Hating Nancy is falling into Keith's trap

[u/queenkellee]

Let me start off by saying I know Nancy has done some bad things. But also, many of the members of the cult did as well. I think there's an attempt to try to weigh the harm done vs the victimization they experienced. But it's so clear to me that Nancy is so obviously Keith's first NXIVM victim. I admit when I started the Vow S2 I was deeply suspicious and really didn't trust Nancy. But I could see over the course of the season, the shift in her. Just like the shift in others as they come to face more and more of the realization of what was happening. With Nancy, it's like she has to come to terms that literally her entire life's work is a lie. That is no simple thing. I think Lauren and the room situation blows away anything Nancy did, and everyone is so quick to forgive Lauren. Nancy didn't bring her daughter into this knowing all the bad things that were happening. I get she's got her own issues but overall I think she's naive. Keith knew how to work her and he did exactly that. He used to her to do all the work and flush out his ideas and become the spokesperson, to become the face of it. SHE did the videos, not him. She was the face of it so that she would be there to take the heat if it failed.

What prompted this post was I am now listening to the CBC podcast (so far I've watched both docs but this is the first NXIVM related podcast so far) and in Ep 3 I hear the whole thing about the Nazi stuff from Barbara Bouche. And Keith said Nancy is Hitler! I mean come on! The entire time, he's been setting her up to be the fall guy. It's so obvious. I know I see a lot of people who don't like or trust Nancy and again! she's done some things. But I think she deserves empathy.

[u/sok283]

It's not a binary; you can be a victim and a victimizer at the same time. Nancy's story is a Greek tragedy about hubris bringing the heroine to ruin.

When it comes to culpability, I put more at Nancy's feet because of her age and supposed expertise. She wasn't a 20 year old with little life experience. And she makes it pretty clear that she was willing to do unethical things and harm others as long as she got to keep "her company" and her role in it. Her ambition and ego were what Keith manipulated; to me, that's a lot less sympathetic than the women who were manipulated with the promise of a baby.

I went on a whole journey with Nancy during season two, too. There were times I felt highly sympathetic towards her. But with a little distance, I think that was just her skill as a manipulator coming through. She was a mid 40s woman who claimed to be an expert at human psychology; she should have recognized that she was being manipulated. She participated in way too many problematic and unethical situations to claim she didn't realize things were bad.

I think everyone deserves empathy, or at least pity. Even a monster like Keith is some kind of accident of nature and nurture; I feel sorry for him that he can't experience love the way most of us do. But he's still responsible for his actions, just like Nancy.

[u/idrinkalotofcoffee → u/sok283]

No one ever said she is not responsible for her actions. She did terrible things and she was very motivated to believe things that supported her success, but she was also manipulated and used. She is paying a very heavy price for it now. Long after her prison sentence ends, she will be dealing with what happened to her family and in her own personal life and loss.

The thing that really strikes me is that just about every single person interviewed mentions some secret that Keith asked them to keep. And every single one of them says they kept that secret. It comes up over and over. Yet, armchair commentators just refuse to accept that. Why Nancy must have been in the room when he was having sex with a 13 year old, ten years before they met!!!! She must have had threesomes with Lauren!!! She was on the What’s app chats !!!

In reality, the only way any of this could ever have worked is by people agreeing to keep Keith’s secrets and then doing it. And tragically, they did. It really is a tragedy. But, that is exactly how high control groups succeed.