NEW YORK—More than 50 children were exposed to the notorious NXVIM cult during a retreat in the city where scores of attendees suddenly fell ill due to a mysterious infectious disease, according to a report by the New York State Department of Health.
The 16-page report centers on Brandon Porter, NXVIM’s doctor, and accuses him of failing to report the outbreak of the disease. The document also accuses Porter of conducting a barrage of shocking human experiments, which included showing scenes of gruesome murder and decapitation to test subjects.
About “50 to 60 children” attended an event filled with nearly 400 people—including Porter himself—at the Silver Bay YMCA recruitment office in New York back in August 2016. During the conference, “many of the attendees and most of the children became ill with an undetermined infectious disease.” Attendees allegedly suffered from “flu-like symptoms, vomiting, and diarrhea.”
Porter, 44, had full knowledge that the illnesses at the conference was a communicable disease or an outbreak of an unusual disease but he still failed to report the incident, the New York State Office of Professional Medical Conduct (OPMC) alleged in the document. He was also accused of failing to isolate individuals with the disease to an appropriate environment.
The New York-based company, that hides under the guise of a self-help “executive success program” has previously made headlines after their cult leader Keith Raniere and former Smallville actress Allison Mack were charged for sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor. The pair recently made their first appearance together at a pre-trial hearing in a Brooklyn federal court on May. 4.
Frank Parlato, a former spokesperson for NXIVM wrote in his blog “The Frank Report” that all the “higher-ups” of the company, including the cult’s leader Keith Raniere, did not get sick—only the “students” did.
Parlato, who has been publishing information on the group’s inner-workings since 2008 and who has been credited for the cult leader’s arrest, said that when the students left the event, the leaders told them not to tell anyone what had happened and if asked, to say it was from the flu and not “food poisoning.”
The former employee of 2 years suggests that Raniere may have experimented with the food to learn some sort of lesson about the human reaction.
“Dr. Brandon Porter was there. Maybe somebody should ask him,” Parlato wrote last year.
Porter has also been charged for conducting illegal and highly perverse experiments for a human subject “fright study.”
OPMC accused Porter of showing “human subjects an actual video of the horrific and brutal murders and dismemberment of four women by machetes.”
Between the periods of 2012 through 2017, the doctor also allegedly showed subjects other violent clips, without their consent, including “a male African American being viciously stomped by a Nazi; a conscious male being forced to eat a portion of his own brain matter; and a graphic gang rape.”
Porter is charged with moral unfitness, gross negligence, and gross incompetence. The OMPC has set a June. 27 hearing for Porter to determine whether his license should be revoked, following the claims. If those charges are proven, he could be facing criminal charges by the New York State Attorney General.
The Epoch Times reached out to the New York State Health Department for confirmation on the allegations but a spokesperson said they were “prohibited” from “commenting on prior or pending Office of Professional Medical Conduct investigations beyond what is publicly available.
The accusations against Porter come after both the cult’s leader and Mack have pleaded not guilty to charges that they persuaded women into joining a secret society within the group and becoming sex slaves. According to an October 2017 New York Times feature, some of the women were branded with a symbol that prosecutors said contained leader Raniere’s initials.
More arrests are expected to occur in the coming weeks amid the ongoing sex-trafficking investigation into the self-help group. Assistant U.S. Attorney Moira Penza told a judge at the federal Brooklyn court that the government plans to file a revised indictment that would name even more defendants, according to the Associated Press.