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- Larry Ray was accused of starting a sex cult at Sarah Lawrence in a 2019 investigation by The Cut.
- Ray, the father of one of the students, was later convicted of sex trafficking and other crimes.
- He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. His story is the basis of a new Lifetime movie.
Back in 2019, The Cut published a bombshell investigation into a pattern of concerning student behavior at Sarah Lawrence College. It all traced back to Larry Ray.
Ray is the father of Talia Ray, one of the undergrads in question, and was already an ex-convict at the time. He pleaded guilty to securities fraud in the early aughts and was sentenced to five years probation.
As The Cut investigation recounts, he later spent six months in jail after refusing a court order to surrender custody of his two children. Ray was arrested again in 2006, per the magazine, after a domestic violence incident with his then-girlfriend. Both were violations of his probation, which led to more jail time.
But shortly after being released in 2010, Ray moved into his daughter's on-campus dorm and took control of the roommates' home life, manipulating teenagers who later characterized themselves as "directionless" and "fragile" in conversations with The Cut.
Several of Talia's former roommates told The Cut that Ray psychologically, physically, and sexually abused them for years, corroborated by friends and family members.
Their accounts of Ray's tactics align with the typical structure of a cult, including sexual coercion, threats of violence, humiliation, and sleep deprivation paired with one-on-one "therapy sessions" — during which Ray would convince the teens they were schizophrenic, for example, or survivors of child abuse, without any medical training. Those who spoke to The Cut said Ray methodically severed their tethers to reality and connections to their loved ones.
Ray also convinced the group of kids to pay him money — approximately $1 million over the years, according to his federal indictment viewed by Business Insider — for fabricated property damage and trivial mistakes, which he painted as intentional acts of sabotage. Sources who had known Ray earlier in life described him to The Cut as highly paranoid and a "psychotic con man," despite close ties to law enforcement officials and past work as a federal informant.
Ray's convoluted story captivated the nation, inspiring last year's Hulu docuseries "Stolen Youth" and the new Lifetime movie, "Devil on Campus," which premieres on Sunday. Here's where he is now.
Ray was arrested, convicted on all counts, and sentenced to 60 years in prison
During The Cut's reporting process, Talia was still in constant contact with Ray. Two of her former roommates, both young women, were living with him in New Jersey.
Other victims had disappeared, either by intentionally escaping Ray's influence or because his actions had triggered a downward spiral. One of Talia's former roommates, Santos Rosario, had most recently been seen in a homeless shelter at the time of the investigation.
After "The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence" was published in April 2019, a joint FBI and NYPD task force began investigating the allegations. Less than one year later, Ray was arrested.
Ray (born Lawrence Grecco) was indicted on charges including sex trafficking, forced labor, conspiracy, racketeering, tax evasion, and exploitation.
Prosecutors said Ray had exploited the group of undergrads for personal and financial gain. They also said he forced one of the students, Claudia Drury, into prostitution. (Ray admitted to The Cut that he took the money Drury made from sex work, describing it as restitution.)
"For the better part of the last 10 years, Ray has continued to mentally and physically torture his victims," FBI investigator William F. Sweeney Jr. said at a news conference, per The New York Times.
Over the course of his three-week trial, several of Ray's victims testified about his use of violence, blackmail, and manipulation, as well as the lasting impact of his actions, including suicide attempts, eating disorders, and bouts of homelessness.
Ray was convicted on all 15 criminal counts by a federal jury in lower Manhattan.
In early 2023, Judge Lewis Liman sentenced Ray, then 63, to serve 60 years in prison.
"He sought to take every bit of light from his victims' lives," Liman said in court, per New York Magazine. "It was sadism, pure and simple."
Later that year, several of the cult's survivors filed a lawsuit against Sarah Lawrence, saying the school failed to protect them.
"They failed us so badly," Drury told The New York Times. "There was a predator living in our dorm and they did nothing."