What Happened to the Kids Who Were in the Sarah Lawrence Cult?
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Today Hulu begins streaming Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence, a new documentary series that chronicles in three harrowing episodes the crimes cult leader Lawrence Ray committed against a group of young college students who fell under his influence. For those who don’t know the story: In 2011 Ray moved into his daughter’s housing unit at Sarah Lawrence, a small liberal arts college in Bronxville, New York, and befriended and ultimately brainwashed some of her housemates.
A former investment adviser who claimed variously to have worked for the CIA and to have served in the marines, Ray had just spent six months in prison for violating a custody order when he arrived at his daughter’s dorm, a four-bedroom residence in a remote part of Sarah Lawrence’s bucolic campus. He was able to insinuate himself into a group of bright young kids, gradually coerce them into rejecting their other friends and family members, and later move into a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Soon they were funneling money to him from their parents, and in some cases turning to prostitution.
In 2019 Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh wrote a story for New York magazine that exposed Ray’s crimes, and soon afterward the FBI launched an investigation. For months devastating facts emerged, which were described in lurid detail on the cover of the New York Post and other tabloids. Ray recorded himself abusing members of the group; he blackmailed their parents; he attacked and tortured one woman while another victim watched.
Ray’s case went to trial in the spring of 2022, and he was found guilty of multiple charges in April. In December he was sentenced to 60 years in prison without the possibility of parole. At that point it seemed as if the Sarah Lawrence cult saga—or at least the media attention around it—might be coming to an end. But Stolen Youth introduces a new chapter that places the victims’ ongoing stories at the center of the narrative.
“I think it became imperative to help people understand why these individuals were interested in Larry and how this happened,” said Stolen Youth’s director, Zachary Heinzerling, in a recent phone conversation. “Some of the victims felt really judged when the news was coming out. Like, ‘How could you let this happen?’ It was important to dive deeper and understand the nature of this relationship and how it began, and ultimately how the victims were able to survive.”
Heinzerling began work on the documentary not long after New York published its exposé and after he spoke with Daniel Levin, one of Ray’s original victims, who had managed early on to extricate himself from the cult and publish a memoir about his experience. “I wrote a book because I was hoping I could reach my friends who were still in the cult,” Levin said in a phone call on Tuesday. “I decided to participate in the documentary for the same reason.”
Filming began early enough that Heinzerling was able to capture many of the victims’ reactions as the criminal case against Ray took shape. He visited two of the victims, Felicia and Isabella, at the house in which they had lived with Ray, and he listened to them defend Ray even after he was charged with crimes against both of them. He interviewed them numerous subsequent times as they moved into new homes and began to put their lives back together and, in Felicia’s case, break free of Ray’s manipulation. All the subjects had their own reasons for participating in the documentary, Heinzerling said. “In the Rosarios’ case [Felicia’s brother and sister were also in the cult], it was about figuring out their story as they told it. Sort of learning to step into an identity that they were taking back ownership of.”
Some of the most upsetting moments in Stolen Youth are clips Heinzerling included of the video and audio recordings Ray made of himself berating his victims. “It was important to show what happened but not be gratuitous,” Heinzerling said. “Those videos were played during the trial, and full-length versions appeared on the internet. For the victims, I think it was vital to be able to add context, and hopefully showing them in the series will help people understand how Larry methodically got them to that place, that mental prison.”
According to Levin, discussing the videos with Heinzerling offered a sometimes uncomfortable reminder of what happened with Ray. “A lot of the abuse was a guy sitting across from you asking you questions about your most sensitive memories. And then you sit down for an interview for a documentary and a man asks about your memories. So, yes, there’s a mirror there. But I think that what Zach did was give everyone space to figure out what had happened to them in a way that put us in the driver's seat—a do-over where you could say, ‘I want to stop’ or ‘I don't want to answer that question.’ Things that had been the opposite of our experience.”
In the process of participating in the documentary, many of Ray’s victims were able to reconnect with each other, which Levin says helped during Ray’s trial. “On the day of sentencing, I got to finally, after a decade, you know, say my piece to Larry, and he had to sit quietly and listen to me. And I got to see my friends get up and hug each other and cry and all these things I could never have imagined a couple of years ago.”
Stream Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence now on Shop Now.
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