NEW YORK _ A reluctant sex cult "slave" opened up to jurors Wednesday about a seduction session she was compelled to have with the group leader now on trial for alleged crimes including trafficking and conspiracy.
The 32-year-old woman from England, who used only the name Sylvie to protect her privacy, said she was told by her handler that it was her turn to "seduce" NXIVM leader Keith Raniere, an encounter that filled her with "shame" and regret.
"I knew what I had to do but it was like I was having some crazy out-of-body experience," Sylvie said, describing the big bed with white sheets where she got undressed.
Sylvie said Raniere performed oral sex on her, and "it felt like it was going on for a week long."
"When is it going to end?" she said she asked herself. "I felt like I was losing control in my own body."
She said she felt doing this was "part of my role as a slave."
When it was over, she said Raniere got in the bed next to her and said she was "special."
"Now you are part of the inner circle," she said Raniere told her. "I felt like it was all lies. I just felt disgusting."
Sylvie said that after the sexual encounter, Raniere asked her to pose for an explicit photo.
"You look beautiful inside and out," he said as he took the graphic photo with her phone.
He even pried her legs open wider to pose her for the photo, she said.
"I just felt like in a whole different realm of darkness." Sylvie said.
She asked for permission to delete the photo which her "master" Monica Duran granted, but then she was forced to take another one.
"All around that time I felt so much shame and still do, honestly," she said.
After that, "I didn't have any respect for him," she said, and she tired to avoid him, talking to him by text only.
She continued to communicate with Duran and her "grandmaster" Raniere.
"That was my strategy, to move through this in a way that I thought would keep me out of trouble," Sylvie said.
She said she was also forced to run errands for her master which supports the prosecution's forced labor theory.
Later, she recruited her own slave and met a woman she believed was "Smallville" actress Allison Mack's slave.
Raniere, 58, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and other charges. He claims his encounters with the alleged victims were consensual.
Five of Raniere's co-defendants, including Mack, have pleaded guilty. Mack is a possible government witness at a trial expected to last six weeks.
Federal authorities said they pulled back the curtain on self-help organization NXIVM and revealed a cult rife with female slaves amassed and literally branded for the sexual pleasure of its perverse leader.
Some of the brainwashed women in the covert group were branded with a symbol that prosecutors say included Raniere's initials.
A superseding indictment from March charges Raniere with child exploitation and possession of child pornography.
