Bonus Drop: Dr. Laura Richards & Lisa Bilyeu on Cults, Control & Dirty Diddy Secrets

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[00:00:28] Das Podcast ist für informational purposes only und nicht beachtet legal, medical oder mental health advice. Die views und opinions expressed do nicht necessarily reflect die official policy oder position of the Podcast und sind nicht intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business, individual, anyone, oder anything. Ich bin Sarah Edmondson. Und ich bin Anthony Nippy Ames.

[00:00:56] Und das ist A Little Bit Culty. Cults are commonplace now. From fandoms to fads, we're examining them all. We look at what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad. Every week we chat with survivors, experts and whistleblowers for real culty stories told directly by the people who lived through them. Because we want you to learn a few things that we've had to learn the hard way. For example, if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty, you might be prime recruitment material. And who knows? You could already be in a cult.

[00:01:26] If you're not aware of your programming, you're probably being programmed. So keep listening to find out. We'll talk about all sorts of topics on the show, but be aware, this podcast might contain stories that could be alarming to some of our listeners. So please check our show notes for more detailed descriptions and take care of yourself. Subscribe to our Patreon for Thursday bonus episodes, Q&A and all sorts of exclusive content. That's patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Welcome to season seven of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:02:05] Welcome back to A Little Bit Culty, everybody. I've decided to hand the mic over to Sarah this week because this is a Sarah-heavy episode. I know you guys all love that. It's our bonus drop. This was a super important conversation. I love super as my adjectives. Y'all have been asking for opinion about P. Diddy updates and your demands are being met. I am probably 35,000 feet in the air at this time. Sarah, I'm going to hand it off to you. Why, thank you, Nippy. You really sound so great up in the air.

[00:02:35] In fact, I would say that Nippy and I are doing fabulously long distance this week. Turned out that because our relationship started long distance that we really thrive that way. It's nice to have a little space from somebody you're writing a book with. What did you say? He's not going to listen to this. So love you. Anyway, a couple updates. We're not getting our newsletter. We just mentioned that we had some great feedback that our book really needed to have eyes on it, that were not coercive control related.

[00:03:05] A structural edit pass from somebody who didn't know anything about us or cults or coercion to make sure we were wrapping up all the loose ends. So we're a little bit delayed with that, but it's still trucking along. Those of you who've pre-ordered, thank you. The book is coming. We're just maybe a few weeks behind. Also, speaking of books, Sarma Mangalas' book about her experience with Mr. Fox, that coercive fuck nugget, drops next week. And we have an exclusive interview with her, which drops on Monday and Thursday. It's a two-parter. It's amazing.

[00:03:34] And I hope that you will check it out. Now for today, as Nippy mentioned, the request for P. Diddy updates has been daily. So instead of reiterating what I've already said, we asked to get permission to drop a really important conversation that I was invited to be a part of with two women I respect so deeply. These are important perspectives from women who have been following the trial closely and who know so much about cults and coercion.

[00:04:02] Laura Richards is somebody that Nippy and I met at CrimeCon. She's a past guest. She is incredible. She's an internationally recognized expert criminal behavioral analyst, advocate, and educator specializing in domestic violence, coercive control, and stalking. With a background in intelligence-led policing, Laura has been the architect of stalking and coercive control law reform to better protect victims on 10 occasions, winning numerous awards for her work.

[00:04:27] Laura is the founder of Paladin and hosts the award-winning podcast Crime Analyst, where she educates and empowers global audiences. Lisa Bilyeu is a badass entrepreneur, author, and the host of the hit YouTube series Women of Impact. She interviews the world's top experts on relationships, confidence, trauma, and female empowerment to help women protect their power and take back control of their lives.

