The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence

[jeaniebueller]

This is a really wild story.

www.thecut.com/amp/2019/04/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-students.html

[cattledogkisses]

I read this last night and was horrified. I hope someone sues the school. They knew that a 50-something year old ex-con had moved into the student dormitory and did nothing about it. WTF.

Also, this guy is clearly a psychopath.

[bronxgirl]

Holy shit!! This is horrifying and hits home even more for me because my cousin was a student there at the time and the whole thing happened about 15 minutes from where i live.

[imojoebunny]

If you made this up, no one would believe it. The schools cop out that parents are allowed to visit their kids? The parents paying for "broken" stuff? Even selling their houses to do so? And then the young adults, I get being sucked in at first, but am confused about how what seem like smart kids, give in to the crazy demands of this man. Like they had no dreams or convictions of their own.

[cattledogkisses]

Apr 30, 2019 10:15:12 GMT -5 imojoebunny said:

If you made this up, no one would believe it. The schools cop out that parents are allowed to visit their kids? The parents paying for "broken" stuff? Even selling their houses to do so? And then the young adults, I get being sucked in at first, but am confused about how what seem like smart kids, give in to the crazy demands of this man. Like they had no dreams or convictions of their own.

I mean, this is what the article says about him:

A psychological evaluation of the family members commissioned by Teresa’s lawyers and submitted to the court characterized Larry as “literally impossible to evaluate” because “he is able to manipulate and control almost any situation in which he finds himself, including a psychological interview with a forensic examiner, no matter how experienced that examiner may be.

He could manipulate even experienced forensic examiners.  He sounds like an extremely dangerous man. 

[eclaires]

I read this yesterday and it was HORRIFYING. Also the school was ridiculous.

[MixedBerryJam]

I just read this today. My son told me about it yesterday. He started at SLC in the Fall of 2014 and he says that there was not one peep about this, and that none of his friends had heard rumors about it or anything. As horrifying as this story is, I'm astounded that there wasn't "talk" about it, especially that first year after several of them graduated. There were certainly kids on campus that overlapped with him. Horrifying, because the silence also makes me wonder what else has gone under the radar. So many questions.

[sonrisa]

Did you notice his friend who went on to body guard for Trump? Is there any sketchy endeavor in NYC that Trump doesn't touch?

[Velar Fricative]

Holy shit. This is horrific.

WTF to SLC's response to this. Per MixedBerryJam's post above, Larry seemed "brilliant" enough to manage to keep this under the radar while there. Parents can visit, sure, but I can't imagine there's a rule allowing parents to live on campus. WTF.

I just about fell out of my chair when I got to the Kerik link. And then once I saw Kerik's name, I knew Guiliani had to be close behind and then ultimately, Trump. Yep. Shady people hang out with shady people in NYC. Just surprised Betsy DeVos didn't show up in this somehow because she somehow gets tied into eeeeeeverything shady.

There really is a playbook for this. Since I was just listening to all the stuff about NXIVM, Keith is Larry. It is astounding that how con-artists can manage to carry on their lies and somehow still forge close ties with prominent people. Either they're just amazingly good at carrying out lies or prominent people really suck at vetting people. Probably a mix of the two.

[tacokick]

I truly don’t understand how they didn’t shut his living there down quickly! It seems like there were complaints, it was an undergrad dorm. A 50 year man should have stood out. There are less than 1,400 undergrads! I went to a school like that we knew everything about everyone.

[Velar Fricative]

I checked Twitter to read what people are saying and a few people have mentioned that one of the writers of the article did not divulge that he was a student there when this was all happening. Now, I don't know what that means for the truth here, but I admit it's odd that he made no mention of his time at the school.

[wambam]

Apr 30, 2019 12:01:06 GMT -5 tacokick said:

I truly don’t understand how they didn’t shut his living there down quickly! It seems like there were complaints, it was an undergrad dorm. A 50 year man should have stood out. There are less than 1,400 undergrads! I went to a school like that we knew everything about everyone.

