working. There I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe there were zero deaths in 2018, but then in 2019 we've seen six deaths so far this year. The deaths returned. It started happening again. Has the government not acted fast enough here?

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Well I mean by and large the measures in 2018 were very similar to the ones that we have in 2019 with a few adjustments to it. But I think that certainly whenever you see that there are deaths happening it is incumbent on the government to act quickly. What I would say to you though is when the necropsy came back, so the first whale on which we got the necropsy back, which said that there was a ship strike that had likely killed it, Minister Garneau immediately within 24 hours put into place the additional speed restrictions in the shipping lanes. So he acted incredibly quickly. We are now only a couple of weeks beyond that and there is an entirely new suite of initiatives we are putting into place to ensure that we are protecting those whales going beyond anything that we did in 2018 in order to ensure that we are you know we are doing everything we can to protect what is a very very much endangered species.

KS: Minister Wilkinson, I want to thank you for your time.

JONATHAN WILKINSON: Not at all, thank you.

KS: Jonathan Wilkinson is the Minister for Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and we reached him in Vancouver. Our next guest has followed the plight of the right whales for decades. Regina Asmutis-Sylvia is the executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America. It's a charity that funds research and conservation efforts. We reached her in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts. Good morning.

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Good morning.

KS: Regina, you just heard from Canada's fisheries minister about new measures to protect right whales in Canada. What do you make of what he had to say?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Honestly I think some things are a little frustrating to hear. I mean I do applaud the amazingly fast action that Canada has taken and can take in their regulatory measures, but it's unfortunate to me that what's happening is reactive instead of proactive to protect these animals. So they were doing very limited surveys in the shipping lanes. Only a visual sighting of a right whale would have triggered one of those slowdowns and it took the mortalities of several whales before those slowdowns are put in place. And I would prefer to see a proactive measure that would ensure that those animals are protected day and night, not just if there's a visual sighting.

KS: So the government right now is reassessing what it's done. It announced these new measures. What more could they be doing right now to try and protect these whales?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Personally I think that one of the things that they could do is not dissimilar to what we have going into our shipping lanes in Boston, which is passive acoustic monitoring, which tells us presence and absence of whales in the area. So then that gives you an idea of where whales are around the shipping lanes day and night, regardless of weather and that an acoustic detection could then trigger a slowdown, rather than it waiting for a visual detection. I appreciate the increase in surveillance that was announced yesterday and it indicates that they're going to go from two flights a week to two a day and that sounds like a lot, but they're also very clear that that's only a week's worth of information because these new measures are only going to be in place until July 15th and then they'll be reassessed again. So there's not a lot of long term effort that I can see that's going to be in place for the duration of the season and that's what concerns me.

KS: At the last check, from what I understand, there are just over 400 right whales that researchers are aware of right now. That researchers are tracking and trying to protect. And also from what I understand, there are more people actually trying to protect these whales than the whales actually still exist right now. For you personally, what drew you to this work?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: They were one of the first when I started, I started initially working on a whale watch boat and they were one of the first whales I ever saw. And you know they're right here off my coast sometimes. I can see them in the stand on the beach in the springtime and see them and they have this long incredibly storied history with the area in which I live. But you know also just with humans in general, they were called the right whale because they were the right whale to hunt. And so we've had this long complicated history with them and the fact that they're endangered is all because of human interactions and so whether it was intentionally killing them previously to accidentally killing them now, they are a viable species and we're the the hurdle that keeps them endangered. And so that's the hard part for me is that these mortalities are all preventable.

KS: Human interaction is not the main threat to the North Atlantic right whales?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Absolutely. I mean it went from whaling to now we're looking at vessel strikes and entanglements and fishing gear and also a change in climate. And so we are the biggest threat that they face.

KS: So this year six whales have died so far and we know the rescue operation is under way for three more that have been spotted that are entangled in fishing gear. What does that mean overall for the right whale population?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Six whales that we know of that died and I think that you know that those are the animals that have been detected and so that's the minimum number. Three that we know are entangled. Again, that's what's been detected, so that's the minimum number. What it means for them is it's simple math. It's very frightening. In the past three years we have, we know 26 whales at least have died and we know only 12 have been born. So we know that this is a declining population. We need to reverse those numbers. We need more animals born than are dying and so we need these animals rescued. We need to stop entangling them and we need to stop running them over.