[00:04:48] She's the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, which she grew into a billion-dollar company, and the co-founder and president of Impact Theory Studios, a production company that creates raw, transformational content across media. Lisa's not just about building businesses. She's building a movement. Women of Impact has become a lifeline for millions of women around the world. Whether she's talking to an FBI profiler about spotting narcissists or diving deep into perimenopause—going to check out those episodes for sure—body image or sex in long-term relationships—

[00:05:16] Lisa delivers unfiltered truths and tangible tools to help women trust themselves, get unstuck, and become the hero of their own lives. Her latest work is laser-focused on giving women the education they never got—course of control, spotting red flags early, and protecting their peace and personal safety in love and life. If you've ever felt like you were too much, not enough, or completely lost in someone else's story, Lisa's here to remind you it's your damn life, and you get to write the ending. Both of these women are super inspirational.

[00:05:43] Please do check out the link in our show notes to see all of the Women of Impact series on P. Diddy, the full series, and Crime Analyst for the full audio series. The video series is on Women of Impact, audio on Crime Analyst. Again, super honored to speak with these women. This is a super important conversation, and we'd love to know what you thought of it. If you've been following the trial, please do weigh in and also what else you'd like to hear on future Thursday bonus drops.

[00:06:09] I'm still trying to name this section, but we're working on it. With love from Vancouver, Canada. See you next time, and enjoy the bonus drop. Bye for now. This podcast wouldn't even exist without our amazing, supportive, generous patrons. Come find us on Patreon. We are at patreon.com slash a littlebitculti. Go there for bonus episodes, live Q&As with past guests, exclusive content, and lots of other goodies.

[00:06:39] Subscribe now and help us keep this podcast going. That's patreon.com slash a littlebitculti. And now, a brief message from our Little Bit Culti sponsors. And remember, when you support our sponsors, you're supporting this podcast. You've heard from our sponsors. Now, let's get back to a little bit Culti, shall we?

[00:07:20] Right. So, we're going to be talking about all of the allegations, the sex trafficking, the bribery, the forced labor. And I love the idea of using other cases that have the blueprint so we can really understand what's happening with the Diddy case. So, now joining us is a woman who didn't just study manipulation. She survived it. After years inside one of the most notorious modern cults, NXIVM, she knows firsthand how power can be weaponized and how charisma can be a trap.

[00:07:50] No one is more qualified to expose Diddy's playbook of control. Welcome, Sarah Edmondson. Thank you so much for having me. The first similarity I see is something that was actually mentioned in the vow that Marc Vicente said, which is that nobody joins a cult on purpose. Just like nobody signs up to be abused by their partner on purpose. It's something that happens slowly over time. And the beginning phase is always such a beautiful stage.

[00:08:15] When you read my book or you hear me talking about NXIVM, I was brought into something that, had it been what it was supposed to have been, would have been great. Just like Cassie signing up to get a record deal. And she had her dreams dangled in front of her, just as I did. And many people who join NXIVM, they don't sign up for a cult or something abusive or something coercive. Ironically, Keith Raniere taught us a lot of things in NXIVM. And what he called it, we didn't realize it was being done to us, was called line bending.

[00:08:45] Bending the line slowly over time. You don't notice that the line is bending. And you say yes to one more little thing, one more little thing, one more little thing. Next thing you know, it's such an overused and possibly incorrect metaphor, but the frog in the pot of water. So the foundational beginnings for everybody is there's a promise, there's the grooming, there's the excitement, there's the good stuff right at the beginning that really hooks you. And I certainly was hooked and I can see that for his victims as well.

[00:09:14] And you thought you were really joining a self-help group, right? I remember talking to you about this. There were some very positive things, right? And I think this is where it's important for people to understand that abusers aren't abusive all of the time. And they do blur the lines. And they load the language once you're in the ecosystem to make it look like you're the odd one out. And when it's all around you, like water, a fish in water, you then start to norm to the environment as well.

[00:09:42] So I think, you know, it's really important for people to understand we're looking in from the outside, but you were in it and wanting to reach the goals that they were setting. And you were doing that for 12 years. That's a long period of time, isn't it, for you to stay in it, thinking that this was a force for good? Absolutely. When I joined, I was more enamored by and attracted to, not sexually, but as a filmmaker, it was Marc Vicente. He's the one who brought me in. I loved his film. What the bleep do we know?

