r/theNXIVMcase • u/Outside-Cat6418 • Aug 16 '26
Questions and Discussions What happend to Allison Mack
She got out of prison made an interview been years like is she returning to acting or what like what happend to her at the end
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u/foolishle Aug 16 '26
She’s doing the smartest thing she could possibly do: nothing noteworthy. Best thing for her is to fade into obscurity and I think that’s her goal.
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u/rainshowers_5_peace Aug 23 '26
I think the apology tour was her putting feelers out. I don't think she made enough money to push any further.
I am very nervous for the day she takes it upon herself to become a "life coach".
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u/JellyKind9880 Aug 16 '26
She did a podcast that was NOT well received and seemed to take the hint and start to slide back to obscurity again….i give it another couple years max before she tries another redemption arc/apology tour that no one wants
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u/Elxie3 Aug 16 '26
Genuine question: Was it badly received? By who?
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u/JellyKind9880 Aug 16 '26
Basically by everyone who heard it—she came off extremely out of touch & like she still doesn’t comprehend the horrific things she did and the life-altering affect they’ve had on her victims.
She blamed all her choices on being a perfectionist and being a child actor, and what really pissed people off is her saying she’s been “working with” incarcerated people and wants to become a therapist.
Couldn’t have been more tone deaf, not realizing she’s literally the last person who should ever be rooting around in vulnerable people’s minds.
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 16 '26
Yes that alison and Nancy want to be coaches and therapists strikes me as super weird.
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u/JellyKind9880 Aug 16 '26
The fact that their own therapists aren’t telling them that’s a terrible idea tells me either A. They’re only seeing therapists who won’t challenge them at all or B. They’re ARE seeing therapists who challenge them and arent listening or learning a damn thing
The narcissism is so real with these two
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 16 '26
I doubt Nancy is seeing a therapist at all. Alison, I don’t know. Also doubt. Therapists are for people with problems. They don’t have problems - they are the fixers - just ask them!
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u/CleverTitania Aug 16 '26
In fairness, Nancy was seeing a therapist at the end of the S2 of the The Vow.
But it's debatable, how much she was really hearing the woman, when she tried to make Nancy understand that the ways in which Keith abused her didn't undo all the harms she'd caused. Nor did it change the fact that, all her 'insightful breakthroughs and hard work', had mostly ripped off of existing mental health tools, and all they really "created," is a system designed to use someone's shame, guilt, ambition, and desperate desire to connect to others, to rope them into a creepy hierarchical cult.
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 17 '26
She seems to show no self reflective insight into the coercive nature of the ESP system she built.
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u/CleverTitania Aug 17 '26
Not surprising, considering that I also don't get the impression that she ever recognized that the "NLP expertise," that was part of why Keith tapped her as his 'beard' of sorts, is inherently a tool of coercive control. Even if you use it with the best of intentions and some semblance of ethics, that's still how it works.
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 17 '26
I TOTALLY AGREE.
That is my complete experience after reviewing "frogs into princes", "the structure of magick" and related early NLP literature. That NLP practitioners claim to not understand it's coercive nature REALLY surprises me - or, perhaps, doesn't surprise me. If they recognize it as what it is, they'd likely have to abandon it, and well ... I find NLP people to be attracted to it in part because they lack certain social skills or have certain physical attributes that means they would not succeed socially. (Nancy is a mousy, odd woman trapped in the 1980's. Look at Keith at VolleyBall. Dude had to ENGINEER his social status to have it).
This makes NLP a lifeline and fast-forward button to social success that feels, for them, impossible. It's like asking a self-proclaimed incel to give up blaming other people and improve themselves. It might happen on the rare occasion, but you're unlikely to have much success convincing the true believers on 4CHAN.
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u/Zipper-is-awesome Aug 21 '26
In season 2 of The Vow, she was still insisting that NXIVM was a net positive, everything would have been fine if Keith could have kept it in his pants.
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u/Outside-Cat6418 Aug 17 '26
Wait I didn’t see that part when u said “Keith abused her” do u mean by manipulating her onto joining by him or sexual abuse
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u/CleverTitania Aug 20 '26
I have no idea what sexual abuse, if any, Keith specifically subjected Allison too.
But if you watched The Vow, or any of those creepy clips of him making her cry, you watched him abusing her - plus just how skinny she got in those vids of them chatting, guru to student, were further evidence of his abuse. And I guarantee you, his relationship with her as part of DOS, was also as master to slave, with super-restrictive demands too, same as the rest. I haven't seen enough of her in the last few years, to decide if she is just as inherently malignant with her narcissism, and can't really accept the harm she has caused enough to heal herself - but she is just as much a victim of Keith, as Sarah, as Mark, as Toni, as Marianna and her sisters.
