The daughter of “Dynasty” soap star Catherine Oxenberg has opened up about how TV actress Allison Mack allegedly lured her into becoming her own “slave” in Nxivm’s sex cult.
India Oxenberg, 29, joined the upstate self-help organization when she was just 19 but her climb up Nxivm’s “stripe path” — the bizarre martial-arts-style sash system used to designate a person’s rank within the group — had stalled, she said in a new episode of Starz “Seduced: Inside the Nxivm Cult” that aired Sunday.
“I was investing all this time and energy into something that I couldn’t make work,” Oxenberg said in the interview. “I felt completely desperate.”
That’s when Mack, the right-hand woman of Nxivm guru Keith Raniere, approached her about DOS — the secret “sorority” where women were branded with the self-styled guru’s initials and many were eventually forced to perform sex acts for him.
But that’s not how Mack described it at the time.
“[Mack] said, ‘I have something that could be really great for you, I think it could really help,’” recalled Oxenberg, whose mother wrote a book about trying to save her from the cult. “She really made it sound like she had the answer, like she had what I needed.”
But the “Smallville” actress told her she first needed to fork over “collateral,” or damaging information about herself, that would ensure she’d keep the group’s secrets.
Oxenberg, whose grandmother is Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, turned over a notarized letter with deeply personal dirt about her family — and Mack in turn invited her into DOS, describing it as a women’s empowerment group that Raniere had nothing to do with.
Mack told her that the group had a “master-slave dynamic,” and Oxenberg would have to ask her permission to do anything.
Oxenberg agreed and began fulfilling tasks for Mack, including journaling about Raniere’s self-help writings and sharing something she felt vulnerable about every day.
“She was especially interested in the things I felt uncomfortable with that were sexual or that felt intimate,” recalled Oxenberg, who addressed Mack as “Master.”
The orders became more extreme, and Mack put Oxenberg on a restrictive diet in an effort to bring her weight down to a scrawny 107 pounds — the emaciated shape that Raniere preferred.
At Mack’s urging, Oxenberg distanced herself from her family and broke up with her boyfriend.
Oxenberg said Mack implied she should be celibate as a way to practice self-restraint and discipline.
But it turned out that Raniere was the sex cult’s puppet master and the end goal was to recruit and groom sex slaves for his personal pleasure.
“I was sitting on Allison’s bed with her and she told me, ‘I have a new assignment for you. It’s about leaning into fear and discomfort.’ She made it sound different from anything I had done before,” said Oxenberg in the episode’s cliffhanger. “She told me: your assignment is to seduce Keith.”
Raniere, who was convicted last year of sex trafficking, racketeering and other charges, faces up to life in prison when he’s sentenced Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.
Oxenberg — who did not testify at the trial and has stayed largely mum about her ordeal until the release of “Seduced” — is among the victims expected to speak in the court before his sentencing.
Mack least year pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges, including extortion and forced labor, for her role in Nxivm. She is yet to be sentenced.