[00:10:11] That was something I think that Keith knew. He got powerful, important, valuable people to be the face of the organization and to bring people in that way. So that's just one thing that I wanted to point out. Actually, that's one of the things that we've noticed in the Diddy case. So we have mentioned over and over and over the name that has come up over again is KK. To your point, Sarah, is that it's everyone around him.

[00:10:37] So if him in and of himself, he doesn't necessarily have that law. But when you have this circle of people that can really then lean in and you end up trusting them, that can be part of the biggest spider web. So talk to me about Christina Corum. Yeah, I think Christina Corum is so key to the Sean Combs case in terms of the racketeering and the criminal enterprise. And I know Sarah can talk to this.

[00:11:01] You know, having a female lieutenant, having the person that's your deputy being a woman, with Keith Raniere, it was Nancy Salsman. Right. With Jeffrey Epstein, it was Ghislaine Maxwell. And I think that that's such an important part where women, we tend to feel safer with other women when they're involved as well. And then there are the eight predicate offenses, which we'll talk to. But perhaps Sarah can say something about the female lieutenant piece. Just because another woman is involved, it doesn't mean that it's safe. Right. Sure.

[00:11:32] Yeah. That group of women were people that I really looked up to. In fact, I probably respected them more. I respected Keith's mind. I thought if he had created this curriculum, which he didn't, he stole it. But if he had, I thought he was quite brilliant. And I put him on a pedestal in that way. But I wasn't attracted to him. I was more drawn to and wanted to be like the women that he had in the organization.

[00:11:55] We mentioned Ghislaine and Jeffrey and also like Sheila and Osho from Rajneesh Puram, Bhagwan from Wild Wild Country. Like this has been going on for a long time. This isn't a new thing to have a female lieutenant. I 100% underestimated their capacity to lie. They all knew about the harem and the sex. And I thought we had a close relationship. We didn't. And Pam, which is another one of his right-hand women, would reach out and say, you know, you're in town. Did you want to see Keith?

[00:12:25] Don't, you know, she'd text him and see if he wants to go for a walk. Don't you want to get, you know, coached by the smartest man in the world? So she would have me reach out to him or to set it up that way. So he was never pursuing me. And if it did come, like Keith wanted to spend time with me, I felt very special. So absolutely, I was groomed on all levels and all fronts. And every time, Sarah, I remember reading your book and every time you were about to withdraw and retract, they dangled another carrot.

[00:12:53] And it was understanding, you know, the reward and punishment or the carrot, the thing that you wanted. And then they would bring that in. Well, the same with Cassie and Christina. I mean, Cassie said that she talked to Christina Karam pretty much daily. And she said, I'm going to quote her. I spoke to Christina Karam nearly daily. I talked to KK a lot. She knew a lot about my personal things. And it was actually Christina who played a key role of monitoring Cassie's movements.

[00:13:20] But also these new text messages that were adduced this week by the special agent Penland who talked to, in 2018, there were a number of texts between Cassie and Christina where Cassie said, I can't do the violent, scary, kick me out of my own house stuff anymore. And Christina says, I'm sure. Stay focused, though. It's not worth derailing. That much I know. So she kept sort of marshalling Cassie.

[00:13:49] And, of course, we know Christina played a key role with the video, the hotel footage, the security footage, which we all saw where Sean Combs chased after Cassie and then beat her physically. Well, we know through Eddie Garcia's testimony that it was Christina Karam who tracked him down, kept calling, appeared in the lobby, set up a meeting with Sean Combs and with Eddie.

[00:14:13] And it was then the $100,000 was given to Eddie by Sean Combs, who had a bank-grade money counter and was counting out the money. So, Christina, this is why she plays such a key role of marshalling the women at times. She was with Sean Combs for eight years and he did call her his right-hand woman. She's aiding and abetting Sean Combs. She's facilitating his behaviour as the head of the organisation and she's covering up a crime.

