Catherine Oxenberg knew her daughter was in trouble — but she had no idea it was this bad.
The “Dynasty” star’s 25-year-old daughter, India, had lost so much weight that she had stopped having periods, her hair was falling out and her entire life had become consumed by a cult-like self-help group called Nxivm.
Then, in May of last year, Oxenberg learned that India had joined a group of “slaves” ruled by Nxivm leader Keith Raniere and his sidekick, “Smallville” actress Allison Mack.
She was further shocked to find out her daughter had been branded with their initials like an animal.
“A friend called to warn me that India was involved in a secret master-slave sorority in which women were put on a starvation diet and, in a secret ceremony, held down naked and branded on the pubic region with a searing-hot cauterizing iron — like cattle,” Oxenberg writes in her new tell-all, “Captive.”
“I prayed my sweet daughter had not gone so far as to allow someone to barbarically mutilate and torture her, but I feared the worst.”
A few weeks later, she says, she put it to her daughter.
“India … have you been branded?” Oxenberg recalls asking in the new tome, which documents her efforts to extract her daughter from the upstate group.
India admitted that it was true — but insisted that it was nothing unusual and that the design was just some Latin symbol.
“I’ve been branded. But why is that a problem? It was a good experience for me,” Oxenberg remembers India replying.
“It’s a good thing because it’s … character building.”
That was the moment, Oxenberg writes, that she knew she had to do “whatever it took to save my daughter from the clutches of this vicious cult and get her back.”
Oxenberg’s book, subtitled, “A Mother’s Crusade to Save Her Daughter from a Terrifying Cult,” hits shelves Tuesday — but her quest is far from over.
Raniere and Mack were arrested by the feds on sex-trafficking and forced-labor conspiracy charges earlier this year — and India was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in their criminal complaint.
Prosecutors alleged that India was Mack’s “direct slave,” and had been forced to pose for nude photographs that were sent to Raniere as “collateral” to keep her in the group.‘I prayed my sweet daughter had not gone so far’
But she was also a “master” to other slaves, the feds said, and allegedly recruited women by duping them into handing over the same kind of incriminating material — and had instructed at least one slave to “seduce Keith,” then take a photo as proof.
India has not been arrested, but she also hasn’t left the cult — and Oxenberg blames herself, in part, for her daughter’s downfall.
The actress was the one who brought a 19-year-old India and then-husband Casper Van Dien to Nxivm’s innocuous-sounding “Executive Success Program” in 2011, she writes.
The self-help group was kooky — followers bowed to instructors with titles like “Vanguard” and “Prefect” and worked their way up a martial-arts-style hierarchy with colored sashes — but Oxenberg bought into it for several years.
She was eventually put off by its sexist teachings that women are “entitled” and “overemotional,” and by actually meeting Raniere at a volleyball game — where he kept “deep kissing” a dozen fawning female groupies who had come to watch him play.
One of those women was Mack.
“That’s the actress from ‘Smallville,’ ” she recalls someone whispering as Mack “hugged [Raniere] full body, and kissed him on the lips like a lover.”
Meanwhile, India became more dedicated, eventually moving to Nxivm’s headquarters outside Albany and dating a recruiter 16 years her senior.
By 2016, Oxenberg learned India had sunk all her savings into courses and had developed a TaskRabbit-rip-off start-up at Raniere’s urging.
Around the same time, Oxenberg writes, Mack recruited India into what she pitched as a “top-secret, badass, female empowerment sisterhood sorority.”
The following year, a Nxivm defector contacted Oxenberg, telling her about the slave group, the branding — and how Mack had begun “mentoring” India, putting her on an extremely low-calorie diet that Raniere believed would help “build character … because women don’t have any.”
Mack also pushed India into Raniere’s arms, Oxenberg writes.
“He’d had his eyes on her for years,” the defector said.
“In this master-slave club, there’s a lot of pressure for the women to sleep with Keith. Alli must have influenced India to get close to him because that’s how Alli got his approval, by bringing women.”
Mack had her own twisted sexual relationship with Raniere — who alternately showered her with love and gave her the cold shoulder — which led her to be “very punitive and sadistic” to the slaves she groomed to pleasure him, the pal said.
She called herself “Pimp Mack,” “The Madam” and “Madam Mack,” according to the book.
Oxenberg met with two of India’s own slaves who were looking to escape Nxivm — including the one mentioned in the criminal complaint who’d been ordered to “seduce” Raniere.
“He’s helping you work on your body issues. There are certain things he can teach you only by being intimate with you … It will heal your sexual abuse. It’s a privilege: You’re the chosen one,” Mack reportedly told the woman, a model and actress.
“I asked India if she was OK with this assignment,” the woman told Oxenberg, “and she said, ‘Look, I freaked out when I got it, too. I thought, Wow, is that what this is all about? But I ended up finding it an important life lesson.’ ”
Oxenberg also learned that India had forced her slaves to go through other “disturbing rituals,” including “readiness drills” where they had to respond to her texts within minutes at any time of the day or night — or another slave in the group would be punished.
Oxenberg tried and failed to stage an intervention for her daughter — then set about trying to take Raniere and Nxivm down by going to the authorities with the defectors.
After one former slave, actress Sarah Edmondson, told her story to The New York Times in October, the state began investigating.
But Oxenberg says she was discouraged when then-Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s girlfriend warned that he probably wouldn’t be much help.
“I wouldn’t count on too much help from Eric,” Schneiderman’s now-ex Tanya Selvaratnam reportedly said at a cocktail party to a filmmaker working on a documentary about Nxivm.
“He has too many similarities [to Keith].”
The very next day, Selvaratnam moved out of Schneiderman’s apartment, according to Oxenberg — and six months later, she revealed in a New Yorker exposé that the state’s top lawman allegedly referred to her as his “brown slave,” wanted to be called “master” and beat her during sex.
Schneiderman resigned shortly after the piece, which contained allegations from three other women.
Nevertheless, Oxenberg got the good news in March that Raniere had been arrested in Mexico and deported to Brooklyn to face federal charges.
But her “joy turned to devastation” when she read the criminal complaint and recognized that “co-conspirator 2” was her daughter.
Mack was arrested a month later — but it remains unclear what will happen to India.
“The best part of Allison’s bail package was that she was ordered to have no contact with anyone involved in Nxivm, and that includes my daughter,” Oxenberg writes.