The Story of Larry Ray and the Sarah Lawrence ‘Sex Cult’
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In April 2019, a website called The Cut published an article titled “The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence.” “What happened to the group of bright college students who fell under the sway of a classmate’s father?” the subhead asked, introducing the general public—and much of law enforcement—to Larry Ray. The story also provided the basis of the 2024 Lifetime movie Devil on Campus: The Larry Ray Story.
Almost nine years earlier, in 2010, Larry got out of prison, moved in with his daughter, Talia Ray, at Sarah Lawrence College and set his sights on her vulnerable roommates. He cooked them steak dinners, taught them lessons from the Marines and regaled them with tales of espionage in the CIA and connections with government officials, gaining their trust and respect before slowly taking control of their lives. His victims, all in their late teens and 20s, endured sexual, physical and emotional abuse and torture. This real-life horror movie went on for years before it was uncovered, almost by accident, by journalists who just happened to reach out to the right person.
Daniel Levin, now a writer, was under Larry’s control for three years, and he spoke about his story on a 2023 episode of the podcast Navigating Narcissism. Levin was one of Talia’s roommates, along with Claudia Drury, Isabella Pollok and Santos Rosario. Talia had frequently talked about her supposedly heroic father, a former Marine and CIA agent, and now that he was getting out of prison (after being unfairly incarcerated by the government, she said), she wanted him to move into the dorm. Strange, but as Levin said, “No one wants to be the one to tell your friend she can’t see her dad.”
His first impression was of a “relatively short, kind of rotund, bald shaved-head guy who’s kind of got this tough-guy Staten Island demeanor.” He seemed kind of “silly” and talked at an “incredible pace” with no pauses for anyone else to chime in. Larry was “overwhelming,” Levin remembered, and “weird.”
“He had this way of trapping you in a conversation,” Levin said. “You might be kind of resistant at first … but somehow, through the process of wearing you down, the logic traps that he would get you in, the authoritativeness with which he spoke about things, you would find yourself kind of confused and a little vulnerable, trusting him a little more than you trusted yourself inside of that conversation.”
Read more https://www.aetv.com/articles/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-sex-cult
Content retrieved from: https://www.aetv.com/articles/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-sex-cult.
