Possibly the most haunting thing about what happened to Daniel Levin and his friends was how eerily recognizable their lives were when they ended up under the thumb of Larry Ray.
"I was a fairly normal 18-year-old," Daniel told E! News in an exclusive interview ahead of the Feb. 9 premiere of the Hulu docuseries Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence. "I was angsty. I was struggling with something that I would now call depression. I was unsure about my sexuality. I was unsure about masculinity and how I wanted to present myself. I was in my first long-term relationship. There's not really a good road map."
He certainly wasn't alone, feeling adrift fairly par for the course for a college kid.
But when his schoolmate Talia Ray's father, Larry, moved into their dorm at Sarah Lawrence College at the beginning of sophomore year in September 2010, it wasn't long before the magnetic 50-year-old had several of his daughter's friends hanging on his every word.
Even the very word, cult, is "so loaded," Daniel, now 31, said. "We think of it as something very fringe. And I think that how I look is not what we associate with cult followers. There were no robes, there was no Kool-Aid, no one got stabbed."
But a cult was what Larry presided over, according to the survivors of his abuse and the authorities who successfully prosecuted him last year. He was found guilty of 15 federal counts, including sex trafficking, forced labor, extortion and racketeering conspiracy, and sentenced in January to 60 years in prison.
In a statement, Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, called Larry a "monster" who "inflicted brutal and lifelong harm on innocent victims. Students who had their lives ahead of them. He groomed them and abused them into submission for his own gain."
Daniel disentangled himself from Larry in the spring of 2013, the second semester of his senior year. He moved into campus housing, took on two part-time jobs to stay super-busy and graduated on time. But being the first to get away—six years before a New York magazine article detailed the students' allegations of what Larry did to them—came with its own unique challenges.
"I got out and for years was living with it mostly as a secret," Daniel explained. "In ways that I didn't fully appreciate for a long time, that was really disassociating. It opened this gap between me and other people. To not be able to share that with, not just the closest people in your life, but the new friend that you meet, your employer, your girlfriend's mom—no one knows these things. Starting to tell my story made me feel like I was able to reconnect with the world."
Who were the students who fell under Larry Ray's control?
Daniel, Isabella Pollok and Santos Rosario were all students at Sarah Lawrence, a private liberal arts college in Yonkers, N.Y., when they first met Talia, who couldn't say enough good stuff about her dad, Larry. But it was a little surprising when he moved into their residence hall, Slonim Woods, after spending six months in a New Jersey jail for allegedly abducting Talia. (Which was a probation violation from a previous conviction on stock fraud charges.)
In Stolen Youth, Santos recalls the special attention Larry paid them, how unusual it was to have an adult (especially one with Larry's impressive, albeit exaggerated, credentials) so very interested in what they had to say, and how he was so sure of what was best for them.
Isabella's mother, Cyndi, recounts in the series that Larry called her before the start of winter break in 2010 and told her that her daughter wouldn't be coming home to Texas—because, Larry said, Isabella had been molested as a child by a family friend, Cyndi was a "terrible mother" and Isabella might try to hurt herself if she saw her family.
Cyndi remembers being too stunned to do anything but agree.
So, Isabella spent the holidays with Talia and Larry at his friend's apartment on East 93rd Street in Manhattan. (In the 2022 Peacock documentary Sex, Lies and the College Cult, the owner of the apartment, Lee Chen, details how he spent six years trying to evict Larry. Their dueling lawsuits went to trial in 2015 and Chen won.)
In spring 2011, dorm-mate Claudia Drury started to join the group for dinner and sit in on their meetings, where Larry would tout his various philosophies. (According to New York, her parents met with Sarah Lawrence's dean of studies and student life to express concern that this man was living among the co-eds. The dean didn't comment and the college maintained in 2019 that it had no record Larry had ever lived on campus.)
Meanwhile, Larry started one-on-one counseling sessions with Talia's friends, and soon Claudia and Santos encouraged Daniel to sit down with him toward the end of the school year.
Facing someone with an outsize personality like Larry's, Daniel told E!, "You might find yourself asking, 'Are they for real or is this kind of an act? Is this someone I want to be around?' These are all normal questions to be asking yourself. But I was also in a situation where all my friends were saying, 'This guy's great, he helped me so much.'"
