“I must take full responsibility for my conduct,” Mack said, sobbing while giving a lengthy statement at the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.
Mack, who is best known for her role as Clark Kent’s friend in the television series “Smallville,” was one of six defendants in a federal racketeering indictment filed last year against members of Nxivm.
Some women in the organization, which was based near Albany, were part of a secret society in which they were branded with the initials of Nxivm’s former leader, Keith Raniere, and forced to have sex with him, federal prosecutors have said.
In her statement Monday, Mack admitted to recruiting women into the society by telling them they were going to become members of a female mentorship group.
Her goal, she said in court, was to promote Raniere’s teachings and help him further his objectives. To do so, she said, she engaged in criminal conduct.
The sect was arranged into circles of women “slaves” that were led by “masters,” prosecutors said. When Mack was arrested last year, officials said that she recruited women into the society as “slaves” and required them to have sex with Raniere.
In court Monday, Mack admitted that she had obtained “labor and services” from the two women mentioned in the indictment.
Before Monday’s hearing, Mack had previously pleaded not guilty to charges including sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and forced labor. She had been released on $5 million bail.
The actress, the indictment said, was part of Raniere’s “inner circle.”
Mack, 36, told the court that she first joined Nxivm, which long billed itself as a self-help organization, because she was seeking a sense of purpose.
“I was lost,” she said.
She said in court that as she spent more time with the group and with Raniere, she became persuaded Nxivm and its messages would be beneficial to others.
But almost a year after her arrest, Mack said Monday that she had concluded through introspection and “self-examination” that Nxivm’s leader and some of his followers had broken the law.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.