by: Alex Richter
They were bright, bookish, and searching for independence. When a group of Sarah Lawrence students allowed a charismatic father to move into their dorm, they believed they were embarking on a journey of self-discovery and radical honesty. Instead, they found themselves in the grip of a decade-long cult under Lawrence “Larry” Ray. Ray, a New Jersey man just released from prison, quickly ingratiated himself with Talia Ray, his daughter, the only untouched student, and her Slonim Woods apartment mates. He took on the “dad” role, screening documentaries and engaging the students in long, late-night talks about truth and justice. At first, the arrangement seemed harmless, exciting even, but the sinister reality emerged soon after.
Once Ray had their trust, he began therapy and intimacy education sessions in the dorm common room, supposedly to help with their traumas. In truth, he was charting their vulnerabilities and slowly, persuasively isolating them from family. Over months, he used sleep deprivation, humiliation, verbal threats, and outright violence to force the students to confess to false crimes, most often vandalism or “poisoning” his food. He demanded they pay for these imaginary offenses by draining their parents’ savings or begging strangers for cash. Prosecutors later found he had extorted well over millions of dollars from at least five victims. In effect, Ray controlled every aspect of his victims’ lives, where they went, when they slept, what they ate, all in the name of repaying him “damages.”
Ray eventually moved the group off campus, leading most members to drop out of college entirely. By the summer of 2011, he had moved into a small apartment in Manhattan, owned by a “friend” he had met in prison. Also living in the apartment were Santos Rosario and his two siblings, Yalitza and Felicia. Additionally, Daniel Barban Levin, Claudia Drury, and Isabella Pollok were part of their group. In this new living arrangement, Ray imposed even stricter rules. He forced the young group to have intimate relations with him and with one another, often during so-called “healing” encounters that he videotaped while playing intense music. When they attempted retaliation or exposure, he threatened to release the tapes or told them their parents would see them in an inappropriate light. In this way, Ray branded his victims as members of a bizarre “family” or cult. Some were made his personal chauffeurs or “soldiers,” others were kept literally under lock and key and made to swear their lives to him. The shyest victim of the group was told she was now his wife; another was made the group’s housekeeper.
By 2013, Ray was now taking several of them to a remote property in Pinehurst, North Carolina, owned by his family. There, he physically brutalized them: locking the refrigerator closed to “ration food,” berating them for imagined offenses, and forcing them to do extremely taxing manual labor during night hours without pay or light (again under the pretense of “repaying” Ray). He forced the smartest member, objectively, (Felicia Rosario) to quit her prestigious medical residency in Los Angeles and join the household in North Carolina. In 2014, Ray turned the screws even tighter on Claudia Drury, a vulnerable art student he had counselled in the dorm, convincing her she was schizophrenic, by coercing her into a dangerous, taxing intimate job. According to evidence presented at trial, he trafficked Claudia to work in extreme adult clubs and forced her to sell herself to strangers for thousands of dollars per encounter. On top of this, prosecutors found that Ray took almost a million dollars of Claudia’s earnings. In the course of this exploitation, he nearly killed her. At one point, he tied Claudia to a chair, placed a plastic bag over her head, and threatened to suffocate her if she didn’t continue her “work.”
Several years into Ray’s reign of terror, the damage was extremely evident. Four victims, Santos, Yalitza, Isabella, and Claudia, showed severe signs of depression by this point. Sarah Lawrence College had no knowledge that Ray was ever living on campus or of the events occurring in Slonim Woods. Meanwhile, Ray maintained his control by extracting fabricated “confessions” from the members and repeatedly reminding them that the outside world could be harsh and unloving compared to their new “family.”
Felicia Rosario was a Harvard–and Columbia–educated psychiatrist in training. Ray convinced her to abandon her residency and move into the cult apartment after beginning to date her. There, he intimately abused her and forced her into commercial club work to pay him back. Prosecutors showed how Ray collected explicit photos of Felicia and used them as blackmail. Sadly, Felicia, even though she was the most educated, was objectively reverted the most, containing little to no remnants of her former self, acting and believing herself to be a child.
Claudia Drury was an artistic, troubled student. Claudia initially fought against Ray’s control, but after he convinced her she had schizophrenia, she was fully under his control. By 2014, he had coerced her into working at adult clubs (under a pseudonym) and then into more extreme lines of work. He took the majority of her earnings and continually humiliated and punished her. Evidence at trial described how Ray grew extremely physically violent with Claudia.
Daniel Barban Levie was another one of the dorm roommates. Daniel became a target of Ray’s rage when he hesitated at Ray’s schemes. In one viral video from Ray’s “business blog,” Ray is seen physically assaulting Daniel with a wrench attached to his tongue. Daniel and others were subjected to sham “hearings” where they were yelled at and accused of crimes, and pressured to confess. Ray’s intimidation deeply scarred him so much that he fled the apartment, thankfully never having made it to the North Carolina home. Daniel later wrote and published a novel about the fear and humiliation the group lived under.
Yalitza Rosario was Felicia’s younger sister. Yalitza was also ensnared, even though she did not attend Sarah Lawrence (nor did Felicia). Ray moved her into the Pinehurst compound in 2013. There she was starved, locked in rooms, and forced to do unpaid labor alongside her sister and the other group members. Under constant threat and shame, Yalitza eventually escaped the North Carolina home.
Other survivors include former Sarah Lawrence students Isabella Pollok and Santos Rosario, who were both manipulated and abused under Ray’s influence. They underwent drastic transformations from their former selves. Isabella became increasingly “confident,” selfish, and narcissistic, likely due to being designated as Ray’s “wife” and “favorite.” Santos turned into a shy, sensitive, and frustrated shell of his former self. All of Ray’s victims were made to feel complicit and indebted to him. The cult’s motto of “radical honesty” concealed the daily lies and coercion they endured.
In February 2020, federal agents finally arrested Larry Ray. At his Manhattan trial in 2022, prosecutors presented harrowing evidence of his crimes. They summarized how Larry Ray was convicted of 15 counts, including sex trafficking, extortion, and racketeering conspiracy, after nearly ten years of abuse. Witnesses described the household rules, the forced confessions, and how Ray’s demands escalated into trafficking students and even threatening dismemberment when they resisted. In January 2023, a judge in U.S. District Court handed Ray a 60-year prison sentence, a term prosecutors said was necessary for a man who had “inflicted brutal and lifelong harm on innocent victims,” even though most believe it is still not enough. Ray was also ordered to forfeit over $2 million in criminal proceeds and was barred from contacting the victims ever again.
The Sarah Lawrence cult serves as a haunting reminder of how easily the quest for belonging can be weaponized against the vulnerable. These young adults went to college seeking self-discovery, only to find themselves isolated and abused by someone they came to trust. Their ordeal, covered in media reports, true-crime podcasts, and a Hulu docu-series, highlights the importance of vigilance on college campuses and beyond. Ultimately, the bravery of the survivors in sharing their experiences and testifying helped bring a predator to justice. Their stories serve as a chilling reminder of the dangers of predatory mentorship and the extreme measures a grand manipulator may take to exert control over bright, vulnerable individuals.
