This entry is one where the distinction between allegation and finding can be drawn cleanly, because a criminal trial was held and a verdict returned.
In June 2019, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the organisation's founder Keith Raniere was convicted on all counts, among them racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, sex trafficking conspiracy, attempted sex trafficking, and forced labour conspiracy. He was sentenced in October 2020 to 120 years' imprisonment. Several senior associates pleaded guilty to related charges before trial.
The conduct established at trial included the operation of a secret sub-group within the organisation in which women were recruited under a false account of its purpose, required to provide compromising material as collateral before being told what they were joining, and branded with a cauterising pen with a mark incorporating the founder's initials.
That is a court's finding after a contested trial, and it can be stated as fact.
The wider claims that circulated around the case are in a different position. Assertions about the involvement of particular donors, about the extent to which the organisation's ordinary membership knew what the inner group was doing, and about the founder's conduct beyond the counts tried, are variously unproven, disputed, or untested. Many of the people who passed through the organisation's courses were paying for management seminars and had no contact with any of it, and the trial did not suggest otherwise.
The distinction is worth holding because this case is often cited as though everything alleged about it were established. What was established was established in a courtroom, and it is more than sufficient without addition.