Lawrence Ray.Photo: HONS/AP/Shutterstock
A new six-part podcast examines the disturbing case of theSarah Lawrence sex cultand ringleaderLawrence Ray, who was recently sentenced to 60 years in prison for multiple crimes including extortion and sex trafficking.
It’s a harrowing, implausible-seeming story. Ray was the father of a Sarah Lawrence student whomoved into his daughter’s dorm room in 2010and set about sexually, psychologically and physically abusing her schoolmates and other young people. The abuse began at Sarah Lawrence, a prestigious liberal arts college just outside of New York City when Ray began giving “therapy sessions” to his daughter’s roommates, purporting to “help them with psychological problems,” an indictment filed against him in 2020 said.
It was through these “sessions” that Ray laid the groundwork for psychological conditioning that would “eventually lead these young adults to become unwitting victims of sexual exploitation, verbal and physical abuse, extortion, forced labor and prostitution,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge William F. Sweeney, Jr. said at the time of Ray’s 2020 arrest.
The abuse continued the following summer at Ray’s apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where several students moved in with him in 2011.
Ray would often coerce his victims into giving false confessions for offenses they did not commit, and then would extract payment in compensation for those imagined offenses.
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He was convicted last April and was sentenced to prison on Jan. 20 of this year.
The podcast digs into the case’s expansive court records, navigating the many disturbing details. Röhm, as the host, provides personal reflections as a Sarah Lawrence alum.
Elisabeth Röhm.Courtesy Elisabeth Röhm
“It’s a story I feel deeply connected to having been an alum of Sarah Lawrence and the mom of a teenager,” Röhm, who also has a feature film on the case in development at Lifetime, says in the press release.
“I hope it is a reminder for all of us to never turn a blind eye on our children, and that this podcast and forthcoming movie begin a conversation so that this type of victimization never happens again,” she says.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
source: people.com
