NXIVM cult leader sues Bureau of Prisons over winter blackout

BROOKLYN (CN) — Keith Raniere, the leader of the NXIVM cult, sued the federal Bureau of Prisons on Wednesday seeking damages over a 2019 power outage that left detainees in a Brooklyn jail without heat for a week in the dead of winter.

Raniere, 65, is serving a life sentence following his 2019 conviction for sex trafficking, forced labor conspiracy, racketeering, extortion and creation and possession of child pornography.

He founded the self-help group NXIVM, pronounced “Nexium,” in the late 1990s. As the group gathered more than 16,000 members in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, its top brass, including Raniere, were running a sex ring within the broader group, through which Raniere blackmailed women into being his sex “slaves” and permanently branded them with his initials.

Ahead of a federal trial where witnesses recounted years of cruelty and abuse at Raniere’s hands, the ex-cult leader was held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, including during a weeklong power outage sparked by an electrical fire that left its 1,600 detainees in freezing cells with sparse access to food and medical care.

The outage lasted from Jan. 27, 2019, until Feb. 3, 2019, sparking protests outside the jail as people inside banged on the windows of their cells calling for help.

In his complaint, Raniere says he “recalls that on at least two of the relevant nights in question, ice formed and remained frozen in his cell,” and that prison officials noticed the failed heating system days before the blackout began.

As a result of the prison bureau’s negligence, Raniere claims, he suffered from physical injuries including pain, cold sweats, congestion, chest pains and high blood pressure. He also says the incident exacerbated asthma, pain and back problems.

Other detainees described being confined to their cells for days on end, broken toilets that filled cells with the smell of decaying feces, and losing access to food, medical care and the outside world.

Detainees settled a $10 million class action against the Bureau of Prisons in 2023.

“These horrifying conditions, independently and through their mutually reinforcing effects, produced a serious deprivation of basic human needs for the people confined in the MDC,” the class wrote in a federal complaint.

Around 1,000 claimants received $8,750 under the agreement, and another roughly 550 people who submitted late claims received $2,500 each, according to attorneys from Emery Celli who represent the class.

Raniere filed suit after the prison bureau denied his administrative claim in February. The bureau cited a section of the settlement framework stating the U.S. would deny claimants with time-barred claims who either didn’t respond to or rejected the settlement offer.

An attorney for Raniere did not immediately return a request for comment. A spokesperson for the bureau said the agency “does not comment on pending litigation or matters that are the subject of legal proceedings.”

Raniere is serving his 120-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Complex, Butner, in North Carolina.

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