This Is The Story Tony Robbins
Doesn’t Want You To Read About How He Uses His Media Monopoly For
Personal Sex Abuse
Tony Robbins is the
world’s most famous self-help guru. This
is the story he doesn’t want you to read.
Unlimited Power
A BuzzFeed News Investigation
Tony Robbins claims he has
helped millions of fans overcome some of life’s darkest
difficulties. But leaked records reveal he has used his fame to
berate victims of rape and violence, while female former
staffers and followers have accused him of inappropriate sexual
advances.
When Tony Robbins leaps onstage in arenas around the world,
under strobe lights and pulsing speakers, he’s greeted by
thousands of screaming fans. They clap with him, jump with him,
and when he puffs his chest and lets out a primal roar, they roar
with him too.
The world’s most famous self-help guru whips crowds into fits
of euphoria few pop stars could dream of, but many of his fans
are grappling with life’s most serious problems. Victims of
sexual and physical abuse, along with people who struggle with
addiction and have mental illnesses, pay thousands of dollars
to see him on the promise he has the power to “transform your
life” and “rewire your brain.”
At the core of Robbins’ teachings is the message that his
followers should not see themselves as victims, and should
instead view their pain as something they have the power to
“destroy.” He claims to have revolutionized millions of lives
with this philosophy, while building a multibillion-dollar business and working
with celebrities from Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to Oprah
and the Kardashians. Access to his most exclusive membership program has cost as much as
$85,000 a year.
But behind that dazzling veneer, Robbins guards his empire
with intense secrecy. Employees are bound by strict
confidentiality agreements, and audiences who attend his
multiday coaching camps must sign contracts forbidding them
from recording what goes on inside.
A yearlong investigation by BuzzFeed News, based on leaked
recordings, internal documents, and dozens of interviews with
fans and insiders, reveals how Robbins has berated abuse
victims and subjected his followers to unorthodox and
potentially dangerous techniques. And former female fans and
staffers have accused him of inappropriate sexual advances.
Two former followers who went on to work for Robbins provided
BuzzFeed News with signed statements swearing under oath that
they felt he had sexually harassed them by repeatedly pursuing
them after they made clear they weren’t interested. Two more
women who worked as his assistants said Robbins expected them
to work alone with him when he was naked in his hotel room or
in the shower. And another former employee said she was fired
after having a consensual sexual relationship with Robbins.
The events described by all five women took place in the 1990s
and early 2000s, when Robbins’ fame was skyrocketing and
before he married his second wife.
Oops! Something went wrong loading this video
Please refresh and try again.
BuzzFeed News; Photo: Carlo Allegri for The Washington
Post / Getty Images
Secret recordings and transcripts from inside his events
reveal Robbins has unleashed expletive-laden tirades on
survivors of rape and domestic violence after inviting them to
share their stories in front of a vast audience. “She’s
fucking using all this stuff to try and control men,” he said after one woman said she had
been raped. When, in 2018, another woman said her husband was
physically violent and emotionally abusive, Robbins accused
her of “lying” and asked: “Does he put up with you when you’ve
been a crazy bitch?”
Interviews and records reveal how Robbins has created a
highly sexualized environment in which both men and women have
been told to touch themselves intimately and simulate orgasms
— but he has repeatedly singled women out of the crowd for
more personal attention. One secret recording from 2018
captured him laughing as he told a woman in the audience that
he wanted her to “come up onstage and make love to me.” And
two former bodyguards told BuzzFeed News they were sent out to
trawl audiences for attractive women on Robbins’ behalf. Two
women told BuzzFeed News they had witnessed it or experienced
it themselves.
“She’s fucking using all this stuff to try to control men.”
Robbins vehemently denied “engaging in any alleged
‘inappropriate sexual behavior,’” sending security personnel
into the crowd to solicit women on his behalf, or making such
approaches personally. He was “never intentionally naked” in
front of staff, his lawyers said in a letter. “To the extent
that he may have been unclothed at various times in his home
or in hotels when working while either dressing or showering,
and whether a personal assistant may have been present for
some reason at that time, Mr. Robbins has no recollection.”
The letter said Robbins “admits he has made mistakes in
relationships and other aspects of his life but he never
behaved in the manner intimated by these salacious and false
accusations,” and he has been “faithful and committed” to his
second wife, Sage, since they married in 2001. No one has
“ever filed a verbal or written sexual harassment or abuse
complaint against Mr. Robbins in the last four decades,” the
letter said.
The firm denied that Robbins’ comments to abuse victims were
harmful, or that he exposed his fans to potentially dangerous
techniques. On the contrary, it said, Robbins went to “great
lengths to ensure the safety, comfort and enjoyment of all
attendees.”
The #MeToo movement has triggered reckonings inside a wide
range of professions where men hold sway. Scandal after
scandal has engulfed Hollywood giants, politicians, and CEOs,
forcing a major change in the politics of sex and power. But
the self-help industry, which generates billions of dollars
every year, has faced little scrutiny.
