{"id":47843,"date":"2025-11-11T08:39:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/47843\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T08:39:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T08:39:15","slug":"allison-mack-breaks-silence-on-nxivm-life-after-prison-in-new-podcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/47843\/","title":{"rendered":"Allison Mack breaks silence on NXIVM, life after prison in new podcast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Allison Mack is addressing \u201cthe bad things she\u2019s done\u201d as a high-profile member of the \u201csex cult\u201d NXIVM<\/a> in a new podcast. <\/p>\n

Released Monday, \u201cAllison After NXIVM<\/a>\u201d is a seven-episode series that features the former \u201cSmallville\u201d 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<\/a> and the eventual criminal fallout. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see myself as innocent,\u201d Mack says in an early episode as she acknowledges using her success as an actor as \u201ca power tool … to get people to do what I wanted\u201d and that she was \u201cvery effective in moving Keith\u2019s vision forward.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a later episode, she accepts claims that she was a \u201charsh monster\u201d during her time at NXIVM.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was not kind and I was aggressive and I was abusive,\u201d Mack says. \u201cI 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2019, Mack pleaded guilty<\/a> to racketeering charges related to her role in NXIVM and its subgroup DOS, a so-called \u201csecret society\u201d of women who were branded with Raniere\u2019s initials and forced to have sex with him. Mack was among one of the \u201cmasters\u201d in the group, a lieutenant tasked by Raniere with recruiting and coercing other women. She was sentenced to three years<\/a> in federal prison in 2021 and was released<\/a> in 2023. (Raniere is currently serving a 120-year sentence after being convicted of sex-trafficking<\/a> and other charges.)<\/p>\n

But while she acknowledges that \u201c100% all those allegations are true,\u201d she also contends that she is \u201csomeone 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI definitely recognize and admit that I was abusing my power,\u201d Mack says. \u201cBut I also can\u2019t 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.\u201d <\/p>\n

The podcast series also touches on what Mack has been up to since being released from prison. She is pursuing a master\u2019s in social work and looking into PhD programs in expressive arts therapy. She is also working at a nonprofit to help bring creative arts such as music, theater and poetry to prisons. <\/p>\n

Over the summer, Mack got married to Frank Meeink<\/a>, 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\u2019s release from prison in 2023. According to the podcast\u2019s host, Natalie Robehmed, Mack now goes by Allison Meeink.<\/p>\n

Robehmed also mentions that \u201cAllison After NXIVM,\u201d which is the latest installment of the true crime podcast \u201cUncover<\/a>,\u201d 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. <\/p>\n

NXIVM also has been the subject of the 2020 documentary series \u201cThe Vow<\/a>\u201d and \u201cSeduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allison Mack is addressing \u201cthe bad things she\u2019s done\u201d as a high-profile member of the \u201csex cult\u201d NXIVM…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[31130,31133,48,52,51,47,50,49,31127,31134,31129,31128,592,2901,31132,5274,6049,31131,315,1557,31135],"class_list":["post-47843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-allison","tag-allison-mack","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mack","tag-natalie-robehmed","tag-new-podcast","tag-nxivm","tag-people","tag-prison","tag-raniere","tag-release","tag-role","tag-sex-cult","tag-time","tag-woman","tag-young-actor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}