Interview with Catherine Oxenberg

Thinking Agenda procured and produced this interview between Dr. Cathleen Mann and Catherine Oxenberg and it’s riveting in depth and full of information on cults.

We thanks Catherine Oxenberg for this opportunity.  YouTube audio link with a written transcript below. 

Interview with Catherine Oxenberg

Catherine Oxenberg is an American actress whose best-remembered role was as Amanda Carrington on the prime-time soap “Dynasty” another significant roles were her portrayal of Princess Diana in the Royal Romance of Charles and Diana, she’s the daughter of Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia. We now present this interview with Catherine OxenBerg and Dr Cathleen Mann.

Cathleen Mann: So how are you? It’s such a pleasure to be able to talk to you.

Ms Oxenberg: Oh, The feeling is mutual. Thank you so much. You know I’m doing much better, thank you. It’s been a very stressful year for me.

Cathleen Mann: I read your book and I wish you could be here while I was reading it, so I could have asked you some questions along the way, and there were a few surprises, a few surprises in the book. Things I didn’t expect, but I thought that in general, you did a very good job of explaining how,
how much torture it is for parents to see their adult child going through something like this. I also wanted to, one of the things that really struck me was, you did a pretty good job of explaining how terrible it is to be a cult member. I think that people forget that, certainly the media forgets, it.
They forget that being a cult member is hard. It’s boring, it’s stressful and full of fear and the pressure is enormous. And, so people think that called members are having a good time. They’re definitely not.

Ms Oxenberg: I’m glad I got that across. Thank-you.

Cathleen Mann: You did. You did. And, the fact that she had to hide so much from you certainly was a bad sign. What do you think her motivation was? Do you think it was to avoid criticism or do you think she was not aware? Or do you think that maybe she didn’t realize?

Ms Oxenberg: What do you think that she didn’t realize that she was hiding stuff from me?

Cathleen Mann: Not that she didn’t realize the extent of, of what she was in.

Ms Oxenberg: Oh yeah. I think from what I’m getting now because what I’m finding fascinating is this, her memory is coming back and I think that possibly indoctrination causes a certain degree of compartmentalizing and obviously normalizing of inappropriate behaviours. And now that she’s feeling and her psyche is not as much as she is remembering things and shocked that she has forgotten things. So I don’t think there’s necessarily constantly hiding. I mean, you know, way more about cults than I do and the behaviours. So, you know, I prefer to defer to you in terms of motivation.

Cathleen Mann: Kind of complicated to explain, but basically it involves the fact that there’s no time for introspection. So they’re so busy, doing things, being over-involved in activities and exercises and reading and that, you know, like most of us, we have downtime during the day where we just think about things that happened to us. So basically it’s over-involvement and you sleep, you eat and you read and you practice the activity all the time. If you don’t have any time to think about anything else.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.

Cathleen Mann: A lot of it too, is they’re afraid of the reaction, they’re going to get if they share something. There was a lot of that in your book.

Ms Oxenberg: Oh, that she’s afraid of people being afraid to share information with people.

Cathleen Mann: I think she was afraid to tell you too much about what was happening because she was trying to protect you.

Ms Oxenberg: Oh, that’s interesting. I wasn’t aware of that.

Cathleen Mann: She wasn’t trying to protect herself. She was trying to protect how she was being perceived and since her primary attachment was to you, she was afraid of how it might hurt you. I think.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah, that makes sense.

Cathleen Mann: But you shouldn’t blame yourself for that. That’s just something that I think she probably knew instinctively.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah, of course, they’re getting reinforcement that they’re sworn to secrecy and then, but their masters are going to be punished if they do share it. I mean, there’s all these layers of guilt, coercion, and control. No, it makes it impossible for her for a relationship and communicate with anybody outside of the group,

Cathleen Mann: Which is, which is intentional. I mean, if you think about it just in context, these cult groups like NXIVM and the other hundreds of cult groups all do the same thing. They do it because they know that no one would affiliate with them if they knew up front what they were really going to experience. They know that they have to lie in order to get people to affiliate, and to me, that’s always the most disturbing thing. If they can’t be honest about who they are and what they do and what the, what the sacrifices are, then to me that makes the group very suspicious.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah. But how did you find out if there’s that level of deception?