[00:14:43] Because taking that video and paying money for it, that is witness tampering, obstruction of justice and covering up a crime. And it's as simple as that. And particularly when we think about the eight predicate offences with the RICO and criminal enterprise elements, that is a very important component. Now, we don't know whether she's going to be called for the defence, but so far she hasn't been called by the prosecution.

[00:15:08] So, going to how much she was titrated and how much they really were like two peas in a pod, there's actually a Facebook post. So, he posts a photo of her on his social in 2021 and he writes, Me to Christina Corum, Chief of Staff at Combs Enterprises. Christina, aka KK, keeps everything in my life and my business running. She's been my right hand for the last eight years and has consistently proven to execute and get shit done.

[00:15:36] Don't know how I'd function without her. For more background on what brought us here, check out Sarah's page-turning memoir. It's called Scarred, The True Story of How I Escaped NXIVM, The Cult That Bound My Life. It's available on Amazon, Audible and at most bookstores. Highly recommend, of course, because she's my wife. And now, a brief message from our Little Bit Culty sponsors. Remember, when you support our sponsors, you support our podcast.

[00:16:09] Break time's over, people. Let's get back to this episode of A Little Bit Culty. It's a good one. I mean, for me, this is absolutely key, right? Eight years, she's the chief of staff. And you've got other assistants saying they were directed by her. So George Kaplan, remember his testimony? And he was saying that he was directed by her to set up the hotels, the drugs, etc. That was from her.

[00:16:33] In a civil case, there's Rodney Jones, who basically said that KK, Christina, was Ghislaine Maxwell to Sean Diddy Combs' Epstein. Yeah. So apart from having a female co-conspirator, how much of this is just lack of understanding of actually what happened to Cassie? Or it's the media influencing us because they have such a biased take. And the reason why I bring that specific up is there's a video of Bill Maher.

[00:17:04] And I can't even speak. Let's just play it because I think it will do more justice than me telling you what the video is about. If Diddy walks free, it will be because his lawyers can point to an endless stream of text from Cassie expressing what's often called enthusiastic consent to their sex life. If you're Me Too-ing someone, it doesn't help your case if you texted him, Me Too. I just want it to be uncontrollable.

[00:17:30] If you want us to think you weren't always ready to freak off, don't write, I'm always ready to freak off. I was so angry listening to what he had to say with his huge platform. Because firstly, Cassie was before Me Too. And we saw what happened when she left him. Right? We all saw it with our own eyes. So people blaming Cassie, including Bill Maher, makes me very angry.

[00:18:00] And I do think that this is just so systemic. The misogyny within all of us that victim blames and sees her as also part of the problem. When Bill Maher has a huge platform and he clearly didn't research anything to do with the case or coercive control or how difficult it is to leave Sarah. I mean, for you, it was difficult to leave, wasn't it? And you didn't have an intimate relationship with Keith Raniere. Yes. There's two things I want to say.

[00:18:28] To see this was upsetting. And my first thought is exactly that. He didn't research. He's uninformed. And I've said this before publicly, and I'm embarrassed to say this about myself. But had I not gone through what I'd gone through, I don't know how I would have perceived this. But I also remember when, for example, with Weinstein and so many women having the same experience of going up to the hotel room, I remember thinking, had I not gone through

[00:18:56] my experience, I may not have understood that. For example, I'm going to just go to Weinstein just for a second. And people don't understand that it wasn't just like, hey, come up to the hotel room. Harvey's going to meet you there. It was, for example, Rose McGowan. I don't know if you've read her book, but it's amazing. And she talks about a meeting set up by her manager. She was meeting in the lobby for lunch and he was running late. And his assistant says, he's just running late. Let's meet up in the suite. And she's with somebody.

[00:19:25] So it's like happening in stages. It feels safe. Her managers or her agent set it up. She's going up there. Do you know what I mean? So when you have all those pieces, you can see how she could get herself into that situation and she's not dumb. It's just the industry. And the fact that Bill Maher didn't research and said that so blatantly for laughs, it's just, it was a real gut punch and it was really nauseating.

