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At the start of the meetings, female members of the so-called sex cult Nxivm — the “slaves” — would offer a tribute to their “master,” Keith Raniere, the group’s leader.
The women would remove their clothes and array themselves on the floor in front of him, while he sat in a chair and spoke to them about philosophy and other topics. If he was not in attendance, they would pose for a group photo and send it to him, making sure that parts of their body that had been branded with a symbol related to the group were visible.
That is how Lauren Salzman, one of the women present at certain meetings, described them in graphic testimony on Friday during the racketeering and sex trafficking trial of Mr. Raniere.
The brief testimony by Ms. Salzman offered insight from a senior member of Nxivm about the ways in which Mr. Raniere, who was known as Vanguard or sometimes Grandmaster, exerted control over the women in the group, including high-ranking ones.
Mr. Raniere, 58, co-founded Nxivm (pronounced Nex-e-um) in the 1990s as a self-help organization based in a suburban town in upstate New York. He is now on trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, facing charges of racketeering conspiracy, identity theft, extortion, forced labor, money laundering, wire fraud and sex trafficking.
Over the last several weeks, five women who were charged as his co-defendants, including Ms. Salzman, pleaded guilty to various charges. Prosecutors have said that while Mr. Raniere purported to be a mentor to troubled people, he was really a “con man” who exploited their desire to improve their lives.
The meetings, according to Ms. Salzman, were for senior members of an ultra-clandestine group within Nxivm called The Vow, or D.O.S., which supposedly stood for a Latin phrase meaning “Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions,” and took place in a house near Albany called the Sorority House.
In her testimony, Ms. Salzman explained the pyramid structure of masters and slaves inside the group. She also identified senior members of Nxivm, known as the Inner Circle, and high-ranking members of D.O.S., including Allison Mack, an actress from the TV show “Smallville.”
“I was a slave with Keith as my master,” Ms. Salzman said. “I had other slaves under me.”
An earlier witness on Friday testified that a senior D.O.S. member had purchased metal ankle shackles, a “studded rubber paddle” and a collar that can be used to shock a person wearing it. Testimony next week is expected to include more information about the purchases.
Ms. Salzman, 42, said that she first met Mr. Raniere when she was in college and began a sexual relationship with him in 2001 that lasted until 2008 or 2009, and was briefly revived in 2017.
At various times, she testified, Mr. Raniere told her he would have children with her. The entire time, she said, he had sexual relationships with other women within Nxivm.
Ms. Salzman said Mr. Raniere took nude pictures of her and persuaded her to have sex with women. She said he explained his sexual relationships with other women as hardships that he endured to further their personal growth.
When one of the members would become upset and begin thinking about abandoning the group, Mr. Raniere would ask Ms. Salzman to persuade them to stay, she said. She added that she and others often consulted with him before planning to visit relatives or make a trip out of town.
He was viewed by people within Nxivm as possessing special abilities. If there was a snowstorm after he developed a new teaching, Ms. Salzman said, many within Nxivm would attribute the change in weather to the ideas he had presented. In one oft-told tale, circulated by Mr. Raniere and others, he strolled through a rain shower without getting wet.
On Friday afternoon, prosecutors projected two charts onto a screen. Ms. Salzman identified people who were depicted in one chart as upper echelon members of Nxivm, including Clare Bronfman, the Seagrams liquor heiress, and Emiliano Salinas, the son of a former president of Mexico. The other showed eight senior D.O.S. members, including herself and Ms. Mack, Ms. Salzman said.
D.O.S. was presented to recruits as a women’s empowerment group, a previous witness testified, and those who joined were required to provide embarrassing or incriminating material that could ensure that they stayed in the group and followed directives from their “masters.”
Ms. Salzman, whom the government described as “a first-line master in D.O.S.,” said she answered directly to Mr. Raniere, but concealed from recruits that he was involved. Some women within D.O.S. were branded with Mr. Raniere’s initials, witnesses have said, or assigned to have sex with him.
After removing their clothes at the beginning of the D.O.S. meetings, Ms. Salzman said, the eight first-line members would discuss topics like recruitment, a project for a book titled “The Game” and “a dungeon.”
Earlier in the trial, jurors heard testimony from two other people who had been Nxivm members, a woman who was identified in court only as Sylvie and Mark Vicente, who had been a top official in the group.
Both spoke at length about the custom within parts of Nxivm to ask members for “collateral,” which Mr. Vicente sometimes referred to as “blackmailing material.”
Mr. Vincente said men who were part of a subgroup called the Society of Protectors were asked to put up money that they would get back only if they followed through on promises to enroll additional members.
Sylvie told jurors that to join D.O.S., she was required to hand over nude photos and a signed, stamped letter to her parents claiming that she had become a prostitute.