Cathleen Mann: A good question, because all successful cult groups practice deception.

Ms Oxenberg: Correct.

Cathleen Mann: They have to and it’s not just a one-time thing. They do it during the course of the involvement, so they don’t ever start telling the truth, all of a sudden.

Ms Oxenberg: No, No, no. Tell me what happened.

Cathleen Mann: Well, what happens is that as they rise up in level or as they gain inner awareness and may start to see the hypocrisy, they’ve usually been part of the deception either through recruiting people through deception. Or in this particular group, NXIVM, through the practices. I call them confession letters. I mean they all, they all do, all groups do the same type of thing and call them something different. So the point is, by the time they rise enough in level towards where they know anything, they are part of the hypocrisy. That’s part of the deception, so that makes it much more difficult to leave or get out. So it’s a deliberate grooming process.

Ms Oxenberg: It’s a deliberate grooming process, how do you stop that? I’ve seen people who come out of this cult who are very high level. And how do you stop doing that behaviour?

Cathleen Mann: Well, there’s a couple of ways that behaviour will backfire on you. One is that if you don’t prepare someone adequately, if they rise up in the level to quickly and they’re not indoctrinated enough and they see too much inner truth, too quickly, that can cause a break. Secondly is, if the hypocrisy or the abuse is done to them as opposed to them seeing it done to other people becomes a lot more personal and a lot easier to break. But most people age out of cults. They leave after a certain period of time because they are all out of energy. I always call it a stamina problem that the vast majority of cult members leave on their own because they have no stamina.

Ms Oxenberg: That makes sense. However, with this cult, I saw, I mean, that was one of the reasons where I understood it was a cult. There were people who never left, Cathleen Mann: Right. But they were high ranking people that never left. That’s the key difference. I mean, let’s talk about Nancy Salzman. The reason why she stayed so long is that she was given a tremendous amount of power and she obviously liked that. Relished it, enjoyed it. And so she would have had to give it up and you know, there’s a lot of rationalization that goes on.

Ms Oxenberg: Somebody asked me a question yesterday, I was doing an interview and they asked me specifically about Nancy if I considered her what I thought of her, was she a bad person? I don’t understand enough about human psychology, to know if people start off bad or if they’re groomed into becoming bad or I don’t know. I just thought this is a woman that had good intentions in the beginning, but how do people become corrupted like that, that they lose all conscience?

Cathleen Mann: Well, I don’t really think it’s a question of conscience as much as it is a question of adaptation or adapting. I think that something could be said for compensatory narcissism, which is narcissism that comes out of being put in a powerful position, for a long period of time. It causes you to become narcissistic. You learned that you’ve learned that behaviour may not have started out being narcissistic, but you learn the behaviour and part of it is a function in order to survive in the system, but a lot of it is because they enjoy it.

Ms Oxenberg : What you’re describing fits Allison Mack as well, to a tee.

Cathleen Mann: Oh yes, absolutely. And you know it’s not an excuse for them, but they really don’t have any awareness. That’s the thing that I think I find the most frustrating when dealing with family members who have a cult member in their family. If they think that they’re doing it deliberately somehow. I try to explain it. All of this is out of their awareness, they’re not aware that they’re being indoctrinated. They’re not aware that this is a cult. I mean, when I, when I talked to current cult members, which I do a lot of, you have to have a special way to talk to them and one of the ways you do it is by asking them, to give you an example of what a cult is. Certainly, they must not be in one. Can you give me an example of what a cult is most of the time they can’t tell you and then I say, well, would you like to know what the characteristics of cults are? Sometimes they don’t listen and sometimes they won’t, but for me to measure the level of indoctrination comes from how well they’re able to define a cult and, and to see it objectively. 99 per cent of the time they can’t do that.

Ms Oxenberg: That’s very interesting! Your comments about people not being aware, they’re being indoctrinated. What about somebody like Keith Raniere? Was he aware every step of the way of what he was doing?

