- Clare Bronfman says she shouldn't serve more prison time than Allison Mack.
- The heiress to the Seagram's fortune says she didn't even think NXIVM was a sex cult.
- Bronfman is serving 6 years and 9 months in a minimum security federal prison in Philadelphia.
NXIVM sex cult financier Clare Bronfman wants out of prison, saying in new court papers that she shouldn't spend more time behind bars than "Smallville" actress Allison Mack.
Mack pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in April 2019. Prosecutors also accused her of procuring women for cult leader Keith Raniere.
Unlike Mack, "Ms. Bronfman never participated in DOS," her lawyers argue in an appellate filing, referring to the cult's secret sex slave sorority. DOS was an acronym for Dominus Obsequious Sororium, Latin for "master over slave women."
Bronfman "knew nothing about it, and cannot in any legitimate way be said to be culpable for it," the filing continued.
Bronfman, heiress to the multi-billion-dollar Seagram's liquor fortune, is serving a 6 year, 9 month sentence for her role in the Albany-based cult.
That's more time, even, than the five years federal prosecutors in Brooklyn requested. They said Bronfman spent at least $116 million of her fortune funding the cult and lawsuits against its enemies.
Mack, meanwhile, was sentenced last year to three years prison, less than half of Bronfman's term.
In her appellate filing, Bronfman quotes Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who in sentencing Bronfman accused her of turning a blind eye to DOS and its humiliation and abuse of women.
"She maintains that she was an innocent bystander to Raniere's abhorrent conduct," the judge said at Bronfman's sentencing.
"As I have said, I find that any such blindness was willful and cultivated," the judge continued, saying Bronfman should serve as an example to those who "avert their gaze" from wrongdoing.
But the judge offered no evidence that Bronfman's ignorance was willful, and also conceded that there was no evidence she directly participated in DOS, her filing argues.
"Clare Bronfman never knowingly funded a sex cult," her attorney Duncan Levin told Insider. "And that is what the judge himself said at sentencing."
Bronfman is "categorically against sex trafficking of any kind," he added.
In contrast, Mack and co-defendant Lauren Salzman were "elbow-deep in DOS," but were shown "extraordinary lenience," Bronfman's filing complains.
Salzman was a high-ranking NXIVM member who dodged a prison sentence entirely after testifying for the feds against Raniere.
Bronfman has asked a federal appellate court to vacate her old sentence and order she be resentenced.
Raniere is serving a term of life in prison after being convicted at trial of child sex trafficking and conspiracy. Despite the evidence against him — including the trial testimony of 15 women who were his victims — he has called his conviction "a horrible injustice."