“Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence” – Hard to retrieve [TELEVISION REVIEW]
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Under the category of “truth is stranger than fiction,” “Stolen Youth,” the story of the cult of ex-con Larry Ray, defies even that category. A group of eight Sarah Lawrence students bonded their freshman year in 2009. They had all worked very hard to get into this prestigious New York college. Several were on full scholarships but all had something to prove; that they deserved to be there. After a successful first year, this group found a unique living arrangement for their sophomore year in a house/dorm on campus and were excited by the seemingly endless possibilities to grow closer during late night conversations.Soon after the start of the new school year in 2010, one of the group, Talia, revealed the tale of her father’s unfair and unfortunate life leading to poverty, prison and divorce. They had been well to do until a biased FBI investigation had unraveled their family life, taking away everything they had. The investigation stated that anything her father had obtained was the result of fraud. But, she said, it was actually because he exposed governmental corruption. He had been betrayed by one of his best friends, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik. Her father had been unjustly sent to prison and would soon be getting out without a place to stay. What Tallia failed to mention was that he had also served time for child custody issues. She asked her roommates if he could temporarily stay with them in their house. And so the spider attached himself to his victims and began to spin his web.
Larry Ray, a bald, paunchy middle aged man with an authoritative manner of speaking, began immediately to assess this group of kids, still not out of their teens. Not handsome by any stretch of the imagination, he exuded confidence and what seemed to be empathy. He extolled their quest for success and quoting often from his bible, “Quest for Potential,” said he could help them realize their potential and find clarity. Larry regaled them with stories of his fantastic adventures with the CIA, the military, and local government. Not unlike New York Representative George Santos, these were fabricated tales of fantasy.
Content retrieved from: https://easyreadernews.com/stolen-youth-inside-the-cult-at-sarah-lawrence-hard-to-retrieve-television/.
Ray isolated his followers often cutting them off from family and old friends as he manipulated them through confessions, humiliations and fear. A common playbook for cult leaders.