Smallville star accused of recruiting women for sex with self-help guru
A US actress has been arrested and charged after she allegedly recruited women into a secret society and forced to have sex with a self-help guru.
Allison Mack, known for her role in WB Television series Smallville, was charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy in an indictment unsealed on Friday after the women allegedly had group leader Keith Raniere's initials branded on them following the alleged sexual encounters with him.
Mack, 35, pleaded not guilty at a brief hearing in federal court in Brooklyn before US Magistrate Judge Cheryl Pollak.
Pollak declined to release the actress on bail but said Mack might be released at a future hearing if she could offer "significant property" to secure her bail.
A second hearing is scheduled for Monday.
Raniere, 57, was arrested last month and charged with sex trafficking. He is being held without bail.
"The allegations contained in the indictment are only that, allegations," Sean Buckley, a lawyer for Mack, said at Friday's hearing. He declined to comment to reporters outside the courtroom.
US authorities have accused Mack of recruiting women to join what purported to be a female mentorship group but was actually a secret society run by Raniere, the leader of a network of purported self-help groups based in Albany, New York, called Nxivm.
Prosecutors said women recruited into his secret society, who numbered as many as 50, were branded with Raniere's initials, put on extremely restrictive diets to stay thin and forced to have sex with the leader.
Upon joining, they were required to provide information about family and friends, nude photographs and rights to their assets - so-called collateral used to threaten them if they left, prosecutors said.
The women were taught the society would empower and strengthen them, according to prosecutors.
Mack helped Ranier control the women in exchange for financial and other benefits from him, prosecutors said.
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"Under the guise of female empowerment, she starved women until they fit her co-defendant's sexual ideal and she targeted vulnerable women," Assistant US Attorney Moira Kim Penza said at Friday's hearing.
On its website, Nxivm calls itself "a community guided by humanitarian principles that seek to empower people and answer important questions about what it means to be human".
In a letter on the site, Raniere said he was "deeply saddened" and denied "abusing, coercing or harming" anyone.
Marc Agnifilo, a lawyer for Raniere, said earlier this month he was "confident these allegations will be soundly disproven".