Cathleen Mann: I think he was aware of it, but, you know, in a different, different way than the average person. I mean he became what he is because of trial and error. Because the way I’ve looked at it is, you can kind of tell the motivations of people and you can interpret their behaviour based on how they behave when someone confronts them or challenges them. Maybe if they’re, if they’re really who they say they are and they’re really this special person and they have all these special abilities, why are they so defensive? Why are they hiding? Why are they going through all these extraordinary things to get people to follow them and you know, they never have a good answer. So I don’t know. I haven’t evaluated Keith Raniere. I haven’t psychologically evaluated him, but I can tell by his behaviour and his defensiveness, the fact that he likes to silence critics that he feels like there’s something worthy of hiding because honest people don’t act like that. Open groups do not act like NXIVM. Honest people don’t act like Keith Raniere. Honest people are willing to take you on your own terms without trying to change you into a mould of something they want you to be. So that’s not very complicated psychologically, but if it’s really if you’re a legitimate spiritual leader or you’re a legitimate teacher, you need to show me what you’ve done to earn that and why I should trust you not the other way around.

Ms Oxenberg: Got It. Do you think that he was born like this with his inclinations?

Cathleen Mann: Oh, I don’t know.

Ms Oxenberg: Ok.

Cathleen Mann: Psychology doesn’t know enough about it, and I don’t know what he would be born with. I mean, when we talk about the behaviour of people who are criminal or antisocial or narcissistic, it’s really hard to determine the cause of that. Psychology is able to look backwards and say, oh, we have this criminal. Now we can look backwards and say these are the events that probably led to that, but we’re not very good at predicting things.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah, that’s true. I’m fascinated. I mean, I think he’s a psychopath and I’m just wondering, you know, in terms of if they do psychological profiling on people who have these mental pathologies. What, what makes them that way? I’m fascinated. Why the way he thinks is very different from me or any normal person? It’s fascinating to me. And then he could do this much damage and destruction under the guise of people.

Cathleen Mann: I’m not trying to defend him, but he doesn’t think that’s what he’s doing.

Ms Oxenberg: Oh, okay. So what do you think he is doing?

Cathleen Mann: Well, you know, we don’t really use the word psychopath anymore. I mean, and part of the reason why is because it’s a term that really has no clear definition. If we do use the term anti-social or say that someone has pretty narcissistic qualities, and you’ve got to understand that from their point of view, they see themselves as so special, that they don’t have to follow the rules that everybody else has to follow, number one. And two, they engaged in a lot of rationalization and becomes a habit. But I do think there are just people that are, I don’t like to, using the word “evil” because it’s not a psychological term, but I do like the word effect. The fact that they are bad actors and they are much more focused on their needs and what they want. And as time goes on, they get worse and worse and worse. You know, like Keith Raniere erects all of these processes to protect himself, to make himself fit his image of being special. He’s been doing it a very, very long time and so at this point, like most long term cult leaders, he’s not in
touch with reality.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah, I see that. I saw that with my daughter.

Cathleen Mann: Well, it’s interesting that with your daughter, you know, the descriptions of her and her personality and her qualities are just perfect for someone like Keith Raniere who is very predatory, but again, it’s hard for them to know. It’s hard to see it, but it’s happening to you. It’s hard to see indoctrination when it’s happening. You may feel like something is off or odd, but you don’t really can’t really put your finger on it. He used classic indoctrination techniques. So does that help in terms of understanding someone like Keith, because he really is is not that special. What he does is not that special is typical of the mini cult-leaders I’ve had to deal with over the years.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told.

Cathleen Mann: Well it’s really a lot of fun to try to interview them.

Ms Oxenberg: Why?

Cathleen Mann: Well, because there are so easily offended. You know, I’ve interviewed lots of cult leaders and the number one thing for them, is I have to be careful how I talk to them. How do I address them as the most important thing to them? Know that they have to be called a certain title, so why would that be the most important thing in the world during an interview? I would think the most important thing is to show me your truth. They’re all wrapped up in titles and how they’re perceived and how they are talked to and your tone and your manner and all of these things that show how fragile they really are.