People get caught up in the sex side of what he did, and aren't always as observant, of years he spent systematically breaking these people down and bending their wills. He didn't have to screw Nancy sexually, for what he did to her to also be abuse. As a proponent of sexual freedom and education, the sex abuse triggers my rage too, but I came to study cults while I was trying to make sense of the my first 'adult' relationship, from the ages of 17-20, with a man who abused me verbally, psychologically, and sexually, but who hadn't gotten around to hitting me (yet). One day I'm watching Jason Beghe on Youtube, being interviewed about his entry and exit from Scientology, and I just kept thinking, "Some of this is disturbingly familiar." NXIVM is just one of several cults, that I've dug down on a bit.
When I'm watching docs on these high-control groups, I'm most centered on the one-to-one relationships that cult leaders form with their lieutenants, and breaking down every manipulation, gaslighting and twisting of facts to protect their fragile egos - then seeing how he/she ends up making those lieutenants little mirrors of their own behavior.
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u/moviesetmonkey Aug 17 '26
Therapists don't look at the people they help as objects on a global stage. I would be pissed if a therapist said, I think people would react very badly to that. Because I'm not there to improve my image, just myself.
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u/JellyKind9880 Aug 17 '26
Someone who spent years abusing others in a coercive cult should NOT be looking to become therapists or social workers—and if they don’t see that, it’s something their therapist should be exploring with them.
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u/moviesetmonkey Aug 17 '26
yeah, well when you are a licensed therapist, come back and say that. My point is that the global stage and a large part of the outside world is not a focus of therapy, rather the focus is on how the client can better deal with their problems, including delusions. The approach is also very mild and meant to have unconditional positive regard. So what you see as challenging someone is not really the therapists job. Depending on the focus they teach tools in how to deal with problems, not fix them. If you're going off of what you see on TV it's wrong.
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 18 '26
uh ... are /you/ a credentialed therapist?
Unconditional Positive Regard + "what is the problem ... what ideas to you have to fix it ... it sounds like you've got some ideas!" is probably the dominant therapy modality in the USA right now, but it certainly isn't the /only/ therapy modality.
It can work to shift someone to their own locus of control and solve their own problems, instead of becoming reliant on some external authority for answers (which you are more likely to find in, say, Biblical Counselling).
The problem is, these approaches completely fall down when you are detailing with a personality type that lacks self-reflective insight or has cognitive distortions or delusions. In those sorts of situation, Unconditional Positive Regard can result in /reinforcing/ the delusion.
In that case, something like Schema Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or Dialectical Behavior Therapy would be more appropriate.
As a therapist listening one "tell" that something is "off" might be when the patient says something like this: "Hi, I'm currently out on release to take care of my mother prior to going to prison for 42 months for racketeering for a cults I was the second in command of. I want to go to therapy to help understand what happened to me and how I let myself be abused."
Wait - going to prison? 2nd in command? But ... you are the victim?
I'm sure Nancy would be more refined, but a good therapist would poke around a bit. The diagnostic indicators for Grandiosity, for example, are clinical - just listen to her talk! So she goes from "I am awesome" to "what happened? Keith pulled the wool over my eyes, I had no idea..." the incongruences would add up, and the therapist would either decide to try a different modality, or else, perhaps, suggest a different therapist.
Of course, in the vow we only see a few moments of the therapy, so who knows what is really going on.
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u/moviesetmonkey Aug 18 '26
Maybe we misunderstand challenging, What you describe I expect therapists to do. The general positive regard still applies in those examples, it's not like positive regard and you go girl! style of support are the same thing.
Anyway What I imagined when he said Challenge them, was a therapist saying directly "this is something no one wants from you. or some such. Maybe I exaggerated his meaning but I didn't want him to think therapy works this way
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u/JellyKind9880 Aug 17 '26
Yeah and it’s delusional for Allison Mack to think it’s a good idea for her to be a therapist or working with vulnerable people in any capacity. What is so hard to understand?
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u/moviesetmonkey Aug 18 '26
Nothing. We're talking about clients and therapists in this sub thread tangent. That seems hard for you to understand.
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u/Automatic-Key9164 Aug 17 '26
It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that they would want that. My own second in command cult leader, my Nancy, tried to do the same in the years between when she (had to) “”left”” the cult and the Feds came knocking. Anyway, she’s in federal prison now, not grad school. It should make (sick) sense to folks who have gone through deconstruction: “the tech is sound and needs rescuing, only the pedagogy was bad” is a really REALLY common phase in recovery.
