Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

‘True Fanatic’ Clare Bronfman Now Heads Sex Slave Cult After Leaders Busted

Clare Bronfman, the daughter of the late Jewish philanthropist Edgar Bronfman, is now in charge of the alleged sex slavery cult Nxivm after its leaders were arrested, the New York Post reported Saturday.

Bronfman, who along with her sister Sara has reportedly poured millions of dollars into the group, moved their headquarters from Mexico to Brooklyn to be nearer to detained guru Keith Raniere and his top aide, former “Smallville” actress Alison Mack, who have been charged with sex trafficking.

Clare Bronfman is “the enforcer — the brutal one,” former Nxivm publicist Frank Parlato told the Post about. “Clare’s running the [operation] now, and she’s the most ruthless of them.”

“I’m issuing an absolute warning now,” he added. “Clare Bronfman is a true fanatic, and if there’s a Jim Jones situation, everyone will commit suicide but her.”

Parlato added on his website ArtVoice that Bronfman is “financing the entire operations now.”

Raniere, who has run self-help groups for the past 20 years, allegedly forced members of his group to be branded with his initials. He also is accused of forcing his female followers to adhere to 800-calorie diets and provide him with nude pictures and embarrassing information about themselves in order to threaten them if they left.

Once fully initiated, members were allegedly allowed to recruit new members of Nxivm as their own slaves.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.