Ms Oxenberg: Why do they even offer then?

Cathleen Mann: Well, because they’re smarter than I am and because I’m so wrong that they just think it’s going to be really easy to show me how wrong I am and so I’m.  willing to do that, but I do have some rules talking to cult leaders. Like I’d limit the title, whatever title they want to be called,  limit it into two words. Like I had a situation where he wanted me to call him “master of the universe” and I said no, I have a two-word limit.

Ms Oxenberg : (laughter) Why do you do that? That’s so funny!

Cathleen Mann: Because It’s ridiculous. I mean, I’m not going to call somebody something as outrageous as that. I prefer just to call them by their last name, Mr Mrs or whatever. Just call him by the right name rather than the title but it’s a big deal. So we have to negotiate for you ever start talking how I address them, you know, and I‘m told how to watch my tone and a not allowed to say certain things. I’m like, well, you know, this an interview and I pretty much going to say whatever I want to say, so let’s get going. But they do it because it’s an act of dominance and superiority. So they’re more than happy to talk to me when I’m working, working on a case or I’m working on an investigation. I always offer them the opportunity to talk to me and most of the time they do. I’ve been turned down a couple of times. Most of the time they want to show me how stupid and dumb I really am.

Ms Oxenberg : (laughter) Oh, So if you were an expert witness, in this particular case, what are some of the things that you think the prosecution should stress?

Cathleen Mann: Well, I mean, I think that they have already gathered enough evidence of several criminal behaviours, criminal acts. You know,, this isn’t the first time that I’ve been asked about these issues concerning NXIVM and Raniere. And I just think that they are so flagrant. The problem comes when ex-members testify, a lot of the time were not treated very well by the prosecution. So that’s usually the only spot where I try to work with ex-members and, and help them understand what to expect. And the other problem is that 99 per cent of people in the world don’t have any idea what a cult is. They think it has something to do with wacky beliefs. It has nothing to do with their beliefs. Has to do with their practices and their criminal enterprises. So I’ll try to educate lawyers.

Ms Oxenberg: How do you, what would be a simple description when you’re trying to educate somebody?

Cathleen Mann: Well, I’m sorry what was that?

Ms Oxenberg: Well, when you’re saying that the world doesn’t know what cults are. So how do you, how do you explain that to people? It’s definitely a problem.

Cathleen Mann: It’s difficult. I mean how you can do it. Get as many media stories as you can, talk to people whenever you get the opportunity, but it’s a huge problem. And even on some of the shows that have done a good job of exposing these cults, a lot of people think, oh, and I get, I get this from media that call me and say, well, let’s talk about their weird beliefs. Their beliefs are not my focus. Every, group that you look at as an outsider has weird beliefs. Let’s talk about their practices. Let’s talk about how they recruit and retain. No, they fight critics. How they handle dissent, and what criminal activities they’re involved in. Let’s talk about that. 

Ms Oxenberg: How come a group like this, I mean, besides the ones that are under a sort of religious protection, how are they able to go under the radar for so long and avoid prosecution of such blatant criminal practices?

Cathleen Mann: Well, that’s a good question. I think, there were several factors involved. Probably the corruption of the local government, probably, people unwilling or afraid to speak out. And I don’t think that there are any cult groups that I know of that have religious protection now. They may have religious protection for their belief. They certainly don’t have religious protection for their practices. You can’t do whatever you want to do.

Ms Oxenberg: Scientology can get away with it?

Cathleen Mann: Well, Scientology isn’t really getting away with it. I mean, they, they may still be in business. I’m not sure it’s a black and white issue. I don’t think they’re really getting away with it. I think they pretend to get away with it. They have a huge number of ex-members that are very full. With NXIVM I think that their attempts at syncretism have been successful. And a lot of it is because just normal regular people don’t want to believe cult members, they don’t want them to believe them. They think they must be weak or stupid or something. And then none of those things is true. Cult members are very intelligent, high functioning people most of the time they’re not seeking anything. They just get caught up in a trap. So there are a lot of myths out there that are perpetuated by the media mostly.