KS: The Canadian rescuers who are working to free the three entangled whales that have been spotted as you say, the three that everyone is aware of at least. From what we understand, these are incredibly dangerous, sometimes deadly missions to try and save these whales. You've seen this up close. What is it like?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: It's horrifying and it's dangerous and I have nothing but tremendous respect for the people that are willing and able to go on on these boats and with the whales, do not want to be rescued. They don't know that you're trying to help them. They're already in pain, they're already you know lots of times have infections. So it's not something that's pleasant for the whales and it's very very dangerous for the rescuers. And so we need it. We need the win-win and the win-win is to try and fish without line in the water and so that's what we're hoping. And again, applaud the Government of Canada for doing some investment in this and trying to transition and do some research on what we're referring to as rope lift gear, which is that the line in the water would only be in the water column when the fisher popped it up and without on site with the gear, so that you wouldn't have these vertical lines for the whales to kind of blunder into. And so that's really the long term goal I think for all of us.

KS: Is there new developing technology? You mentioned that investment that the government of Canada is making. Are you optimistic that the technology is going to change in time to make an impact and prevent more whale deaths?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Again, that's up to us as humans. I mean I think that we put somebody on the moon. Certainly, this is a doable prospect in my opinion, but there has to be an investment financially, funding from the government to help to get this gear in a place where it's workable and there has to be a cultural shift. I think you know within the industry to accept that this is a new technology in a different way to fish, but it's absolutely doable.

KS: The last thing I want to ask you about is when we spoke with, I've interviewed the Fisheries Minister a couple of times about this issue and he spoke about the impact of the whales going to places where the whales were not necessarily known to be and they're following food in some of these cases. Is that, does climate change play a role in that?

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: It absolutely appears to. So you know when whales were previously in Canadian waters at least historically and when I say historically, understanding that you know researchers at the New England Aquarium that have been documenting these animals kind of started doing it in the 80s. So our historical knowledge is based on a few decades worth of information, but where they appear to be aggregating with in Canadian waters was in the Bay of Fundy. So not necessarily in large masses going up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but that seems to have shifted sometime around 2010. There was a lot of evidence that there were some dramatic climate shifts at that point. If that shifted their food supply, we don't even know how they find food, but they figured it out. So now they're not hanging out so much in the Bay of Fundy and they're going up into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. So they have shifted their habitat to a much higher risk area.

KS: Regina, I want to thank you very much for your time today.

REGINA ASMUTIS-SILVIA: Thank you so much and I appreciate any information that can come out about this species.

KS: That is Regina Asmutis-Silvia. She is executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation North America. We reached her in Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts. We're going to leave you with a remarkable whale rescue story. This comes from WNYC's Radio Lab.. More than 10 years ago, a charter boat operator in San Francisco named Mitch got a call about a humpback whale caught up in crab gear about 20 miles off the California coast. So he called up some scuba diving friends to see if they wanted to help try and free it. After hours of treacherous work the small group succeeded.

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VOICE 1: Next thing I know I have this 50 ton whale coming right at me. I'm thinking oh my God, stop. I just saved you.

VOICE 2: Wait, so this whale is coming at you from below like Jaws?

VOICE 1: Yeah she's rising up toward me.

VOICE 2: Oh God.

VOICE 1: And I was just thinking this is going to hurt. And when she was only inches away from my chest, she stopped and pushed me on the chest backwards and then released me and then kind of pushed again. And then she swam up right next to me, picks her head up above the water so that her eye was above the water and then came up and looked directly at me.

VOICE 2: And for what felt like 30 seconds he says, she just stared at him.

VOICE 1: The pupil didn't move around. She wasn't looking for anything else. She was just looking at me. You're in the presence of something that great. Makes you feel small. It really was a very emotional feeling and I wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

VOICE 2: But then he says she went off to the next diver.

VOICE 1: Did the same thing.

