Seagram heiress Clare Bronfman gets nearly seven years in jail in NXIVM sex slave case
- Cult-like ‘self-improvement’ group was led by Keith Raniere, who branded brainwashed women with his initials and forced them to sleep with him
- Bronfman gave away tens of million of dollars to bankroll organisation, also paying for lawyers to defend it in lawsuit brought by critics
A wealthy benefactor of Keith Raniere, the disgraced leader of a self-improvement group in upstate New York convicted of turning women into sex slaves who were branded with his initials, was sentenced Wednesday to almost seven years in prison in the federal conspiracy case.
Seagram’s liquor fortune heiress Clare Bronfman was taken into custody to begin her 81-month sentence immediately after her appearance in federal court in Brooklyn.
Bronfman, 41, admitted in a guilty plea last year that she harboured someone who was living in the US illegally for unpaid “labour and services” and that she committed credit card fraud on behalf of Raniere, leader of the group called NXIVM.
In a letter to the court last month, Bronfman wrote that she “never meant to hurt anyone, however I have and for this I am deeply sorry”. Still, she said that she could not disavow Raniere because “NXIVM and Keith greatly changed my life for the better”.
At trial, prosecutors told jurors the 60-year-old Raniere’s organisation, NXIVM – pronounced NEHK-see-uhm – operated like a cult whose members called him “Vanguard”.