If you are struck by the brevity of the jury decision in a case revolving around weird "cult" practices, then you have a very short memory for "cult" trials in America and very little critical sensibility for the distortions that prosecutors can create in the public experience of deviant groups. It was only thirty years ago that juries were sending daycare workers accused of "satanic ritual abuse" away for staggering sentences (many now overturned). When prosecutors manufacture "cult crimes" allegations before juries and the media they are playing with our deepest cultural desires for prurience and to punish those who incite our titillation; and you and Colin Moynihan played right into those desires to have sexual transgression paraded before us, then persecuted. Cast by prosecutors as a "cult" -- an inflammatory and discredited category in sociology and religious studies -- the NXIVM trial was clearly meant to excite, then inflame us: BDSM stories, branding, forced oral sex, a charismatic leader, even sexual slavery. In the 1990s, the Satanic Abuse stories had gothic sexual rites, which likewise worked on juries and public fears. Some NXIVM activities may have taken place, and yet all the women joined the group of their own free will and consented to the activities, however demeaning or graphic. Innumerable charismatic groups have been persecuted for sexual impropriety: Mormons, Catholics, "Moonies." Would that the Times provided some critical context!