Licensed
professionals who treat mental health issues must undergo
extensive training and follow strict ethical guidelines governing their
relations with their clients. Self-help coaching requires no
such qualifications or standards. But it creates a potent
recipe for the abuse of power, setting its leading lights up
as godlike figures with answers to life’s most painful
questions, and placing the supplicants who seek their wisdom
in their thrall.
Robbins claims that his methods have helped fans
overcome severe trauma, averted suicides, and transformed the
lives of “phobics, the clinically depressed, people with
multiple personalities.” Many credit him with extraordinary
breakthroughs. They report summoning the strength to quit
dead-end jobs, launch new companies, reunite with estranged
family members, end toxic relationships, and find their
soulmates as a result of his teachings. Some of the women who
spoke to BuzzFeed News still view Robbins with awe and
reverence — one said she sees him as someone who “saves
lives.” And the fan whom Robbins accused of “lying” after she
said her husband was abusive told BuzzFeed News it was a
positive experience and that she was grateful for the advice
not to be a victim, which had helped her leave that
relationship.
But some long-term staffers, including Robbins’ former
director of security Gary King, who spoke exclusively to
BuzzFeed News, said they were deeply troubled by the
psychological impact of his methods on vulnerable audience
members.
“We used to joke about it. People started ‘popping like
popcorn.’”
Robbins’ intensive multiday events are often held in rooms
kept deliberately cold and run from early in the morning to
well past midnight, with few breaks for food and water.
Followers are encouraged to run across hot coals. Internal
company emails reveal concerns about fans suffering mental
breakdowns after days of emotional exhaustion as well as
“sleep deprivation and dehydration.” In this intense
atmosphere, some audience members became disoriented as the
days went by, said Todd Spendley, a former logistics
contractor for the organization. “We used to joke about it,”
he said. “People started ‘popping like popcorn.’”
Robbins’ lawyers said there have been “very few reported
instances of anyone suffering any form of significant physical
injury or adverse medical condition” at his “thousands of
events over the past 40 years.”
Several leading national experts on domestic and sexual
violence who reviewed transcripts of Robbins’ private events
said berating traumatized women and blaming them for their
reactions to abuse is a dangerous strategy.
“It’s not only secondary trauma, but a secondary assault,”
said Ruth Glenn, president of the National Coalition Against
Domestic Violence. “This behavior from a self-touted self-help
expert is just beyond egregious.”
“We are alarmed that he’s using his platform to ridicule
victims privately and publicly,” said Jodi Omear, an executive
at RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.
“It’s not only secondary trauma, but a secondary assault. This
behavior from a self-touted self-help expert is just beyond
egregious.”
Like many famous men caught up in the #MeToo movement,
Robbins has engaged powerful lawyers to try to shut down
accusations: Lavely & Singer, a Hollywood megafirm with a
client list including Bill Cosby, Charlie Sheen, and Scarlett
Johansson.
The firm has been shielding Robbins from scrutiny since at
least 2007, after a website published anonymous criticism of
Robbins, including allegations that he had sexually harassed
and manipulated women insiders. The site quickly disappeared,
and website registration records show the
domain was taken over by Lavely & Singer. The firm said
the site was “not a source of reliable information,” and was
taken down because it “was illegally using Mr. Robbins’
tradename.”
Robbins did face some rare public criticism last spring,
after leaked
video emerged of him calling the #MeToo movement an
excuse for some women to “try and get significance” by
“attacking and destroying someone else.” He apologized after widespread backlash,
professing “profound admiration” for #MeToo and promising to
examine his own behavior to ensure he was “staying true to
those ideals.”
But behind the scenes, Lavely & Singer had tried to shut
the story down, sending a letter to a woman who posted the video
online, warning that the footage was a “clear violation” of
the legal agreement she had signed before being let into the
event, and demanding she remove it.
And secretly recorded audio from another
private event in December 2018, obtained by BuzzFeed News,
shows Robbins soon doubled down on his attack. “Victimhood is
now rewarded in our culture,” he railed. People can now “make
claims about anybody, and everyone jumps to support them.”
Lavely & Singer defended that stance in its letter to
BuzzFeed News. “While BuzzFeed attempts to portray Mr.
Robbins’ remarks in a negative fashion, it is important to
remember that when Mr. Robbins says something like ‘victimhood
is rewarded in our culture’ that's because, in some cases, it
is,” they wrote.
Have you had experiences with Tony Robbins that you would
like to share? To learn how to reach us securely, go to tips.buzzfeed.com.
You can also email us at tips@buzzfeed.com.
During the reporting of this story, Lavely & Singer
launched what it called an “extensive” counter-investigation
to make legal threats against two people accused of speaking
with BuzzFeed News. One received a letter warning that if he
did not retract what he had told reporters, his life would “be
forever changed.” The other was told that he had 48 hours to
recant his story or face damages which could “easily be tens
of millions of dollars.”
When BuzzFeed News sent Robbins a letter seeking his comment
eight days before publication, Lavely & Singer said it had
not been given enough time to respond fully, but accused the
reporters of pursuing a “predetermined” narrative against
Robbins “as part of their ‘Me Too’ Agenda.” The firm
threatened legal action that would have a “devastating impact
on the financial condition of BuzzFeed and its investors.”