VOICE 3: She swam around every diver.

VOICE 4: All the guys got.

VOICE 3: So it was about dusk and the water was glass flat. I was sitting at the helm of the boat just in awe and they had to leave the whale. She didn't want to leave them.

VOICE 1: I felt this well was really thanking us. I know it sounds crazy, but I could see the look in her eye. This mammal, this 50 ton mammal was literally saying thanks. Thanks for helping me out and you know I'll bring that to my grave, knowing the gratification that I felt.

KS: The CBC News is next. I'm Katie Simpson. You're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

Uncover: Escaping NXIVM – Episode 2

KS: Hello. I'm Katie Simpson and you're listening to the summer edition of The Current. This week we are bringing you the first award-winning season of the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM. The group billed itself as an Executive Success Program and had some high profile members, including actor Allison Mack and an heiress to the Seagram Fortune. Last month NXIVM's leader was convicted of sex trafficking and racketeering. In this episode, journalist Josh Bloch explores how people are drawn into the organization through the eyes of a childhood friend who became a high ranking member. Here is Episode 2: The Epiphany.

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[SOUND: Beep, beep, beep - you have one new message, first new message… ]

JB: Sarah Edmondson is an old friend of mine. We went to the same Jewish summer camp.

JB: We hadn’t seen each other for years until last summer when she told me she had just left a self-help group called NXIVM. She had been running the Vancouver branch of their Executive Success Program or ESP.

JB: She was part of the group for 12 years, but now she says it’s a cult.

JB: Its leader Keith Raniere is facing numerous charges including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Other senior members of the organization are also facing charges. They have all pleaded not guilty.

JB: This dream is only strange because I’m in it. The rest of it — sashes, proctors, prefect, vanguard were all part of Sarah’s life in NXIVM. They are key to understanding how Sarah was drawn into this group, why she missed so many red flags, and why she didn’t run from that home in Albany, New York before being branded with a cauterizing iron.

JB: How does someone join a self-help group and end up in an alleged sex cult? I want to understand the bait and switch. I want to try and step inside Sarah’s brain and see how she experienced it. Why she kept saying yes to stranger and stranger things. And why she kept pulling in others. And why it took 12 years before there was a breaking point.

JB: Can you hear me?

JB: Sarah and I talk frequently. And I’ve been recording our conversations as I investigate how the group pulls in celebrities and millionaires and people like Sarah.

JB: Sarah grew up in Vancouver. She’s an only child. Her parents divorced when she was young. They’re both former hippies. who always encouraged her to be open-minded. Her love of yoga and smoothies and organic salads makes her a bit of a West Coast stereotype. She’s always been into acting - she was a drama dork in high school and studied theatre at Concordia University. After graduating, she returned to Vancouver to try to make a go of it. Her first encounter with NXIVM goes back to 2005. She is living in a basement apartment in Vancouver. And feeling unfulfilled.

CARL: Carmen!!

JB: But then her boyfriend Tony’s film is accepted into a spiritual cruise film festival in Florid, which is exactly what it sounds like.

SE: I had like a seal bark cough — like the worse offensive cough. Like i shouldn’t be out in public, but here I am. And Mark said something like what would you lose if you stopped coughing, which is a very ESP question. LIke what is the downside if you stopped doing the behaviour like whatever it is. And I was like I just had this awareness like I was trying to get Tony’s attention to like take care of me. And I don’t know exactly what he said or how I figured it out, but I realized that I had linked love and sickness. I remember thinking, wow, whatever Mark Vicente from “What the Bleep” is up to, I want to do.

SE: Yeah, he’s this guy, he’s like really high IQ. really high IQ. He is this concert pianist, blah, blah, blah. But we are really working to change the world. It was totally not a hard sell. Not a hard sell at all.

SE: So if it wasn't for her I may not even have signed up. She was like I heard you are going to do the five-day like here’s some paperwork.