Ms Oxenberg: When people leave a cult, their critical thinking is impaired. I’ve watched a lot of people leave NXIVM, and there was a period of time when they have a hard time making sense.

Cathleen Mann: Right. But that goes away with time, it’s not permanent. And you could say the same thing about anyone. I mean not just NXIVM. It’s all cults. People have a hard time adjusting after they leave for, for a multitude of reasons. And one is, a fear of the outside world because they’d been told that they wouldn’t be believed, they had been told that they’re, you know, their only safety is in the group. It’s kind of hard to overcome that

Ms Oxenberg: Now you say that over time this is the kind of behavioural limitation that disappear. But I have also witnessed certain people who left NXIVM decades ago and they’re not that functional or there’s still deeply, deeply wounded by the experience in a way that they could never move forward in their life. How does that happen?

Cathleen Mann: I think it’s an attempt to.. they want to hold onto some of the perceived as good experiences in the group. Want to hold onto those, but at the same time, they want to try to move forward. They’re trying to please everyone and they’re having a lot of doubt. And I think, I think it’s just, it takes time. It takes them to become involved in something creative and healthy. I don’t really know a very good answer to your question except that the only thing that helps is time and a good support system. I’m trying to work these things up because a lot of times ex-members think that they’re shocking everyone by telling them things. So if you can normalize what they’re telling you, it’s helped or to put what they’re telling you in context and to remember that the life of an ordinary cult member is pretty boring and frightening at the same time. And people that have left, we’ll miss the excitement of it. I don’t think that anybody really has the solution…it’s like a traumatic experience. It takes a while, to process that takes a
while to get used to the world again. You get used to ordinary relationships again.

Ms Oxenberg: Is there anything legislatively that could be changed to protect people in a way that they’re not being protected now by these deceptions? Deceptive cults.

Cathleen Mann: I don’t know. I don’t think so because these people are adults. They are, they are allowed to be deluded. Cults are allowed to exist, We can’t outlaw cults. You can’t outlaw indoctrination. Very subtle process. There are laws that are pretty specific about undue influence, that have been in the laws for 300 years. That can be used in certain situations. I know I’ve used the undue influence legal argument many times, but as far as protecting people go, the only thing we can really do is try to educate people in critical thinking and the problem with that is that most people think critical thinking is criticizing things. When that’s not what it means at all. And so it’s a good question and I wish I had a better answer for you, but cults are very common. They exist. Every single human institution exists with cults. Medicine, psychology, therapy, nonreligious, spiritual groups, guru groups.
There are cults in the Roman Catholic church or cults within most religious denominations. There are cults within colleges, higher ed, you know, I’ve seen them from every single possible place. We can’t prevent cult formation from happening because a lot of it is human nature. A lot of it is explained by the human need for power, exploitation of others, money and sex. So I don’t know what we can do that we’re not already doing except to have people like you who write courageous books who hopefully we’ll get a wide readership because the thing that was good about your book was that it was not just about how you experienced it, but it gave a lot of insight into India’s experience. Which most people don’t get to hear in most cult-related books. It’s about the family complaining about how they lost their daughter or son and why can’t they just wake up and be reasonable, but you didn’t have that aspect itself. Yours was much better in terms of showing the emotional demands. Having a cult member in your family and you also were very honest about the good and the bad things that you did. So much more honest for parents could identify to it. So the more books like this, it’s telling an honest story about the struggle, the better, if you can just get people to read them. Just pass it out on the airplane or something.

Ms Oxenberg: So funny. (laughter)

Cathleen Mann: Yeah. Out at the airport, being constantly approached by people trying to recruit me into something. Why don’t we just have your book around and say, read this?

Ms Oxenberg: Oh my God. Do you remember in the eighties when Hare Krishna’s would be at the airports?