Three of the women who said Robbins had mistreated them
initially agreed to speak publicly but later withdrew
permission for their names to be published, saying they, like
many others interviewed for this story, feared reprisals from
Robbins and his lawyers. BuzzFeed News has corroborated key
aspects of their stories, interviewed dozens of insiders, and
obtained sworn witness statements from six former followers
and staffers who raised serious concerns about the inner
workings of Robbins’ world.
Like so many of his fans, Tony Robbins found self-help at a
moment of need. In interviews and writings, he has described how an “incredibly violent”
childhood and a mother with alcoholism left him “floundering and fat,” grindingly poor,
and lonely to the point of “emotional death.” But at 17 he
scraped together enough cash from a gig as a janitor to see
the motivational speaker Jim Rohn, and was “mesmerized” by the
message that change starts from within.
It was the 1970s, and Robbins delved deep into the era’s
proliferating personal-improvement literature. Once he had
learned how to stop thinking of himself as a victim and
overcome his pain, he became determined to show others how to
do it too.
Robbins had natural charisma and dominated the stage at
6-foot-7, with a gravelly baritone voice. He started drawing
sizable crowds to seminars promising to “unleash the power
within.” As business boomed, it became a pillar of his own
self-help story, which he told and retold to eager audiences. He
had lost “thirty-eight pounds of fat,” married “the woman of
my dreams,” and ditched his tiny apartment for a Spanish-style
castle in Southern California.
But Robbins told
Charlie Rose in a 2000 interview that what really “made
my career” was calling the bluff of a psychiatrist who had
phoned into a radio show to attack him as a “charlatan.”
“Give me your patient, I’ll be at the Holiday Inn tomorrow
night.”
Robbins said he had thrown down a challenge: “Give me your
patient, I’ll be at the Holiday Inn tomorrow night.” He
claimed he quickly cured a patient the psychiatrist had been
treating for seven years for snake phobia. He had even wrapped
a snake around her. “It was like this shootout,” he told Rose.
“It was like a movie.”
A flair for the dramatic accelerated his rise. He persuaded
audience members that they could walk over hot coals, psyching
them up with drums and chants of “YES, YES, YES!” It was proof
of what positive thinking could accomplish, he explained in
his 1986 debut book, Unlimited Power: The New Science of
Personal Achievement.
Robbins started touring around the country, amassing an army
of volunteers who often worked 12- to 18-hour shifts to keep
his shows running. “You don’t have any food, you’re literally
in the room until Tony gives you permission to go for a break,
you hardly get any sleep,” said Jon Richelieu-Booth, a former
Robbins volunteer. They were not rewarded with a wage or
travel expenses — but they did get to hear him speak for free.
In 2018, Robbins’ company confidentially resolved a class
action lawsuit over these unpaid hours, arguing that the
volunteers are “providing services for their own pleasure,
education and enjoyment,” according to a settlement notice obtained by BuzzFeed
News. Robbins’ lawyers told BuzzFeed News the company
“vehemently denies” violating labor laws and settled the case
“in order to avoid the time and disruption.”
Robbins pledged that his methods could help just about
anyone. He knew from his own experience that abuse and
depression didn’t have to weigh you down. It was a choice: “In
one stroke,” he wrote, “I had purged my vocabulary of
disempowering language and thus a feeling that can devastate
even the stoutest of hearts.”
In 1991, Gary King was holed up inside his Florida
home in a deep depression. A former powerboat racer with a
love of floral shirts, King had built a career in event
management, but the recent breakup of his relationship had
left him unable to work and suicidal. “I was a broken person,”
he told BuzzFeed News.
A friend told him he should try out a Robbins event nearby,
and right away, King said he found the event’s “high energy”
and “euphoria” addictive. He felt his depression lifting, and
handed over around $600 to sign up for the next event, going
on to volunteer for a few years before a contract opened up as
Robbins’ director of security in 1994. King jumped at the
chance.
King was soon spending many of his waking hours with Robbins,
traveling the world with him, carrying his luggage, and even
sometimes accompanying him to the bathroom. At first he
revered Robbins as “some kind of savior,” King said — but two
decades in the guru’s inner world would leave him with
troubling questions about much of what he witnessed. Robbins’
lawyers said King was “disgruntled” and “unreliable.”
Robbins demanded relentless energy and a willingness to
confront your darkest fears. He spoke openly about his use of
“taboo language,” humor, and other shock tactics to try to
shake fans out of emotional stagnation — often swearing,
berating audience members, and talking graphically about sex —
and he didn’t censor himself even when addressing his most
troubled fans. For some, this led to ecstasy. Others found his
events mentally and physically shattering.
King said he soon found that a key part of his job involved
responding to calls about participants who had threatened or
attempted suicide or needed to be hospitalized after suffering
mental breakdowns. At one 1995 Life Mastery event in Hawaii,
he said he had to intervene after one participant started
biting members of the hotel’s security staff and guests. “I
was dealing with crisis and emotional meltdowns from the
start,” he told BuzzFeed News.