SE: She said, you know, you're 27, and you don't have any money? Like do you, do you wanna change that? I said, of course, I wanna change it. So how are you gonna change it unless you work on your underlying beliefs around money? Otherwise, you're never gonna have any. I was like, OK that's a good point. You know? And then she, and then I said: "But also like I'm an actor, and I gotta be available, I need to be available for acting because my agent might call." And she said Do you wanna be the master of your own ship? Or do you wanna be waiting around for your agent to call you for the rest of your life? And I was like good point, I wanna be the master of my own ship! And then she totally sold me. Truthfully, I also didn't wanna waste my 500 bucks.

SE: I walked into a conference room, I literally thought I was walking into like a Tony Robbins type of arena. You know like a "Raaaa we'll change your life," but there was nine people in my training. And probably more staff than there were like actual students. I was so sceptical. I was just like super judgy and...I hated their power suits, and they like, it was just super budge...like this is supposed to be executive success?

SE: Oh my god, they would kill me.

SE: It’s so sacrilegious in the ESP world.

JB: The strangeness begins with the introduction of the sash system. During class, everyone is required to wear a coloured sash worn like a scarf hanging around their neck. It’s based on their rank. Similar to the belt system in Karate.

JB: New students have white sashes, and then there’s yellow, orange, green, then blue, and then purple...Keith Raniere wears an extra long white sash because he is a perpetual student.

JB: You also learn a special secret handshake to reinforce hierarchy.

JB: Where the higher-ranked member places their hand on top of the lower-ranked member.

JB: You’re told you need to bow when you enter or leave a class.

JB: You learn about the special clap at the beginning of each class.

Sarah: Yeah so I clap, if I’m the highest rank, I clap. [clap] And then the highest ranking student would clap.

SE: Yeah, it takes you about 5 minutes to do the whole thing. “Success is an internal state of clear honest knowledge of what I am, my value in the world, and my responsibility for the way I react to all things.

SE: I called Mark Vicente, and I said, "what the fuck do you get me involved with?" And he was very compassionate, very patient. He's like I totally get it. I went through that whole thing too. So just you know, give it a chance and go through the next few days and see how you feel. He said by day three, there's a module in the middle of day three, and by the end of day three most people are like, "wow this is incredible."

PETER: Hello?!

PETER: Hey Josh...

PETER: There's some things that I don't want to talk about because it would reveal me [laughs]

PETER: And I see the positives, I see the negatives, and I stand pretty much right on the at the edge of the knife.

PETER: So most people go around the world blaming their feelings on other people and saying things like well you made me feel this way. You know you did this, and then you made me feel this way. The company takes a complete reverse stance on that. There may have been that stimulus. There may have been that trigger. But you created the feeling, right? You gave it meaning.

PETER: There are valuable things that exist within the group. And if the company is going to be destroyed, I still want to see some of that stuff preserved. You know I don't I don't want to see the baby with the bathwater.

JB: Keith has recorded hundreds of hours of videos outlining his teachings, including the second important thing you learn, which is that your belief system is full of errors.

JB: This is Keith in one of his online conversations with students explaining the NXIVM philosophy.

JB: Keith says.. he can help with this kind of thing. He calls his method Rational Inquiry. It makes me think of a self-help system created by a car mechanic. All you have to do is open the hood, change some wiring, tighten a screw, and you’re good to go.

JB: The main tool they use to fix your belief system is called Exploration of Meaning or EM. When getting an EM, you take an issue in your life that you have an emotional reaction to and an instructor asks you a whole bunch of questions.

JB: Sarah is a neat freak. I could imagine this driving her up the wall.

SE: Often times there is a memory, and the memory that popped up when I'm discussing it with my facilitator is my parents fighting over dishes before they divorced. My parents divorced when I was two-and-a-half, so, or separated. So, what I make dishes mean in my deep structure is divorce. Like dishes cause divorce. What a good facilitator would say is something like "Do you see how the dishes didn't cause your parents divorce?" //Sarah: [00:14:57] ….So when you unhook the dishes, right? From just deep structure whatever's going on and they're just dishes, the dishes don't have that meaning in reality. Does that make sense? So you know, had a laugh, I had a cry. Months went by, and I realized, you know, he was still leaving dishes in the sink, and I hadn't, they don't trigger, it doesn't trigger me.