Cathleen Mann: Well, and you know, they weren’t exactly subtle. I mean, it was a big thing. I think my reaction to it was, how could you be right? Look at you. How could you be right? It was just because it was so extreme. But cults are not like that. They’re very much so very much out of view. Very much, but if we could just get people to read the book, you know, I had, to fly out of the airport a week or so ago and as I was walking past, I saw your book. I probably passed three bookstores in the airport and I saw your book. They’re all perfectly stacked up right there on the front. And so I was like, okay, people here it is pointing to it.

Ms Oxenberg: I know they’ve done a brilliant job. It’s everywhere.

Cathleen Mann: It is. I was telling someone the other day that it was even in Costco, Selling it for $10. Wow. So can’t do much more than that.

Ms Oxenberg: No, they’ve done everything. Yeah. Everywhere.

Cathleen Mann: So for people to read it with would be another good step. if I could just get the media to listen, that would be a big step. And sometimes they, sometimes they do a good job, sometimes they don’t.

Ms Oxenberg: Well I’ve done a ton of media so you have a ton. So now it’s up to the consumer because I’ve done everything that I possibly can, the publishers and everything have done everything they possibly can and I’ve never written a book before so I have no idea how this works. The good news is that this is not going to go out of the press for a while because we’ve got the trial, we have potential, you know, more indictments, more arrests and it will stick around for a while.

Cathleen Mann: You know, when the story first broke and I first heard your name, I thought finally somebody is, somebody is prominent enough, to bring this story out because I’ve been dealing with them for so many years and it was like, I mean I was involved in legal cases involving this group and I saw lots and lots of evidence and I think I mentioned to you, I read Nancy Salzman deposition and I was like, this is just as glaring as it can be, but there was not much I could do except take it one case at a time.

Ms Oxenberg: What cases were you involved with now? May I ask? 

Cathleen Mann: Sure. You may ask, but they’re, confidential. And sometimes I was just in the background, as a consultant but I was involved and got
to see more than I wanted to. So I’ve been familiar with this group for a long time, so I was glad to see something happening. finally. And the thought of Keith Raniere sitting in jail, I’m sure he’s very uncomfortable and I’m sure it is having a hard time adjusting to it, but it’s, well overtime for him.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah, I would agree with you entirely. And just so you know, it was a very frightening process because I was putting myself out there so publicly and exposing myself with no idea of what, what the outcome is going to be.

Cathleen Mann: Right. You showed a lot of courage.

Ms Oxenberg: My daughter said to me the other day, well, that I had been accused of being just an attention seeker.

Cathleen Mann: Really? Why would you want this kind of attention?

Ms Oxenberg: Well, I must be desperate. (laughter)

Cathleen Mann: There are lots of ways to get attention. I don’t really know the best way to get attention.

Ms Oxenberg: No, definitely.

Cathleen Mann: Well, it’s obvious, If anybody reads your book it was done out of care for your daughter, so that’s not really a legitimate criticism.

Ms Oxenberg: No. And people will say what they’re going to say and it wouldn’t stop me anyway. So.

Cathleen Mann: Right. That it shouldn’t. And you’re allowed to tell your story and you have absolutely no obligation to these people to keep their secrets.

Ms Oxenberg: It was extraordinary that because if you think about it when I started writing the book, he hadn’t been arrested. Nobody had been arrested for writing into thin air.

Cathleen Mann: Right. And there are other people that had been, had spoken to the press. I mean I spoke to the press every, chance I got. I was part of Jim Odato’s six-part series. Spoke to the press. He cut out 99 per cent of what I had to say and put in a tiny little bit. Nothing happened. Nothing except they went after Jim Odato.

Ms Oxenberg: I know they did and I’ve met subsequently with Heidi Hutchinson who also came out in that series. I’m telling the story of how Gina had been raped by Keith when she was underage and again, the shock of people coming forward and nothing happening. It was horrendous.

Cathleen Mann: It’s really, really hard to not just this cult, but it’s really, really hard to shut down the vast majority of larger successful cults. Some of them have been in operation for over 100 years. You know, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses have been around 150 years. They’re still bigger than ever. No one has been able to shut them down even though there’s tons of evidence that they are a corrupt organization.