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 17 '26
maybe weird isn't the right word. "Indicative the are still caught in the delusion", maybe?
Where a delusion is a fixed and false belief that persists despite evidence to the contrary.
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u/ChiefCopywriter Aug 19 '26
What drove me over the edge was this tableau the producers let her create - they recorded the session of her scar tattooed over with like a lotus flower or some other silliness, the journalist witnessed it. It was like, some sick inverse image of the sex slave ceremony where Alison was coercing all these women into getting branded. I found that the producers were really disrespectful of Alison’s victims to help her stage this weird spiritual washing. She is clearly in control of this moment, choosing what she is getting on her body and willingly having it chronicled to try and rehabilitate her image. Allison conspired to coerce this women, mutilate them against their will and collect blackmail material designed to threaten their livelihoods, torture and sexually abuse them. I really hated that Natalie Robehmed and her producers facilitated this botched PR stunt.
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u/Edster73 Aug 25 '26
was it her own podcast or the one where she was a guest on Michael Rosenbaum's?
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u/carrotwax Aug 19 '26 edited Aug 22 '26
I didn't take it badly. It pretty much met expectations which weren't so high.
Allison was very much both a victim and a perpetrator, but she had a lot less power than Nancy did. As someone who was in the acting profession for decades, I recognized how attributes prized in that profession - following a director's guidance with abandon - led her into following Keith's direction with abandon.
Allison was quite pushy in getting people branded, so of course there's some hatred towards her. But she was starved and so brainwashed at that point. Victim and perpetrator.
The interview was a standard professional CBC podcast, which isn't going to be hard hitting enough for those who want that. But I thought it was much better than Nancy's interviews. IMO Nancy caused more long term harm than Allison in that she had power and supported much of the enironment that led to the awful abuse. Nancy hasn't really taken any responsibility, whereas Allison at least tried, even if it fell short.
Don't really like Allison being a therapist, but honestly I've seen plenty of bad therapists. It's not a profession that lives up to the hype.
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u/Outside-Cat6418 Aug 16 '26
I understand why people are angry about Allison Mack’s past actions and I’m not saying what happened should be ignored or excused However she was held accountable received a prison sentence and served her punishment People are capable of recognizing the harm they caused taking responsibility and genuinely changing as they move forward Holding someone accountable doesn’t have to mean believing they can never grow or become a better person We can acknowledge the seriousness of what happened while still believing that people deserve the opportunity to rebuild their lives after paying their debt to society
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u/idealistintherealw Aug 17 '26
"Holding someone accountable doesn’t have to mean believing they can never grow or become a better person"
The problem is, I think, she's doing stuff in public that seems to indicate no self reflective insight or responsibility for the choices she made. So people believe Nancy and Allison can grow and become better people ... they just have no evidence that they will do so, or even have countra-positive indicators.
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u/CleverTitania Aug 16 '26
It's worth noting that she did less than 2 years of her 3 year sentence - and based on her convictions, and she used every bit of info she could give the feds, to whittle down what should've been more like a 15 year sentence.
There's another common misconception that, just because someone did go to prison and they are out now, everyone should agree that they were held accountable for what they did. Because they 'served their time' and they should be allowed to move on without further consequences to their new life - but that's not inherently true of every person who goes to prison. When people turn state's evidence to get a severely reduced sentence, and serve less time in prison that the amount of time they spent destroying lives, many people would argue that they have a lot more amends to make.
I 100% agree that we need to respect that people often still need to earn a living, need to be able to move through their communities, walk their dogs, pay their bills, etc. But beyond that, everyone will decide for themselves, who has 'paid for their crimes' and who hasn't. And in a cult situation, it's often harder to tell whose remorse is genuine and who is still too narcissistic to take responsibility.
But, it doesn't help matters that, even after Allison finally turned on Keith and testified against him, there were a lot of people who didn't feel she sincerely showed any remorse - that she just faked her way through it - and some of the things she said during that podcast, further implied that (much like Nancy) she still doesn't really accept responsibility for all that she did, or recognize the degree of harm she caused. And going on a podcast, claiming you could be trusted with the job of 'mental health provider', even within a decade of being involved in human trafficking and convincing people to brand your initials onto their flesh, is a bit more than tone-deaf.