SE: I felt like a cloud, a veil had been lifted after my Five Day, and I could function in the world with better grace and ease. And I wanted that for everybody.

SE: And that's when I was like "oh my god, that's why I've never really... because I've never really pushed through anything."

SE: The stripe path was like my own adult, you know, swim class going from red to silver to gold or whatever. And to be honest, there is an aspect of that that was really good for me. Because I stuck I stuck through it.

SE: I think the first level two after that, that I did, was 2a: Anatomy of Mind and Body. I did the ethicist weekend 1 and 2, I also did the ‘ethicist complete’...

JB: They have names like Mobius, family values, human pain…

JB: There is $10,000 acting program called The Source, a movement based program called Exo/Eso, and you can enroll in a NXIVM university, which basically teaches all these classes for a lot of money, there’s a women’s group called J’ness and a men’s program called Society of Protectors.

JB: Once you’re in the company, you’re assigned a personal coach. They become your mentor. They track your progress. They learn everything about you. They can even punish you if you don’t meet a goal.

JB: Once you become a coach, you are required to work for free. You work as a personal coach for free, you facilitate classes for free, you set up chairs and tables and food and then clean up, all for free.

JB: Sarah loves it. She is part of an exclusive group with an impressive roster: Clare and Sara Bronfman, heirs to the Seagram Liquor fortune. Emiliano Salinas the son of a former Mexican president. She was told Richard Branson had taken a course, as well as the founder of B-E-T and even a former US surgeon general. And then later, attractive young actors join including Allison Mack and Kristin Kreuk from “Smallville”, and Grace Park from “Hawaii 5-0”. And the inner circle of NXIVM — who mostly lived in Clifton Park near Albany, New York — embraces her.

JB: NXIVM's leaders prepare her to open their ESP centre in Vancouver. It’s the only one in Canada.

SE: [watching video] I’m just going to see what else is, cause I know in here, somewhere, which I haven’t watched since then, is a moment where he kind of like put us up in front of all our peers and had us practice the things we just were learning. But I’d love to show you that because I feel like he sorta humiliated me, umm.

KR: [on tape] To make sure what…..

KR: [on tape] You are being very formal, you’re telling us…

KR: [on tape] Use your body more with more flow.

KR: [on tape] You’re standing a lot like a preacher-teacher…

SE: [on tape] So we’re all going to have fun.

SE: [on tape] Yes… [awkward laugh]

SE: [on tape] Do you guys wanna have fun?

SE: [on tape] I’m not sure yet.

KR: [on tape] No, not fun enough!! If I said, for example, who here is here to have fun? Fun! [cheer] C’mon. Fun? [bigger cheers] Yeah, ok…

JB: If he is hard on her, it works. Sarah becomes his star salesperson, responsible for bringing in two thousand students. She has the highest closing rate in the company.

JB: Let me take you through Sarah’s rise through NXIVM. Sarah taking thousands of hours of personal growth training, recruiting new students, flying to Albany, meeting Vanguard and the other higher-ups, making new friends, earning her sashes and climbing the ranks… recruiting recruiting recruiting. You see her becoming a coach and teaching ESP classes, pages of a calendar fly by 2006, 2007, 2008. More recruiting. Newer, better sashes yellow, orange then green! In 2009, you see Sarah and Mark Vicente cutting the ribbon on a brand new ESP training centre on Georgia St in Vancouver. You see Sarah training coaches, conducting EMs, and confidently pitching a roomful of people interested in signing up. In 2013, you see Sara and her husband Nippy get married. You see Sarah at the bank depositing her first cheque from NXIVM. And then you see her walk in again with a bigger check, and then, an even bigger one.

JB: Jen Kobelt attends one of Sarah’s pitch sessions. This is in 2010…

JB: Jen’s life is upside down. She is a struggling actor just like Sarah was when she she joined ESP five years earlier. Jen has also just broken up with her boyfriend, who she says was emotionally abusive. She is looking for help.

JK: I never even thought about standing up in the chair. Why? Oh, because nobody said I could. Well, why do I have to only do what people say I can do? Maybe that's what's holding me back is I keep waiting for permission rather than just deciding this is my life, and I'm going to take it by the... you know, I'm going to go for it!!

