Lifetime has unveiled the first look at its chilling original movie on the NXIVM sex cult. But viewers wanting to get the full story and fill in the missing pieces can watch Lifetime’s companion documentary, Beyond the Headlines: Escaping the NXIVM … India and Oxenberg are immediately separated so that India can get the “full experience,” while Oxenberg is clearly skeptical and is shocked to learn that she signed an NDA in her welcome packet, further tipping off her doubts.
Andrea Roth (Rescue Me) takes on the role of Catherine while Peter Facinelli (Twilight) stars as Keith Raniere, the charming and charismatic secret organization leader with devious motives. The film then jumps ahead to Raniere and Mack’s arraignment, where Lifetime recreated the walk to court perfectly as it happened in real life, all the way down to Mack’s outfit and hairstyle. That’s when Mack recruits India into DOS, a “secret society sorority” for a “lifetime of sisterhood.” But there are rules and rituals no one can know about, and there will be “real consequences” for betraying Mack and Raniere, so India promises to never tell a soul. TV

Mack continues to bond with India, revealing she’s on a strict calorie reduction diet because Raniere is “hurt” when she’s heavier. “My family was fractured by horrific circumstances and we were able to come back together again. He kisses her and she backs away, and he promises that won’t ever happen again unless she wants it to.NXIVM eventually opens the café for India to work at, and her family starts to wonder if she’s in a cult. After their first class, Oxenberg and India go on a retreat in Albany — Oxenberg only continues with it because she wants an experience she can share with India.

Despite Catherine’s best efforts, India is drawn deeper into the cult, eventually joining a secret sorority of female members who are branded with the cult leader’s initials, ordered to maintain a restricted diet and forced to recruit other women as sex slaves. Lifetime has unveiled the first look at its chilling original movie on the NXIVM sex cult.

Mack, best known for Smallville and Raniere's associate, pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in April. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on September 25.Get our latest storiesin the feed of your favorite networksWe want to hear from you! “Hi, I’m Catherine Oxenburg,” she says. Her goal is to get to 106 lbs and she wants the same for India.

The movie then recreates all the real-life testimonies given by the women taken down by the authorities, including Mack, Salzman and her daughter Lauren, as well as Seagram’s liquor heiress Claire Bronfman, who helped fund NXIVM. But Raniere is arrested in Mexico and India is picked up by the FBI. India calls the cult deprogrammer her mother recommended to her, ready to talk.The real Oxenberg then returns at the end of the movie, addressing viewers again about how as a last result to save her daughter, she went public with her story. She hopes her story helps to educate others about widespread and systemic predatory abuse. She also uses her inheritance to enroll in NXIVM University full-time. Meanwhile, one of the women tips Oxenberg off to the danger that India is in with DOS and the master/slave dynamic and how the DOS is actually a sex cult.Oxenberg reaches out to a cult deprogrammer to stage an intervention for India, and contacts the FBI to try to get them to open up an investigation. She also dangles India’s dream of running her own café, saying that Raniere gives back “as long as he’s reciprocated accordingly.”A year passes, and India barely comes home.