[00:19:50] And I'd love for him to have a pivot, was what I really love to see now, is for him to pivot and to apologize and say, hey, I made a mistake. I didn't understand coercive control. I didn't understand that a victim could comply for safety reasons and say what the person needs to say. If someone were to look at my text messages between me and Lauren in the weeks leading up to leaving, it would look like I was on board. Oh. Oh. I was, yeah. And some of these things are seen in the vow where I'm like, can't wait to see you.

[00:20:20] Love, love, love. And I was supposed to be at the coach summit where the next round of brandings were to take place. And we decided to go business as usual to not draw attention to the fact that I was waking up and I was out. So even the phone conversations you hear with me and Lauren where I'm asking questions, it looks like I'm trying to understand. I already know. I'm just playing along so that she doesn't ring the alarm that I'm a defector.

[00:20:48] So we don't know what anyone's thinking when they're texting complicit or complying or affirmative or positive messages. I just got to do what I got to do to stay alive and figure out how I'm going to get my shit together, which for me was happening for months before I left. Going along with it and going, this is crazy. And like trying to figure out how to blow it up internally before I, way before I left. Thank you for highlighting that because that's so important. Even if you were ready to leave, you're still sending nice text messages.

[00:21:17] And people want to just be like, well, if you send a nice text message, it must mean that you have warm feelings for them. So the fact that you highlighted that you were still sending these text messages all the way up to a couple of weeks before you were leaving after 12 years. Like I really want to make sure that people hear that because it isn't as black and white as simple as people think it is. Yeah. I mean, nine times out of 10, as Sarah described, it's about management and other people don't have that full context. But it's also, I go back to my quote, when fear is in the room,

[00:21:47] consent is not. So women do this all the time, managing men. And this is the problem of men when they're not educated, having such a big microphone and audience, right? They're talking for them. They're not talking for women. And why doesn't he judge Sean Combs or the men who do this to women? Why was his whole monologue really geared to telling women what to do? That's the bit that makes me angry. Why does it always fall to, oh, you women do this or do that.

[00:22:15] And we're not going to infantilize you, but you're the one who has to leave. Well, Cassie did leave. And look what happened to her. We saw it. Often women stay because it's too dangerous to leave. And 76% of women are murdered by an abusive man at the point of separation. And I can't underline that enough. Many women stay because it's too dangerous to go. As Sarah was biding her time to find the exit strategy, not wanting to be a defector because there would be a repercussion.

[00:22:43] There would be a backlash on you and Nippy. And there was, wasn't there? They said that you were the crazy ones. So there's a fear of consequence. And that's important for us to understand. And we did see that with the other defectors. There's a group of women who left in 2009 and they were sued into oblivion. And after I left, we were right. Claire Bronfman flew to Vancouver and tried to get me arrested on completely trumped up charges.

[00:23:08] But had the Vancouver police not been so savvy or done their due diligence, I could be in jail. Such an important point. The fear of consequence is real. And also men with deep pockets, the lawsuits when they use, I'm going to call it lawfare, against the true victim. And it can be you that gets criminalized. And we see that with domestic abuse and coercive control. And you were one of the key whistleblowers. So it's so important we hear from people like you because it came at great cost.

[00:23:38] But thank goodness you did it. I mean, that was an incredible thing to go in and speak to the FBI and tell them what was going on after you had been branded. I appreciate that, Lauren. I want to say that obviously I left with a lot of shame and embarrassment for having fallen for it or being duped or, you know, missing the red flags and all that. But because I wasn't as hurt, I guess. And I don't want to say it's not like the trauma Olympics. Yes, I had trauma.

[00:24:04] But when I look at the other women, I'm trying to speak for them as best as I can because I know that many of them just don't want to and never will. I think that by you speaking out and Cassie taking, you know, a stand and really putting herself out there, that is what's going to make real change. Cassie's bravery, Jane's bravery, Mia's bravery, your bravery of coming on this show and speaking out will hopefully echo to other women who feel dismissed, who don't feel heard, who don't feel seen.

[00:24:33] So please continue on this journey. You're amazing. We really appreciate you. Thank you.

[00:24:39] Thank you.