INDIA OXENBERG My escape from the NXIVM cult

That night, she was the first to be branded. It was January 2016, and India Oxenberg, then 24, had already been deep in the clutches of a group called Nxivm for almost five years.

“We were instructed to remove all of our clothes and walk one by one into the room, where there was a table,” says India, recalling her initiation along with three other women into a secret Nxivm sisterhood called DOS. “I had two women holding my hands and my feet so I wouldn’t convulse.”

As the cauterising pen carved a symbol near her bikini line, she could hear the woman she called her master, actress Allison Mack, chanting, “Feel the pain, feel the love,” as the smell of burning flesh filled the air. “I remember watching what was happening but not really registering it,” she says. “I