Ms Oxenberg: But this is where I’m asking you about the law. I mean, isn’t this a failure of our legal system that these types of groups are allowed to continue even though they’re like you say, they are criminal enterprises. That’s where I’m confused.

Cathleen Mann: It’s similar to trying to litigate the mafia. I mean you have to have evidence that certain people are involved and committed crimes so you know, I think in this they are using the Rico statutes, which is a big step, but to see that.

Ms Oxenberg: But if you think about it, to fight them off, they had to come up with the Rico act.

Cathleen Mann: It’s not so much the Rico statutes that helped break down the mafia, but it was the people that were flipping, people that were coming out and testifying at a high enough level that they could take out major players, but they haven’t been able to shut them down completely.

Ms Oxenberg: That’s true.

Cathleen Mann: It’s still there. It’s just not as flagrant. I suppose. With the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I mean, time after time after time, major legal story are broken about them and you know, it doesn’t change anything. They’re still recruiting. Still hugely successful. Millions of members and that’s where you kinda have to just try to take it one case at a time. That’s all you can do.

Ms Oxenberg: Wow.

Cathleen Mann: The big thing with NXIVM is that I think what surprised me in your book was the amount of money they had stashed in their houses. You know, this was like mafia behaviour. Why would you have half a million dollars in your house?

Ms Oxenberg: I don’t know, in a shoebox.

Cathleen Mann: And behind books in the bookshelves. I mean, I don’t understand where you think you’re going to go, without a passport when you can go to Mexico. Sure. But why would you want to be arrested in Mexico? Well, it’s really difficult. I mean, and just thinking about having to get out at a moment’s notice, we had to remember where you put all the money way too much.

Ms Oxenberg: Way too much money. It shows as well, I’m sure they have millions stashed in places.

Cathleen Mann: That attracts the attention of the Treasury Department and the IRS, so we should get these people involved. Then, you know, gets a little easier. Like a lot of times, ex-members are afraid to say anything because they fear retaliation.

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah.

Cathleen Mann: So in terms of recovery, when you can get them past the phase where they’re afraid of retaliation and now they’re angry, that’s when they’re the best and most useful to the case. So it takes time, effort, encourage them to speak to you about it, telling them you’re not going to be shocked.

Ms Oxenberg: Well, that’s a given that’s my personality. People pretty much tell me anything.

Cathleen Mann: Right? Because first, you said “I’m a mother. I can handle a lot” I remember you saying that, so, but your daughter is going to want to protect you. So I think you should have a conversation.  I don’t want you to protect me. You know, when you feel ready, please, please tell me everything. Whatever you tell me cannot be worse than I imagined. Why don’t you just tell me everything?

Ms Oxenberg: Yeah.

Cathleen Mann: Sort of giving her permission, you know, because she was texting you and she saw a lot. How are you handling the book and the media attention and all of that?

Ms Oxenberg: Well, the good news is, because my background in entertainment, is that I’m fine with media attention. That doesn’t bother me. The one thing that’s hard is that every time I have to go out there and speak about the book it kind of traumatizes me. I had a sense that writing the book will be closure, I would be able to move forward, but I am rehashing details and it was very painful to write. So that’s something that I’m having to deal with it and I’m dealing with it. I’ve dealt with worse. That would be the only kind of glitch.

Cathleen Mann: Right and that I know will happen over time. Part of it is, I don’t know if you’re like most people, but they read the book and they wish they’d put something else in. I wish they’d put more about this, but as an expert in, and an outsider who read your book, it was quite powerful.

Ms Oxenberg: Thank you. Thank you, Cathleen.

Cathleen Mann: I mean I started reading at 12:01 in the morning.

Ms Oxenberg: You’re amazing.

Cathleen Mann: I was afraid I was going to miss it.

Ms Oxenberg: Oh my God, you’re probably the first person to read it.

Cathleen Mann: Well, Amazon was great because, you know, you put in your pre request and you wait, you wait and you wait. And I was thinking, well maybe they’ll release it early because sometimes they do that. No, you know, has to be on Tuesday. So I just sat. I sat up and kept refreshing my browser and finally it was there. Really anxious to see it. Oh, thank you. Because I know so much about this group, I was
hoping that know I want them to be defeated. I want them to be prosecuted. All of them.

