The Dalai Lama Accepted Money From This Wretch

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Several women are also expected to describe the agony they endured when the symbol containing Mr. Raniere’s initials was burned into their skin. And a woman from Mexico is likely to testify that she was kept for 18 months as a virtual prisoner in the home of one of Mr. Raniere’s supporters because she had defied his order not to become romantically involved with someone else.

In recent weeks, five women who were Mr. Raniere’s co-defendants pleaded guilty to various federal charges, and it is anticipated that some may appear at his trial. Others who were in the group and their relatives had hoped that Mr. Raniere also would strike a plea deal to spare his former followers the ordeal of testifying in public.

“My one reservation about the trial is that these victims are going to have testify and it is going to be terribly traumatic for them,” said Catherine Oxenberg, an actress whose daughter, India, was a member of Nxivm. “If Keith had any decency, he would plead out.”

Doing so, however, would have required Mr. Raniere to publicly acknowledge he is someone other than the person he has long professed to be — a brilliant philosopher blessed with a vision of how to create a better world.

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Mr. Raniere demanded obedience from his male followers. But his treatment of women suggested a deep well of misogyny.

The diet he insisted female followers adopt was so severe that some of them stopped menstruating, former members said. At meetings of a Nxivm-affiliated group called “Society of Protectors,” women were forced to wear fake cow udders over their breasts while men called them derogatory names, according to court filings.

Nxivm had long succeeded in fending off scrutiny. In 2012, when a series of articles in a newspaper, The Albany Times-Union, described alleged abuses within the group, officials largely ignored the disclosures.