The dictionary definition of harrowing simply says, “acutely distressing.”
If there were a word beyond harrowing, I would use it to describe a new documentary series streaming on Hulu and airing on Freeform: “Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence.”
The series was profoundly disturbing. Yet I found myself glued to the TV, simultaneously gripped by disbelief and disgust at the story that was unfolding.
Sarah Lawrence College is a prestigious and progressive liberal arts college located north of the Bronx in New York City. These students obviously had the academic standing to attend beyond their freshman years — as well as the financial ability. In other words, this is no junior college or even a state school; this is an expensive and selective private school.
The series begins in the fall of 2010. College sophomores Talia, Max, Dan, Gabe, Claudia, JuliAna, Santos, Isabella and Raven had the opportunity to move into a dormitory house in which everyone would have their own room: Slonim Woods Building 9.
Enter Larry Ray.
Talia’s father, Larry, was around 50 years old when he started visiting his daughter and her housemates at Slonim Woods 9. Larry had just gotten out of prison — wrongly convicted, he said. He regaled the college kids with tales of conquest on the world stage: he was a friend of Mikhail Gorbachev; he was a Marine; he negotiated insider deals with New York City officials from Wall Street to the NYPD. The groundwork for this mythology had already been laid by Talia, who idolized her father and brought him into the lives of her friends.
Larry started staying over. He ingratiated himself into the lives of the coeds by grilling steaks, buying groceries and hosting game nights. Larry seemed like a great guy and had an uncanny ability to get inside the heads of the young people, listening intently to their problems while asking probing questions about their upbringing. In fact, the first episode features everyone saying generally good things about the guy. And then, it gets dark — quick.
The first target was Isabella, a quiet and shy girl from Texas. Strangely, Larry began staying in Isabella’s room having all-night “sessions,” in which he was supposedly counseling her through her problems, which included heretofore unknown abuse and neglect from her parents. In reality, he was engaging Isabella in deviant sexual role-playing and other activities.
Isabella was his first victim, the last one to stand by his side at the end, and the damage done to her is incalculable as she forever stopped speaking to her family. She went to prison last month.
Larry rented a high-rise in Manhattan. What college students wouldn’t be attracted to a free, all-expenses-paid life in New York City with this wise, generous older man guiding the way? Larry lured all the housemates to his apartment — and there they would live, in cramped quarters, for the next few years.
From Larry’s perspective, Dan seemed confused about himself. Larry decided to make Dan as masculine as possible and forced him into hard labor situations to keep him from being gay.
Claudia also began staying in Larry’s room. He would eventually sell Claudia into slavery and prostitution, extorting $700,000 in money made from her activities to pay what he called “damages.” But all of that was to come.
The whole crew from the Manhattan apartment migrated to family land in North Carolina, where Larry put them into a hard labor camp. Footage shows him standing over them like a slave driver, while the young people dutifully follow every maddening directive.
But all these stories, terrible as they are, pale in comparison to the complete destruction of the family at the center of the series.
Santos was dating Talia when Larry entered the picture. Santos and Larry spent hours together, discussing family problems. Santos’s parents, who didn’t speak English, – who spoke no English, worked very hard to get their children an American education. All three of their children were drawn into Larry Ray’s web and moved into the Manhattan apartment.
Over time, all three were brainwashed to believe their parents were part of a conspiracy led by New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik and Mayor Rudy Giuliani to defraud and defame him. Strangely enough, all three siblings believed it to the point they convinced their parents to give their house, cars and life savings to Larry.
Perhaps the most shocking transformation in the series is Felicia, who we see transition from a happy, smiling, well-put-together medical student to a shrieking, wild-eyed, totally dependent shell of a woman. In the series, she crawls around crying, hanging on Larry and begging him to tell her what to do next.
It makes one want to scream at the television. How could these smart, wealthy, progressive-minded college students so easily fall under the spell of a cult leader?
“It is literally impossible to evaluate Mr. Ray in the usual clinical manner,” read the psychiatrist’s report presented at Larry Ray’s sentencing in the series. “He is able to manipulate and control almost any situation in which he finds himself. He is calculating, manipulative, and hostile.”
In January, convicted of sex trafficking, extortion, and forced labor, Larry Ray was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Michael Bird is a music teacher and disc jockey in Tallassee.
