Lauren Salzman leaves Brooklyn federal court in New York. Salzman flew into a panic. According to her testimony — which has so far taken three days — when police arrived at the home where Raniere was staying, he was taking a nap in an upstairs bedroom, so she ran up to try to help him escape. She talked to the police through the bedroom door, asking if they had a warrant. Yet she tried to remain calm. When police finally kicked down the door, Salzman said, they pushed her to the ground and pointed guns at her. The daughter of group cofounder Nancy Salzman, who has pleaded guilty to a single charge of racketeering conspiracy, Salzman, 42, began her testimony last week describing her first meeting with Raniere in , when she was 21 years old.

A young woman was starved while being held captive by her sister-in-law and forced to work naked for nine months as a domestic slave, a court was told yesterday. Veronica Sandeman, 26, said she was too frightened to fight back as she was subjected to prolonged mental and physical torture by Antonia Pearson-Gaballonie. She finally escaped after her tormentor hacked off her hair, held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her, York Crown Court heard. Miss Sandeman had turned to her soldier brother, Steven, for support as a teenager while having a difficult relationship with her divorced parents in Scotland.

When he was unable to attend the meetings in person, the women would take a naked photo and text it to him - making sure he could see where they had been branded with his initials, Salzman said. Raniere, 58, faces charges including sex trafficking and child pornography for allegedly using his self-help group, Nxivm, to hide a secretive sorority known as DOS in which young women were forced to have sex with him, follow dangerously restrictive diets and obey his every command. If convicted of the most serious charges, Raniere faces life in prison. His lawyer has argued at trial that the women became members of Nxivm voluntarily and were never coerced into doing anything against their will. Salzman said some believed he could affect the weather, echoing the testimony of another former member.