“Date With Destiny” events could be especially difficult. The
six-day program, which currently costs as much as $7,995 per person, left
little time for sleep or rest and was packed with
soul-searching activities and deeply personal “interventions”
in which Robbins selected audience members to publicly unpack
their despair.
After a March 2003 Date With Destiny in Australia, Robbins
held court in a “debriefing” session with his staff. A
transcript of that session was made so that Robbins could pull
out material for his next book. BuzzFeed News obtained a copy.
One woman had told him through tears that she had been raped.
Robbins recounted how he had “cut her
off” in a “warm” and “elegant” way and informed her that she
was “fucking using all this stuff to try and control men.”
“I don’t support anybody fucking raping her or taking
advantage of her,” he said, according to the transcript, “but I don’t support her
fucking manipulating herself, men, and other people by trying
to use that tool when it’s really not the primary experience
of her life now.”
“Women’s torment is that men fucking look, and men’s torment
is that women are fucking insane.”
By now, Robbins had set himself up as an authority on
relationships, dispensing a theory about “two opposing energies —
masculine and feminine.”
“Women’s torment is that men fucking look, and men’s torment
is that women are fucking insane,” he said at the same 2003 event.
Robbins also described using “orgasm or masturbation” as
“humor” to break a suicidal woman’s “pattern” at another
event, the transcript shows. He also told a woman struggling with
relationship issues to grab her breasts.
“I said ‘which breast is more sensitive,’ she said ‘my right
breast’ and I said ‘I know,’” Robbins said, according to the transcript. “I just watched her face. It
just freaked her out that I knew which one of her breasts was
more sensitive.”
Have you had experiences with Tony Robbins that you would
like to share? To learn how to reach us securely, go to tips.buzzfeed.com.
You can also email us at tips@buzzfeed.com.
Robbins’ lawyers said “none of the participants at those
events ever raised any concern or made any complaint that Mr.
Robbins’ statements or conduct were inappropriate or harmful
in any manner.”
Gary King said this was the sort of line he had often heard
Robbins use to distract nervous women during fire-walks:
“Which one of your breasts is bigger?” And by now, he had
reason to believe that Robbins’ intimate interest in his
female fans was more than just professional.
King said that Robbins often dispatched him to get the phone
numbers of attractive women in the audience, an
allegation which Robbins' lawyers fiercely denied. Though he
felt deep down that what he saw wasn’t right, King said his
entire world revolved around Robbins, so he tried to bury his
discomfort. But as time went on, he said, his concerns grew.
“Ultimate power corrupts,” King said. “I watched it like a
movie unfolding.”
Marie, a young woman living in California, was in such
a dark place that she was making plans to drive her car off a
cliff near her home — until she saw Tony Robbins on a
television infomercial. The more she learned about his
teachings, the more she began to believe she could save
herself.
At her first seminar, in Newport Beach in 1999, Robbins
walked up to her in the crowd and tapped her on the shoulder.
“I remember everyone gasping like it was this great honor,”
Marie said. He invited her onstage with several other audience
members, where he hugged her tightly and whispered in her ear
to find him after the event was over, Marie said. She
declined, but he continued to ask for her number, she said. “I
considered him my mentor and I didn’t want to blur any lines,”
Marie said. Like others, Marie spoke with BuzzFeed News on the
condition that her full name not be used.
Robbins denied Marie’s allegations, and his lawyers said he
had never engaged in any “inappropriate sexual behavior.” They
said his microphone would have made it impossible for him to
whisper anything while he was on stage without it being
broadcasted to the whole crowd.
Despite her discomfort, Marie came away from the seminar
feeling more upbeat than she had in a while. So she went back
to other events, including a Date With Destiny seminar in
Miami. There, one of Robbins’ bodyguards stopped her in the
bustling hallway. “Tony sent me to take you to his room,” she
remembered him saying. The bodyguard kept his eyes on the
ground, she recalled, and told her she was “too good for
this”: “If it’s not you that goes to his room, it’s going to
be somebody else,” she remembered him saying. Again, she
declined.
BuzzFeed News tracked down that former bodyguard, who spent
more than a decade working for Robbins. He said on condition
of anonymity that, while he could not recall this specific
occasion, his former boss did give him notes to pass to
“young, attractive women” and he witnessed Robbins make direct
advances to women in the crowd.
Robbins’ vehemently denied that he had “authorized or
participated in any systematic selection of event audience
members for personal intimate sexual encounters backstage.”
His lawyers said he “openly admits that he had consensual
relationships with women, many of whom aggressively sought him
out.”
Robbins has indeed spoken publicly about the attention he has
received from female fans. “They’d send me their panties and
show up at events in limousines to get through security, or
turn up at my house to convince me they had an offer I
couldn’t refuse,” he told Playboy in 2013. “I was beyond
tempted at times. There was no drought, for sure. I was like a
kid in a candy store.”
The bodyguard confirmed that many women sought Robbins’
attention. It was a different time, when people had
“completely different beliefs, values, and rules.” But some
women had clearly not welcomed Robbins’ advances, he said.