This is what's got me WTFing. I went to a large state school and lived in the dorms for two years. We had to have visitors sign in. If someone's parent were spending multiple nights at their dorm, the school would know very quickly. 

[msmerymac]

“Part of why I got in a cult at all was because I had no idea how one finds a place to live in New York.”

OMG

Also, my school definitely had rules about visitors not staying more than a certain number of nights. Boyfriend, best friend from high school, sister - it didn't matter. Even if it was rarely enforced, at least it was on the books.

[pixy0stix]

I only read part one of the article. It sounds like there were a lot of people, including the administration, that were trying to appear "open minded".

[amberlyrose]

This is just crazy. And such a web of people connected to him!

[litebright]

Apr 30, 2019 13:31:06 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

I checked Twitter to read what people are saying and a few people have mentioned that one of the writers of the article did not divulge that he was a student there when this was all happening. Now, I don't know what that means for the truth here, but I admit it's odd that he made no mention of his time at the school.

That info and more is in the accompanying section on how the story was reported. So it is probably a sidebar in the print magazine. It could've been done as a sidebar in the web version of the story rather than via a link at the end of the story, but that info is there. 

[cleo29]

Apr 30, 2019 15:52:14 GMT -5 msmerymac said:

“Part of why I got in a cult at all was because I had no idea how one finds a place to live in New York.”

OMG

Also, my school definitely had rules about visitors not staying more than a certain number of nights. Boyfriend, best friend from high school, sister - it didn't matter. Even if it was rarely enforced, at least it was on the books.

Yeah, my sister and her suite mates had to take one of their roommates and her boyfriend to the RAs, and i think administration, because he had pretty much moved in and was there all the fucking time.

Back to the story, this is crazy. And for some reason when they were discussing his ability to manipulate Hannibal Lecter popped into my head.

[bronxgirl]

Apr 30, 2019 15:53:54 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I only read part one of the article. It sounds like there were a lot of people, including the administration, that were trying to appear "open minded".

That makes perfect sense at Sarah Lawrence. Even the on campus housing set-up sounds a little different.  These students weren't living in a traditional residence hall so it was a lot easier for Larry to weasel his way in fairly undetected.  In retrospect, I wonder if he knew that and had his daughter choose SL purposefully. 
What I found fascinating about this article is it really demonstrates how smart, seemingly well adjusted people can get sucked in to a cult.  Scary.

[MixedBerryJam]

Apr 30, 2019 13:31:06 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

I checked Twitter to read what people are saying and a few people have mentioned that one of the writers of the article did not divulge that he was a student there when this was all happening. Now, I don't know what that means for the truth here, but I admit it's odd that he made no mention of his time at the school.

Not justifying anything at all but just to clarify this was a house with 8 residents, not a tradtional dorm. Which actually makes it worse in my eyes because the houses are little safe extended families for some of these kids. Which exacerbated things here.

[Velar Fricative]

Apr 30, 2019 20:06:08 GMT -5 MixedBerryJam said:

Apr 30, 2019 13:31:06 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

I checked Twitter to read what people are saying and a few people have mentioned that one of the writers of the article did not divulge that he was a student there when this was all happening. Now, I don't know what that means for the truth here, but I admit it's odd that he made no mention of his time at the school.

Not justifying anything at all but just to clarify this was a house with 8 residents, not a tradtional dorm. Which actually makes it worse in my eyes because the houses are little safe extended families for some of these kids. Which exacerbated things here.

That’s why I figured it was tough for others to know what was going on but then once it was reported that he was living there, that should have been the time to take action. My goodness.

[isabel]

Apr 30, 2019 10:20:59 GMT -5 cattledogkisses said:

A psychological evaluation of the family members commissioned by Teresa’s lawyers and submitted to the court characterized Larry as “literally impossible to evaluate” because “he is able to manipulate and control almost any situation in which he finds himself, including a psychological interview with a forensic examiner, no matter how experienced that examiner may be.

He could manipulate even experienced forensic examiners.  He sounds like an extremely dangerous man. 

