It does not appear from the links that Grace Park was involved in an active way… she definitely did meet the man though. BSG’s Cally (Nicki Clyne) was more involved and was actually with Raniere when his ass was hauled away by police.
FYI, there’s a podcast called “Escaping NXIVM” from a former member if this topic interests you.
I’ve got a little bit of an advantage in terms of understanding Raniere. I knew him back in the 70’s (we’re about the same age). He was dating someone I knew.
Keith was a soft-spoken and polite kid. Parents liked him, and he could charm anyone. Although unassuming and unintimidating (my guess is that’s why he attracted followers), there were what I now consider warning signs even then. If memory serves, he was a control freak and he took competition seriously no matter the context. Simple board or card game? Sure, analyze your moves to death, Keith, there’s no such thing as a friendly game. To his credit, he didn’t lord his numerous wins over others, but the simple fact remained: he wanted to win. Always. And he was willing to work hard to ensure that he did.
One thing that’s not much of an exaggeration is his intelligence. Cult leaders often claim some sort of super-intelligence, but in his case it’s true. He is a fucking genius. I’m smart too, but he is way out of my league (assuming drug use hasn’t taken any toll). When he went to RPI (an upstate NY school of renown), I recall hearing that he triple majored in 3 difficult subjects: math, physics, and biology (dunno if he did any graduate work). Not only did he always wanted to win, he always wanted to be right. Always. And he was willing to work hard to ensure that he was. He didn’t coast.
Pity. All those brains and look what he did with them…
According to Wiki, Nicki Clyne and Alison Mack married in 2017.
I obviously didn’t know him personally as you did, but my impression from the “Uncover: Escaping NXIVM” podcast was that he was probably smart enough to do well in school, but couldn’t actually apply it to anything, or at least he never did. His entire adult life seemed to be wholly dedicated to scamming people via pyramid schemes. NXIVM wasn’t the first scam, just the most successful. He even tried his hand at the stock market and lost millions of dollars doing that as well (with money he scammed out of a friend in NXIVM).
He claimed to have super intelligence but he never proved it in any way in the real world, other than successfully scamming and blackmailing people. Personally, i just think he was/is full of shit.
Allison Mack has apologized for the whole blackmailing sex slaves thing.