“It’s who he is to take advantage of women.”
Both Heather
Porter, a former event manager, and Miki Knowles, who worked as Robbins’
personal chef, recalled hearing colleagues describe how the
security team would pluck women from the audience on Robbins’
behalf. “The security guys would tell stories about women
they’d had to take up to his room,” Knowles said. Lavely &
Singer said that both women referenced their work with Robbins
in a positive light in their online profiles.
Robbins went on to approach Marie directly at that Florida
event, she said. As the seminar came to a euphoric close
around 2 a.m., she heard him shout, “Come here!” across the
crowd. Robbins clamped his hand over Marie’s arm, she told
BuzzFeed News, and pulled her toward the greenroom. She
twisted free and melted into the crowd, she said, hoping he
would lose sight of her.
Still, Marie could not tear herself away from Robbins’ world
— a common theme among people who said they had experienced
behavior that crossed a line but continued to work with him
for years.
Marie still believed Robbins’ message was invaluable. “I knew
that had saved my life,” she said, and she wanted to help save
others. So she became more deeply involved, first as an unpaid
volunteer — and then as an employee.
By the early 2000s, Robbins’ business empire was
flourishing: He had sold millions of self-help tapes and
books, become a TV infomercial star, and was
attracting audiences of thousands all over the world. Many
women who worked at Robbins Research International — his San
Diego–based company — said they loved the experience. One
former employee, Marie Kozak, said there was “never a stray
hand or a wrong look.” Traci Porterfield, who worked as an HR
executive from 2004 until 2009, said the job “literally
changed the trajectory of my life.” In around five years, she
said she never received any sexual harassment complaints.
But other former employees and volunteers told a different
story.
One former personal assistant, who said she worked for
Robbins for around 18 months in the 1990s, said he made her
take notes while he showered. “He would call you into the
bathroom with him. ‘Hey come here, I need you to make a note
of something,’” she said. “He just didn’t care, he was too
powerful.”
The assistant, who was then in her twenties and asked to be
identified only as “B.,” said on one occasion, Robbins came
out of the shower when she was working in his hotel room and
dropped his towel. She shouted at him to cover up, she said,
then left in tears. “I called my parents,” she said, “and I
was like, ‘What in the world makes him think I would want any
part of that?’”
B.’s mother confirmed that her daughter complained about
Robbins’ sexual advances at the time.
B. first told BuzzFeed News she wanted to tell her story
using her full name, but later changed her mind, citing her
fear of Robbins.
“To the extent that he may have been unclothed at various
times in his home or in hotels when working while either
dressing or showering, and whether a personal assistant may
have been present for some reason at that time, Mr. Robbins
has no recollection.”
Kate Rittase, who worked for Robbins from the late 1990s to
early 2000s, also told BuzzFeed News that she had to work with
him while he was nude. “My job would be to get him out of bed
in the morning so I’d wake up and pull his naked butt out of
bed,” she said. “I had to get his naked butt into the shower
and into his suit.” Robbins would also call her into the
bathroom while he showered, she said. “I guess some people
would think it was weird,” she said, but she just saw it as
part of the job. “Yes I could be a victim, I could go down the
victim road but I just chose not to.”
She said she was careful never to be in the room with him
when he was naked unless he needed something, and “never put
myself in a position of being vulnerable or exploited.”
Robbins seminars were “life transforming” for her and her
family, she added.
A fourth woman, Kay, joined Robbins’ crew in the late ‘90s.
She told BuzzFeed News that he singled her out immediately,
frequently telling her she was beautiful. Over the next few
years, she said he encouraged her to end two separate
relationships, offered to fly her out to visit him, and gave
her a secret phone number. The more she refused him, she said,
the more he “relentlessly” pursued her.
“It’s part of what he teaches: Go after what you want,” she
said. “And he wants to acquire you as a woman.”
Kay recalled one seminar where Robbins told the crowd to
imagine they were having an orgasm. He then stepped down and
whispered in her ear, “I wanna see you have an orgasm,” she
told BuzzFeed News. Again, Kay refused. “I’m not showing
you anything,” she recalled thinking, “that feeds
that monster.”
Robbins’ lawyers said Kay’s accusations were “false and
preposterous.” They said Robbins wore a microphone at all
times while he was on stage and his events are typically
recorded from start to finish using multiple cameras.
Kay stayed in Robbins’ universe until 2001. A friend of Kay’s
told BuzzFeed News that about a decade ago, Kay disclosed to
her that Robbins had repeatedly hit on her.
Kay first told BuzzFeed News she wanted to speak publicly
about what happened, then changed her mind, and spoke on
condition that her full name not be used. “He’s very
connected, he’s very powerful, and he’s very wealthy and able
to squash bugs,” Kay told BuzzFeed News. “And we’re the bugs.”
“He’s very connected, he’s very powerful, and he’s able to
squash bugs...and we’re the bugs.”