This part is fucking terrifying. That he is able to manipulate experienced forensics examiners is just... wow.

[MixedBerryJam]

Apr 30, 2019 20:51:07 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Apr 30, 2019 20:06:08 GMT -5 MixedBerryJam said:

Not justifying anything at all but just to clarify this was a house with 8 residents, not a tradtional dorm. Which actually makes it worse in my eyes because the houses are little safe extended families for some of these kids. Which exacerbated things here.

That’s why I figured it was tough for others to know what was going on but then once it was reported that he was living there, that should have been the time to take action. My goodness.

My quote of you seems like a bit of a non sequitor because I realize now I quoted the wrong post.  And yes, this is way more than just admins doing the ball. I am completely flummoxed by every aspect of this story but I really want to understand why there were no "rumblings" of the story in the years that followed.  

[turnipthebeet]

I started reading the story, then did a ctrl+f for Trump. And of course, only a degree of separation. Fucking grifters.

The whole article was unbelievable.

[miniroller]

Not sure if anyone else just caught the authors on Morning Joe. Wanted to share, sadly, two of his victims are still living with him. The families traveled to their residence last week to stage an intervention, which was unsuccessful.
The families, rather, hold out hope that at least the girls know that there are people who love & care about them & are basically waiting with open arms 😢

[bronxgirl]

May 8, 2019 7:03:09 GMT -5 miniroller said:

Not sure if anyone else just caught the authors on Morning Joe. Wanted to share, sadly, two of his victims are still living with him. The families traveled to their residence last week to stage an intervention, which was unsuccessful.
The families, rather, hold out hope that at least the girls know that there are people who love & care about them & are basically waiting with open arms 😢

I can't imagine how painful this must be for their parents.

[Velar Fricative]

Bumping up the zombie thread since I remembered we talked about this here. He finally got arrested this morning:

www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/nyregion/larry-ray-sarah-lawrence-sex.html

[phunluvin82]

Wow! I'm glad that they've managed to charge him with something after all this time. I remember thinking it seemed hopeless, like he'd basically got these kids under his spell and there wasn't anything anyone could do. I wonder if the ones that were still with him at the time the first article was published did finally manage to extricate themselves or what?

[ChillyMcFreeze]

Wow. Just... I worked at a place like Sarah Lawrence. We attracted particular types of students. When someone in this article described them as fragile and doing things to draw attention to themselves, it felt like deja vu. College students can be very intelligent and still be incredibly insecure and vulnerable to someone who pays attention to them and makes them feel special and different. I can think of students of mine who would have fallen prey to this kind of thing in an instant, and no one would have been able to talk them out of it.

The part about the school not knowing he was living there -- I don't totally fault them for that, partly because of SL's wonky housing set-up and partly because college students slip a lot of crazy things under our noses. When I was a res life director, I found out that a mom had been living with her daughter for a week. Private room, small dorm, and either no one noticed or (most likely) no one reported it. (Topic for another post, but college students' lack of regard for watching out for their own community makes me want to tear my hair out.) The difference is, I nipped that shit in the bud as soon as I heard. So the response was abysmal, but you can't act on what you don't know, and you can't know everything.

[phunluvin82]

Per CNN, the two women that were still sticking with him by the end of that initial expose article were present at his NJ house when he was arrested. So I guess they hadn't managed to break free of him:

www.cnn.com/2020/02/11/us/sarah-lawrence-college-sex-trafficking/index.html

I wonder if their families will have any luck deprogramming these women with him out of the picture at least temporarily. I wonder if he'll be out on bail immediately though.

I'm so obsessed with this. I've always been fascinated with cults and how people...even very smart people...can get indoctrinated/brainwashed like this. It's just unfathomable to me.

[Jalapeñomel]

I have a friend whose adult daughter (who was part of my theater program in Indiana years ago) took her newborn child and ran away with her husband. Her daughter has cut ties with them completely, and my friend mourns for her every day. At first they chalked it up to their daughter stopping medication for bipolar, but now they truly believe that her spouse has completely brainwashed her. The whole situation is devastating.