Actress Allison Mack is speaking out about her time in the 'sex cult' NXIVM in a new podcast. Photo: TNS
Allison Mack is addressing "the bad things she's done" as a high-profile member of the "sex cult" NXIVM in a new podcast.
Released Monday (Nov 10), Allison After NXIVM is a seven-episode series that features the former Smallville star detailing her time as a young actor and how she became involved in the purported self-improvement group, as well as her role in manipulating women into becoming sex slaves for NXIVM leader Keith Raniere and the eventual criminal fallout.
"I don't see myself as innocent," Mack says in an early episode as she acknowledges using her success as an actor as "a power tool... to get people to do what I wanted" and that she was "very effective in moving Keith's vision forward."
In a later episode, she accepts claims that she was a "harsh monster" during her time at NXIVM.
"I was not kind and I was aggressive and I was abusive," Mack says. "I was harsh and I was callous and I was aggressive and forceful in ways that were painful for people. [I] did make people feel like they had no choice and was incredibly abusive to people, traumatic for people."
In 2019, Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering charges related to her role in NXIVM and its subgroup DOS, a so-called "secret society" of women who were branded with Raniere's initials and forced to have sex with him.
Mack was among one of the "masters" in the group, a lieutenant tasked by Raniere with recruiting and coercing other women.
She was sentenced to three years in federal prison in 2021 and was released in 2023. (Raniere is currently serving a 120-year sentence after being convicted of sex trafficking and other charges.)
But while she acknowledges that "100% all those allegations are true," she also contends that she is "someone who cares deeply and wanted very much to grow and wanted very much for everybody that I was involved with to grow.... [B]oth of those things are true about me.
"I definitely recognise and admit that I was abusing my power," Mack says. "But I also can't negate the fact that there was a part of me that was altruistic and was desperate to help people. [I] wanted to be better, and I was willing to do anything to be better in myself and to help other people be better."
The podcast series also touches on what Mack has been up to since being released from prison. She is pursuing a master's in social work and looking into PhD programmes in expressive arts therapy. She is also working at a nonprofit to help bring creative arts such as music, theatre and poetry to prisons.
Over the summer, Mack got married to Frank Meeink, a prominent former neo-Nazi who now speaks out in support of racial diversity and acceptance. The couple met in a dog park not long after Mack's release from prison in 2023. According to the podcast's host, Natalie Robehmed, Mack now goes by Allison Meeink.
Robehmed also mentions that Allison After NXIVM, which is the latest instalment of the true crime podcast Uncover, came to be after Mack reached out to journalist Vanessa Grigoriadis following her release from prison, hoping to tell her own story for the first time.
Grigoriadis, who serves as an executive producer on the series, had interviewed Mack before her arrest.
NXIVM also has been the subject of the 2020 documentary series The Vow and Seduced: Inside The NXIVM Cult. – Los Angeles Times/Tribune News Service