One former staffer who did consent to a sexual relationship
with Robbins said she came to regret it. The woman, who asked
to be identified only as J., worked as Robbins’ personal
assistant in the 1990s, when she was in her twenties and he
was more than a decade older. They began an affair soon after
they started working together, J. said, but she was fired
after his then-wife became suspicious.
Distraught, J. turned to a friend, attorney Ron Blumberg, who
told her she had a strong legal case for sexual harassment and
unfair dismissal, in part because of the “difference in power”
between the two parties.
“He was on a pedestal as few celebrities in any field were at
the time,” Blumberg told BuzzFeed News. “Everything about him
— his looks, his demeanor, his money — was crafted to define
himself as having extreme power.”
Both J. and Blumberg said they met with Robbins’ lawyer.
Afterward, J. told BuzzFeed News, she was “scared to death.”
So she never brought a case.
Robbins’ lawyers said he denied J.’s claims “generally and
specifically.”
J. said it took her time to make sense of the experience. She
remained in touch with him for several years after she was
fired.
J. was not the only former Robbins employee who claimed she
was unfairly dismissed after his sexual attentions turned
sour. Marie said that Robbins stopped making direct advances
after she started working for him, but still made her feel
“totally violated” at times by staring at her breasts and
stomach. Still, she stayed at his company for years. When
people asked why she stood by him, she said she would tell
them, “Listen to the message, not the messenger.”
Then one day in the mid-2000s, a senior manager called her to
a meeting at an empty hotel restaurant in the middle of a
Robbins event and fired her on the spot. Marie said she
received no explanation for her firing.
But speaking to BuzzFeed News on condition of anonymity, one
employee with knowledge of the incident explained the decision
to fire Marie: An order came from above that she had to go
because she was “obsessed” with Robbins. This was not the
first time a woman had been fired for similar reasons, that
employee said.
“I felt like I was being disfellowshipped from a religion.”
Robbins’ lawyers denied Marie’s allegations, and said that he
“is not involved in the day-to-day operations” of his company,
“including the hiring and firing of employees.”
Marie said she was ostracized by many of the people she was
close with in Robbins’ orbit. “I felt like I was being
disfellowshipped from a religion,” she said.
The day she was fired, she was ordered to head back to her
hotel room, pack her belongings, and get in a taxi straight to
the airport. Gary King escorted her away.
King still believed that Robbins was a force for good.
And he enjoyed sharing the perks of superstardom — golf
outings, global travel, and standing next to Oprah as she did
a firewalk with Robbins on TV.
But when his son, who had depression, killed himself, King’s
concerns about the mental health of Robbins’ more vulnerable
followers grew more acute.
In 2014, a man wrote to the Robbins organization to
complain that his wife had collapsed and begun hallucinating
after a Date With Destiny event — believing a clock was moving
backward and a lightbulb was the moon. A staffer had advised
him that this was not uncommon and she would be “back to
normal” the following day, yet his wife had continued to
hallucinate after being admitted to the hospital, and remained
in a “poor” mental state months after the event, the man
wrote. The couple did not respond to repeated requests from
BuzzFeed News for comment.
An employee forwarded the email to King. “The reality is,
there is collateral emotional and physical damage at DWD [Date
With Destiny], there always has been,” King replied. “In a
room full of every personality disorder and personal emotional
need and financial need, it goes without saying.” He said he
had flagged the problem repeatedly, but “it falls short of
being taken seriously enough.”
“The reality is, there is collateral emotional and physical
damage ... It falls short of being taken seriously enough.”
Glen Lechtanski, who was a registered emergency nurse during
more than a decade spent volunteering for Robbins, including
as director of medical operations for his
live events, told BuzzFeed News that he too had witnessed
participants becoming “mentally unstable” due to a lack of
sleep, water, and food.
Lechtanski also recalled treating dozens of participants with
second-degree burns from a 2012 San Jose firewalk. “He’s been
taking risks with everyone’s health and safety,” he said.
Robbins’ lawyers said Lechtanski was terminated from his
volunteer position “based on certain inappropriate conduct,”
and that as a result he, like King, had become “disgruntled”
towards Robbins’ company. Lechtanski said he had been let go
for taking fan merchandise such as CDs and vitamins from
Robbins’ product tables to hand out to the team of volunteers
he oversaw in lieu of pay.
Todd Spendley spent a decade working for Robbins as a
logistics contractor but left in 2014 after growing
increasingly disturbed by the way the company was run. At one
Palm Springs, California, event, Spendley said he witnessed a
fan experience “what I would describe as a seizure, or a sort
of mental and physical breakdown.” Robbins staffers attempted
to help him themselves instead of calling an ambulance,
Spendley said. “I realized that many of these trainers had no
qualifications besides being trained by Tony,” Spendley said.
“I felt like there was no regulation, and very little
protection if someone was vulnerable.”
Robbins’ lawyer said his events are “fully staffed with a
team of security personnel, medical personnel, coaches and
trainers who are available at all times.”
In 2014, Robbins let a documentary filmmaker inside a Date
With Destiny event to produce a film called I Am Not Your Guru. As always,
the access to his private world was tightly controlled.