JB: Can I ask you like I think I saw you a couple times in Toronto for TIFF. But like if I ran into you six months earlier than I did or a year earlier, would you have like you said you saw things through potential recruitment. Would you have tried to recruit me?

SE: Probably. I mean probably not even so much like Hey Josh, do you want to come to this training? I’d probably... it was always... it was more like I’d want to just check in with you and see if you even needed it. Not… like even... you wouldn’t even known that. It was like I would just wanna know how you are in your life, and see if I could see if there was something you were looking for, and then I would talk to you about it.

JB: So you had kind of like probing questions or things that might’ve sounded like you were interested in my life?

JB: This is a common theme I hear from people who were inside NXIVM. It doesn’t take long for a new recruit to start seeing the world this way.

JB: Jen Kobelt immerses herself in ESP. She quits her office job, joins the stripe path, and Sarah hires her as a personal assistant.

JB: Those who have left the group have a name for what Sarah did there — turning an issue back on its author. It’s called the NXIVM flip. If you have an emotional response to something, ESP tells you that it’s your issue. You have to work on it. So when Jen complains to Sarah that she is so overworked and can’t spend time with her boyfriend…

JB: This is one of the ways that the ESP tools can be used to coerce people. If you have an issue with venerating a leader, or the fact that he is sleeping with his students, or with being branded on your pelvis, you might be told you need to do an exploration of meaning to figure out why you are having a negative reaction. Sarah has been on both sides of the NXIVM flip. Sarah says, It’s how Lauren Salzman, who led the branding ceremony, turned Sarah’s discomfort against her.

JB: But it sounds like they also took away, right from the beginning, that part of you that says "I don't want to do this anymore. This is not my thing." Another part of your brain now is supposed to kick in and say "Wait a second this is your issue, this is your pattern. You're just trying to avoid it.

So now your gut instinct around it is gone, right?

[pause]

JB: A Google search yields some pretty unsettling results that Sarah must have been aware of.

As far back as 2003. That’s when Forbes magazine writes a profile of Keith Raniere alleging he uses manipulative cult-like tactics. A few years later, The NY Post writes a series of unflattering articles. In 2010, Vanity Fair publishes an article about the billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr, and his attempt to rescue his daughters — Clare and Sara — from the group he calls a cult. And in 2012, the Albany Times Union publishes a series called “The Secrets of NXIVM” that includes allegations that Keith Raniere had sex with girls as young as 12 years old.

JB: How did you deal with red flags like that?

SE: We were really encouraged not to read that stuff because it would change, quote, “our internal representation of Keith,” end quote. Keep in mind all the stuff that was said about him that was negative, it was just instantly erased by this brilliant set-up that Keith put in place for us. Which is if you really believe that Keith is you know the next messiah — a Jesus-type, Buddha-type of guru that is really intelligent and kind and humanitarian and trying to teach the world how to think critically and bring an ethics to an unethical world. If that’s really the case, then there’s going to be push back. And anything written about him was push back — it was all part of a smear campaign, it was all part of a conspiracy against Keith and this little group of humanitarians who were trying to change the world. And they can write whatever they wanted online.

JB: It was at this point that her friend Lauren Salzman approaches her to join DOS — the secretive women’s group. And it’s all these aspects of NXIVM — the idea of being responsible for your life circumstance, the manic self-improvement, being training not to question ESP teachings, the total confidence in Keith Raniere, plus her financial issues, which begin to explain why Sarah agreed to join DOS.

JB: But there is something more subtle, more disturbing going on. Just under the surface. It’s something I start to understand when I sit down to interview Sarah with her husband Nippy.

NIPPY: How are you doing?

JB: Sarah shifts over to make room on the couch.

SE: Weah, we hit it off.

SE: I was like, what kind of fucking name is Nippy? [laughs]

JB: Sarah and Nippy met taking NXIVM courses in Albany. Nippy was in NXIVM for as long as Sarah. He was one of the leaders of the men’s group — Society of Protectors or SOP.

