Sarah Edmondson - My Escape From The NXIVM Cult

She Fled The Now-Infamous ‘Self-Help’ Group After 12 Years, Then Helped Investigators Finally Bring Its Leaders To Justice

- Johnny Dodd

Sarah Edmondson isn’t a big fan of the term “brain washed.” But as she sits on the patio outside her downtown Vancouver apartment on a recent afternoon, the 42-year-old actress—happily married and a mom of two young boys—admits that the word pretty much captures how she spent 12 years of her life. “On any given day,” she explains, “I’ll catch myself thinking about something and suddenly go, ‘Is this me thinking or is this the cult’s belief system?’” Edmondson broke free from NXIVM—the sinister Albany, N.Y.-based sex cult whose leaders now await sentencing on federal charges—in 2017. Since then she, along with her husband and former NXIVM member, Anthony Ames, have been working to put the pieces of their splintered lives back together. “We’ve both really just been focusing on trying to heal, seeing therapists and trying to get back in touch with reality,” says Edmondson, who was branded with the initials of NXIVM’s guru, Keith Raniere, shortly before fleeing. With the high-profile trial of the group’s leaders behind her, Edmondson takes readers deep inside the bizarre and chilling NXIVM world—and how she helped shut it down—in her riveting new book Scarred, exclusively excerpted here.

After earning a degree in theater from Montreal’s Concordia University in 2000, Edmondson moved home to Vancouver. She got roles but was frustrated by never knowing why she failed other auditions. “It’s very not measurable,” she says. She felt empty.

I was working enough to actually be called a “working actress,” but I wasn’t happy. My mother was a therapist and I’d always had this altruistic streak, wanting to make a difference in the world and help others. Deep down I was yearning for more meaning in my life.