Robbins struck a deal with the director allowing him to cancel
filming at any time during the six-day seminar and retain
ownership of the footage if he chose.
In the documentary, Robbins said staff kept a keen eye on
people in the audience with serious mental health issues.
In one scene, a young woman told Robbins she was sexually
abused while growing up in a Christian cult. Robbins’ response
was to instruct her to pick three men, all strangers, out of
the crowd to serve as “uncles” to watch over her for the next
“10 years.” Later, he acknowledged that he had never “dealt
with this issue or anything like this before, obviously.”
Citing her book about the experience, Robbins’
lawyers said that the woman’s “breakthrough and transformation
speaks for itself.”
When it debuted on Netflix in 2016, critics panned the film
as “almost fawning” and “self-help snake oil.” The New York Times
dismissed it as a “missed opportunity”
to analyze how Robbins’ “peacocking dominance” inspired a
“near-religious devotion” from his audience. “There are no
in-depth interviews with employees or family members and no
negative experiences,” the reviewer noted.
King and another person at the event said film crews shot
footage of a woman on the foyer floor screaming while Robbins
staff tried to help her. Another employee later told King that
this woman then tried to jump out of a hotel window, King
said.
The scene didn’t make it into the documentary. The film’s
director said it was because she refused to sign a release
form. “I was not asked to nor did I make a ‘fawning’ film,” he
said, adding viewers could draw their own conclusions about
Robbins.
By now, King was at the end of his rope. After working a
seminar in London in March 2015, King sent a one-sentence
email: “Effective Immediately, I resign from responsibilities
and communication with RRI.”
Over the next few years, King would reinvent himself as an
“international happiness expert.” Lavely & Singer said
King had a “self-interest” in attacking Robbins because he
viewed him as a competitor.
King said he did his best to move on with his life. But in
2018, a woman reached out to King in a state of distress about
Robbins. “Please get in touch with me,” she wrote. The woman
declined to be interviewed for this story, but BuzzFeed News
reviewed her correspondence with King.
By then, the #MeToo movement was in full effect, and King
started hearing from others who used to be in Robbins’ orbit.
He began to wonder about how those women he had approached on
Robbins' behalf might have felt.
At the encouragement of a friend, he reached out to a
reporter at BuzzFeed News. “It’s a classic case of nobody will
come forward,” he wrote in one email, “because they fear his
money and power.” It was time to change that, he said.
Robbins also praised the casino magnate
Steve Wynn, who had recently been accused of sexual
harassment. He said he knew a “dozen” men who were afraid of
hiring attractive women because it posed too big a risk.
This was a rare moment: footage from inside Robbins’ world
released outside of his tight control.
Robbins apologized, but less than two weeks later, secret
footage obtained by BuzzFeed News captured him pointing out a
fan at a London show whom he called “attractive as hell”
before declaring he wanted her to “come up onstage and make
love to me.”
And in December 2018, Robbins was in Palm Beach, Florida, for
another Date With Destiny event. A woman stepped up to the
microphone. Speaking softly, she told Robbins that her husband
had emotionally abused her.
That set Robbins off. In a 50-minute secret recording
obtained by BuzzFeed News, he launched into a tirade,
punctuated with expletive-laden questions. “What the fuck is
emotional abuse?” he asked the woman. “Are we that fucking
weak that someone can’t tell you with passion what they
fucking feel without them abusing you?”
“Are we that fucking weak that someone can’t tell you with
passion what they fucking feel without them abusing you?”
“She’s focused on her needs,” he went on. “We’ve not heard
one thing in the last 12 minutes about his needs. And we’re
already characterizing it as emotional violence. There’s no
fucking thing.”
“There has been physical violence,” the woman clarified soon
after.
“What led to that?” Robbins shot back. “What role did you
play? I'm not suggesting there’s any excuse for hitting a
woman, so hear me, but I also want you to know that people
don’t just act a certain fucking way.”
When the woman tentatively began to describe the violence —
details she asked BuzzFeed News not to publish — Robbins
interrupted her and said her husband “sounds like somebody
that actually wants to engage with you because he loves you.”
“What I find when I usually dig in,” he later said, “is what
they call abuse is a relabeling of ‘they didn’t like what the
person said or did.’” He later turned back to the crowd.
“She’s lying to herself,” he said. “She’s done it so often she
doesn’t even know the difference between a truth and a lie
anymore."
“Has he loved you?” Robbins went on. “Has he looked out for
you, does he put up with you when you’ve been a crazy bitch?
Have you ever been a crazy bitch? Ever?”
“Probably, yes,” the woman answered, her voice shaky. The
crowd laughed. The song “Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?” by
Moby began to play on the speakers.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, the woman said she
understood why people would find Robbins’ comments upsetting.
But she was able to take “whatever served” her from the
intervention even if she didn’t feel everything Robbins said
applied to her situation. “I didn’t take it personally,” she
said.
“Does he put up with you when you've been a crazy bitch?”
Robbins’ team attended to her afterward, and with their help,
the woman realized she “had a self-love issue,” she said.