Ms Oxenberg: Thank you. Do you think there are still other groups, some that you think need to be arrested based on your understanding?

Cathleen Mann: Many, many. You know, I can only do what I can do, and try to educate the legal system as much as I can. A lot of times lawyers don’t want to hear it, it makes them uncomfortable. They think it’s about religion. It’s not, Judges are uncomfortable with it, they think I’m going to give some kind of a doctrine dispute. I’m not going to talk about their beliefs so it’s a lot of fear of based on the First Amendment. I don’t talk about their belief. You can give me 10 minutes and you won’t hear me talk about the beliefs.

Ms Oxenberg: Very interesting. That’s what the defence is using as their argument.

Cathleen Mann: They all do that. They don’t have anything else. So what kind of special beliefs do you have to have to brand women? That’s no belief system. I know. That’s a problem, it’s an illegal practice. Again, remember lawyers don’t really know they are gonna throw out anything they can and they all claim the first amendment, all of them, So, you have to have an expert in there that doesn’t fall into the trap of criticizing no other beliefs, to diagnosing them or saying they have some kind of pathology because that’s unethical and illegal to diagnose someone you’d never evaluated as long as you can dodge those two things. Say they have narcissistic qualities, which is different from saying someone is a narcissist. As long as you could dodge these two major issues. You should be all right if you stick to practising it.

Ms Oxenberg: Well, I’m very curious to see how this plays out in court and I think they have a lot more evidence than just a dispute views about whether it was an abusive group or whether it was a female group.

Cathleen Mann: It’s a criminal organization and I’m not ashamed to say it as loudly as I can they have been here 20 years and their behaviour shows that. Yeah. And so, you know, lawyers are going to do what they have to do. I also was taken back when I, you know, I was shocked, literally shocked when I saw that Park Dietz showed up and I thought, oh my God, he’s not involved in this, is he? And then I read about it, and first of all, I don’t believe that he doesn’t know when you think about cults. I think he knows plenty, but as a psychiatrist, he’s a medical doctor, which means he doesn’t use any psychological testing. They’re not trained in that. He’s a psychiatrist. He sees things in terms of pathology or mental illness or mental dysfunction. I mean it’s practically worthless because he’s a psychiatrist. He’s a big name psychiatrist. but you are absolutely right not to
cooperate with him. I mean, he shouldn’t have even asked.

Ms Oxenberg: Well, yeah, he must have been paid a lot, right.

Cathleen Mann: But regardless of whether you’re paid or not, a lot or not, you still should have ethics. And that includes not reaching out and contacting the family of the victim. I don’t know what, here’s what’s going on with him. But, I would like to read more about his opinion of NXIVM.

Ms Oxenberg: He didn’t have one. He said, “I know nothing about the group.”

Cathleen Mann: I don’t believe it. This is a forensic psychiatrist that everybody recognizes his name. He was just trying to pretend to be objective.

Ms Oxenberg: That was very disappointing.

Cathleen Mann: I would never, I would never take money from someone like Keith Raniere and say, Oh, I’m going to do an evaluation for you would never do that, would never associate myself with cult leaders and take money to help them promote their cause or to justify their actions. That’s me. I’m not going to assist leaders to rationalize or justify or normalising. You need to call somebody else because I’m not going to help you. I get a lot of criticism for that. When I testify in cases involving cults. Where they say, well, you know, you, you didn’t want to hear their side of it. I said, well, I certainly did. I interviewed their leader. How much more do I need to hear? And these are my impressions based on interviewing their leader, but I’m not going to take money to interview their leader. She’s part of the case. I think you think you did a very good turn and contributed greatly to thousands of books we have out there about cults. Because I’ve read the whole thing.

Ms Oxenberg: Well, if you feel inclined to, a review on Amazon. That would probably help tremendously. Thank you. Thank you so much. Anyone else read it and like it. Get the word out.