KR: [on video] How many men in here have had orgasm? How many men in here had orgasm by the time they were 14? Now if I asked a group of women, how many do you think would say? A lot of them wouldn’t. A lot of them don’t know. What the hell?!! Could you guys go without having orgasm? We have it in our genes. We do it with anything that will accept it. That’s the nature of fucking. Women don’t have to be driven to have sex. They’ve never had to be driven to have sex. It was bountiful. They were getting taken care of like sheep. They can get fucked to their capacity.

JB: Men are more physical and cut off from their emotions. Women are the opposite. Men need to spread their seed. Women need to be loyal to one man. Men are disciplined. Women are indulgent. Keith says it goes back to when we were hunters and gatherers and living in caves…

NIPPY: I mean ultimately the curriculum is presented in a way where we live in a patriarchal society, male-dominated, female-influenced, and if you subscribe to the notion that your behaviour is somewhat linked to your genetics, understanding your own physics can lend to why we have a lot of the problems in the world, you know? As a guy, you he's talking about thoughts that you have, right? And that's when guys are going ok, this is a safe place for me to go. Ok, you got this too? You know like when a girl walks by, a guy goes what's the first thing they look at? They go oh yes, she's hot. I'd love to you know... and that's a male thing that maybe needs to be uprooted in our society and changed, but this where we are.

NIPPY: But having a dialogue and having conversations about it is the first step.

NIPPY: I think he has a commentary on women that he got women to agree to.

Sarah: And it's the foundation of everything that happened later with DOS that I feel shitty about myself. Ultimately, and I see this across the board of Women in J’ness, is that they began to feel shittier and shittier about themselves. And a number of things sort of came towards the end like women need to be more obedient. Like a good wife as an obedient wife, and that's something...

SE: That was in the last training

SARAH: That’s because i”m such an obedient wife.

SE: There was like I started to not like… like he used to talk about oblivious women. And how like women aren’t as aware of their surroundings as men. And [laughs] I think this is really indicative of how much Keith just like hates women and is annoyed by women. But then I started to notice it, and I'd see like a woman you know like walking slowly on the sidewalk while someone's trying to get by in a wheelchair or something. And I'd be like fuckin oblivious women like fucking move, you know?

SE: And that for me I never have that with women before.

JB: My head is spinning. This is the first time I hear just how fundamental misogyny is to the NXIVM philosophy. It’s troubling to hear Nippy and Sarah participated in this kind of group, and perpetuated some of these ideas. Nippy and Sarah were leaders in SOP and J’ness. it’s hard for me to accept that these were ideas they taught. Did they learn this in NXIVM, or was it part of the attraction? I’m starting now to understand the internal logic of Sarah’s story. She was singularly focused on personal development. She bought into Keith Raniere’s definition of what that meant.

She believed there was something wrong with her in no small part because she is a woman. And was told her questions and doubts were a part of her deficiency. But of all the things Sarah did in NXIVM, what I hear next is one of the most difficult things to wrap my head around.

JB: It happened right here in Sarah’s apartment. When Lauren Salzman — Sarah’s best friend and mentor — travels from her home in Clifton Park to Vancouver back in January 2017. That time when she sits down with Sarah at her dining room table and says…

JB: What I’m now beginning to understand, is that even find out what it is, Sarah has to provide collateral.

SE: So she asked for collateral from me. At first, I said let me think about it. Truthfully, I don’t have a lot of secrets. And I think it took me like at least a day to come up with something. And I wrote it on a piece of paper. And she took a picture, and she sent it to somebody that she said she couldn’t tell me who it was.

JB: It passes the test. And Lauren tells her about DOS and how it works. She says it is top-secret international women’s group. Sarah would be Lauren’s slave, and Lauren Sarah’s master.

JB: It would be a lifetime commitment. It was run by women, for women. Sarah took this to mean that Keith had nothing to do with it. Lauren promises that it will not only help Sarah achieve her personal goals, they will operate like a powerful sleeper cell that can change the world — though it’s not exactly clear how.

JB: But to join, Sarah would have to give over more collateral. This time even more potentially damaging.

JB: Sarah decides to record four videos. One was about Nippy, her mom, her dad, and her step brother.