(Both the woman and Robbins’ lawyers said there was a
follow-up portion but declined to provide the recording to
BuzzFeed News.) The experience helped her discover her own
agency and sever ties with her husband for good. She later
published an account thanking Robbins for his teachings.
“In no way, shape, or form I would like to give the wrong
impression that I found the interaction with Tony to be
damaging to me or that I found it not useful,” she said. She
also repeatedly asked to make clear she was not the person who
had leaked the audio, and therefore had not violated the rules
of the event.
Experts in domestic violence who reviewed the 50-minute transcript voiced serious concerns about
the encounter.
“In some ways, the dynamics of Robbins’ relationships with
the women in these workshops is essentially the same as the
dynamics of the abuse that may have brought them to him in the
first place,” said Leigh Goodmark, a professor and director of
the Gender Violence Clinic at the University of Maryland Carey
School of Law.
“I’m glad that experience was empowering for her, but another
survivor sitting in that room might have felt like she was
being ridiculed and her experiences were being dismissed,” she
said.
“There is no context that would make this okay,” said Latifa
Lyles, an executive at the National Network to End Domestic
Violence.
One morning in late November 2018, Gary King received
a threatening letter from Lavely & Singer, the famously
aggressive Hollywood law firm whose founder once told the New York Times its “goal is to
try to kill the story.”
“We have been informed by several individuals that you are
the source of false and malicious information and rumors that
have been provided to on-line publication BuzzFeed,” the letter read.
The firm warned King that his conduct could cost him a
fortune if he didn’t take back everything he had already said
within 48 hours and promise not to make any more “defamatory”
accusations against Robbins.
King’s lawyer responded that the threats were triggering the
post-traumatic stress disorder he had developed after his
son’s suicide. Lavely & Singer replied that King had “no
one to blame other than himself.”
King received a third letter from Lavely & Singer in
February. “We are informed that Mr King met with BuzzFeed
reporter, Jane Bradley, last week in Florida.”
In April, in-house attorneys at Robbins Research
International sent out a new nondisclosure agreement to staff.
It demanded not just silence but also a promise to take action
to stop their colleagues from disclosing “Confidential
Information.” If they breached the NDA they would have to pay
Robbins up to $100,000 in damages.
Lavely & Singer also sent threats to another staffer
accused of speaking with BuzzFeed News. Unlike others in
Robbins’ orbit, the man said he had never signed an NDA. Yet
one letter, reviewed by BuzzFeed News, warned that if he did
not retract his story, “Your life will be forever changed.”
He also received text messages from a former colleague asking
him to pass on information about BuzzFeed News to Robbins’
team. He said that the colleague told him he could receive an
unspecified “reward” if he did so. That same woman had
previously spoken with BuzzFeed News herself claiming to have
been a victim of sexual harassment by an event leader who
worked for Robbins’ company — but failed to produce any
evidence. In May, an attorney for Robbins wrote to the staffer
to say that a goodwill payment of $3,485 could be available to
him on the condition that he sign a legal document agreeing
not to cooperate with the BuzzFeed News investigation. He
refused.
Employee NDAs are “common and standard in the industry,”
Lavely & Singer said. The idea that Robbins’ company
conducts its business with “intense secrecy” is “misplaced and
sophomoric.” Lavely & Singer denied that it is an
“aggressive firm” saying, “we merely apply existing law to
counter and preclude illegal conduct by others, including
individuals who would publish false and defamatory statements
regarding our clients.”
The firm’s threats serve as “an example of using the law to
silence people and keep conduct in the dark,” said Fatima Goss
Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center and
cofounder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. “In the
era of #MeToo, more and more people feel emboldened to speak
out,” she said. Threats such as the ones Lavely & Singer
directed to people in Tony Robbins’ orbit “are sending a
reminder: ‘You are not as powerful as you think.’”
Gary King said he decided to speak out as a gesture of
solidarity with the women who felt too scared to come forward.
“Nothing is more important than your character in life,” King
said. “Knowing I knew all that stuff that went on and I didn’t
do anything about it? I couldn’t function like that.”
Though each of the women who backed away from speaking on the
record about Robbins said they were afraid, some also gave
more complex reasons.
To this day, Marie believes Robbins' work “saves and changes
lives.” In fact she said it helped her not to see herself as a
victim when she grapples with the way he treated her. “It's
easy to blame someone else for our problems however we don't
grow or change by doing so,” she told BuzzFeed News in one
email. “While I may not agree with everything Tony does as a
person, I am forever grateful for the gift Tony's been in my
life.”
After years of therapy, she is still struggling to recover
from her experiences in Robbins' inner sanctum. “I had so much
confidence and was so strong and powerful in how I saw
myself,” she said. “I haven’t gotten that back.” ●
Opening art: Benjamin Lowy / Getty Images; illustrations
by Akiko Stehrenberger for BuzzFeed News.
[Editor’s note: The maker of I Am Not Your Guru also
directed a documentary based on reporting by Katie J.M.
Baker, one of the reporters of this piece.]
Jane Bradley is an
investigations correspondent for BuzzFeed News and is based
in London.