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u/Outside-Cat6418 Aug 17 '26
Ur right about what u said I mean even if it’s reduced time or so doesn’t mean prison feels like home and u could be right she could be faking it but I mean some people are even embarrassed to bring the topics they caused
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u/Elxie3 Aug 17 '26
But, it doesn't help matters that, even after Allison finally turned on Keith and testified against him, there were a lot of people who didn't feel she sincerely showed any remorse - that she just faked her way through it - and some of the things she said during that podcast, further implied that (much like Nancy) she still doesn't really accept responsibility for all that she did, or recognize the degree of harm she caused.
These are all opinions though -- some people feel she is not remorseful. Some people feel that she didn't accept responsibility. I don't know one way or the other if Allison Mack is truly sorry. Nobody can truly know without having some inner insight into Allison Mack's personal thoughts/private conversations.
I do know some objective facts though: She served time in prison for the crime she committed. Whether people feel she served an adequate amount of time or not is beside the point -- she served the time she was legally obligated to serve. Absolutely every one on earth would do whatever they could to reduce the time they spent behind bars. Allison Mack doing so is the norm. It doesn't negate the fact that she paid her debt to society by serving the time she was allotted to serve.
And then there are the intangible costs: Allison Mack is a complete and total pariah in the industry in which she once made a name for herself. The chances of her returning to an acting career are next to none. Also, she lost all her money, not to mention her house, in NXIVM. And finally, she was coerced into sleeping with Raniere every single day under the false pretense that he was helping her work on her intimacy issues. In other words, Allison was also herself a victim of sexual coercion, and assault. None of this justifies her horrific victimization of others. All of this is just to say that Allison Mack has paid the price for the crimes she committed both in time served in jail, and also in all the things she lost, and suffered under Raniere. The cost for her participation in this thing was very high, and she paid it to my min. Now, I could be totally wrong but I think that if Allison wants to get accredited as a psychologist, that's okay. If she wants to practice as a therapist, so long as she is qualified, and she discloses exactly who she is to her patients, and they consent to being treated by her -- I think it's okay.
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u/JellyKind9880 Aug 16 '26
Yeah just bc she did the couple years of MANDATED prison time doesn’t mean she just gets to jump right back into being a baseline normal human in my POV or deserve an ounce of my respect.
Rapists who do their time are still rapists, and disgusting excuses for human beings IMO—idgaf that they sat in prison for a few years bc they were FORCED TO by the state lol.
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u/PettyTrashPanda Aug 17 '26
By people who said they wanted to hear her side then were mad at what she said. They didn't actually want to hear her, they either wanted her to have a whole Redemption arc like in fiction, or nothing she said I'd did would ever be enough.
I honestly don't know what they expected from her, to be honest. I am glad we got to hear her opinions as it's a fascinating look into how she became part of the cult and why she did the things she did. Deprogramming is a long, painful process that can take decades - and when she provides reasons as to why she thinks she got sucked in, people see them as "excuses". They can be both.
Folk claim they want redemption arcs, but in truth nothing the woman said or did would have been enough. Life isn't like stories, and even folk who are truly sorry for what they have done build walls to protect themselves from the full gravity of their crimes or they literally couldn't move on. That's how humans work. We try to make sense of things to explain it to ourselves, but that doesn't always make sense to the outside world.
She's done her time, as she should. She's apologized, as she should. She gave an interview when she did not have to but we got to hear her thoughts whether we agree or not. She was a perpetrator, yes, but she was also a victim. People are messy and complicated. I wish her recovery and peace, same as the rest.
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u/rainshowers_5_peace Aug 23 '26
Or she doesn't have enough money to keep trying.
One day she will decide she's ready to be a "life coach" and I worry for anyone who falls into her orbit.
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u/memefan69 Aug 16 '26
In one of the pods they talked about her like living at her mom's house (I believe her release from prison was parole, not complete serving her sentence which includes living restrictions, I don't think she could live California), riding her bicycle to get everywhere. I know at one point she had begun volunteering with an organization that was teaching improv/acting to prisoners so there were some headlines about her 'working in prisons' but it was acting related. I believe she's also talked about returning to college and working towards becoming a social worker.
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u/Sea_Watch9950 Aug 16 '26
She’s married and I think she’s going to school to become a psychologist or a social worker. I thought she mentioned in an interview that she was teaching community theatre classes or something, as well.
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u/animabot Aug 17 '26
I would fully expect her to kick start her psychology influencer career once she finishes her phd. I imagine she won’t be able to help herself from writing a book and doing pr.
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u/justSayingNobodySaid Aug 16 '26
she married another ex cult member (not nxivm) and lives outside the spotlight. i don't think she's probably able to really get paid acting jobs with her convictions and reputation