SE: But she said I wasn’t done yet, because I still needed to collateralize my home. She said you need to go to a lawyer and figure out how to get a document that signs over this home. The deed to this home, in her name. For her to hold. Like ‘I, Sarah, like give this home to Lauren.’ [laughs]

SE: So it started off really good. Like it started off with her giving me some assignments that were to help me in my relationship with Nip. And it was like coaching and checking in everyday with Lauren that was totally normal, except I was calling her ‘master.’

SE: So I was learning to put other first. And it wasn’t just me like I think a lot of actors and a lot of people in ESP are quite narcissistic. I’m not gonna deny that, but it was across the board. Something they really wanted women to be less self-involved. To learn to be more thinking of other. Which again, in and out of itself, is a good trait, but you don’t have to call somebody master to do it.

JB: But also like after a week of doing that were you like, oh, this is going to be the rest of my life, is texting master to someone?

JB: Sarah finds the readiness drills one of the most demanding part of DOS. When Lauren texts her slaves with the word ready, they have to all respond within 1 minute “I’m ready”.

If anyone in the group fails to respond, everyone is punished.

JB: If Sarah was unavailable even for a few minutes, she had to notify Lauren. They called it ‘going dark’.

SE: And this is the first fight I had with Lauren as my master, is like I’m not doing that. There’s no way. Like I’ll be. I’ll be undark during the day, but at night I can’t be, I’m not keeping my phone on.

SE: But I remember Lauren saying, to me at one point when I was reluctant about enrollment and recruiting, she’s like imagine having six people doing an hour of work a week for you. And how much a) money you’d save. And also like how you’re leveraging your time. That’s an MLM. It’s a multi-level marketing pyramid scheme with blackmail.

JB: How did it feel to have someone call you master? What’s that feeling like?

JB: Not my real slave. Having grown up with Sarah, this is not something I ever thought I would hear her say. On the one hand, Sarah says she’s having doubts, on the other hand she is perpetuating the same things she claims to take issue with. And given the collateral hanging over the head of every DOS member, it is difficult to see this as just an exercise — something that can be brushed off. She keeps going. Sarah flies to Albany for a ceremony led by Lauren Salzman.

JB: Back at her condo in vancouver, Sarah shows me and my producer Kathleen her scar from that initiation. Months later, some lines are still red and swollen others are paper thin.

SE: Ok. And it's also really close to my pubic line, but that's it now. But this line see right here? that line, one of the other girls, every line is still like this. Her skin doesn’t heal as well. But I’ve also been putting amounts of cream on like three times a day.

SE: What’s happening with Sarah and what Sarah is doing is the very reason why we need things like DOS…

SE: Because she is complaining, she's having a tantrum to get out of responsibility because she made a commitment, and it got hard, and she backed out. And she has no character and no honour, and she made a commitment, and she's not following through because she felt uncomfortable, which is ultimately what the whole structure of J’ness teaches is that that's the worst part of being a woman.

[Sound: SE is heard on a phone call]

JB: It isn’t years of allegations that Keith Raniere had had sex with under age girls.

JB: Or allegations that the group is a destructive cult.

JB: It’s four letters that would make her leave.

SE: I was like "There's an A and M in here”.

JB: A-M, Allison Mack — the actor from “Smallville” who gave up her career to be near Vanguard in Clifton Park.

JB: Four letters… K - R - A - M.

SE: So someone like drew it and made it up?

LS: Yes.

SE: OK. Because the thing.

LS: I was not part of that.

SE: OK cause Nippy told me that I have Keith's initials on my body.

KS: We've been listening to the CBC podcast Uncover: Escaping NXIVM with Josh Bloch. Last month the group's leader Keith Raniere was found guilty of sex trafficking, racketeering and other crimes. His sentencing is scheduled for September. That's our program for today. Stay tuned to CBC Radio One for Q. Tom Power welcomes Rhiannon Giddens, singer and fellow banjo player. Her latest project is called Songs of Our Native Daughters, which puts stories about slavery to music. I'm Katie Simpson. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

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The Current Transcript for July 9, 2019

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Prologue

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July 9, 2019 episode transcript

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