Admittedly he remembered feeling, "This is kind of weird and this isn't really how I want to be spending my time."
But he was still drawn to the apartment on 93rd—and driven to it, a limo with his friends inside actually waiting for him following his sit-down with Larry at a Starbucks for what, in hindsight, resembled a job interview. Only the job was being Larry's devotee.
"I wanted to be living my life," Daniel, who also scooped ice cream in the East Village that summer, said. "But Larry had a way of dominating space and time. You didn't have time to question things because you were being peppered with questions from him, or he was just talking in a way that would never let you insert yourself. It was hard to even be, like, 'So, I've gotta go...' You couldn't even say that because there was no room."
Santos introduced his sisters to Larry in the fall of 2011: Yalitza Rosario was a freshman at Columbia when she started spending time at the apartment, while Felicia Rosario—a Harvard graduate who also finished medical school at Columbia—was doing her residency in psychiatry out in Los Angeles.
For reasons she's still trying to process, Felicia embarked on a long-distance romance with Larry and subsequently grew terrified that she was going to be harmed by the nefarious forces who were out to get him (more on that later). She ended up abandoning her life out West to move in with him and the others.
These were people "from diverse backgrounds, with really promising lives ahead of them," Stolen Youth director Zach Heinzerling told E! News in an interview. "The difference in this is, if you compare it with other cult stories, the subjects are very relatable. It felt like me when I was in college."
As far as the specifics of what Larry did, "what we present is a fraction of what happened," Heinzerling said, "but ultimately the story was more about how it happened. How do you get an audience to understand what it's like to be 18, 19—that period of your life where you're seeking answers. And also, what does love-bombing look like? What does gaslighting feel like?
"Those are the questions that we wanted to answer so that an audience can sympathize with these individuals and not view them as broken souls who are obviously falling for some master manipulator, but to see them as individuals just like you and I."
What did Larry do that led to the accusation he was leading a cult?
Santos recalls how he and the others were tasked with organizing the apartment, which as seen in Stolen Youth, was increasingly jammed full of stuff. Larry was in charge of when they ate and slept, Santos says, and he kept them tired on purpose so they'd be a jumble of "raw nerves."
Larry would wake them up before dawn for boot-camp-style exercises, telling them they needed to "get on top of our s--t," Daniel says in the three-part series.
According to audio recordings (Larry maintained a vast archive of his so-called therapy sessions) and video clips included in the show, Larry alternately soothed and berated them. He frequently accused the students of breaking his stuff and, even if they didn't remember doing so, they'd get so confused they'd eventually admit doing whatever he said they did.
And, shadowing everything, Daniel and Santos remember how Isabella always slept in Larry's room with him at the apartment, the older man explaining to the rest that the girl "needs a lot of help."
According to Daniel, Isabella came out of the bedroom one night and started kissing him—which initially, he admits in the series, was flattering. But a few weeks later, he was summoned to the bedroom, where Larry directed him and Isabella to have sex. That happened multiple times, Daniel says, Larry sometimes watching and sometimes joining in.
He and Claudia both went to England to study abroad in the fall of 2011, their junior year. But before leaving, Claudia emailed the dean her parents had spoken to—subject line: "The Truth"—explaining that previously expressed "fears and concerns about Larry Ray being a bad, dangerous, manipulative, and sexually deviant man" were entirely unfounded.
By the time Daniel and Claudia returned from abroad, Felicia and Yalitza were part of the mix.
Larry—as seen and heard in recordings included in the series—was increasingly volatile. Santos testified at trial that Larry hit him repeatedly with a hammer and told him to jump out the window. In one video Larry's seen shoving pliers in Daniel's mouth. And in the victim impact statement he read at Larry's Jan. 20 sentencing, Daniel said he'd never forget "sobbing while Lawrence Ray brandishes a knife over me, asking Isabella to go line the bathtub with plastic to catch my blood and the pieces of my body he's about to cut off."
There was no one breaking point, Daniel recalled, but he finally realized he had to go.
"It was more like this frog-boiling situation," he told E!, "where it slowly got worse and worse."
What happened after Daniel Levin left Larry Ray behind?
Daniel went on to get an MFA and authored a book about his experience, Slonim Woods 9, which was published in 2021. He said his personal life was "remarkably good" and this spring he'll be teaching a course for Stanford's continuing education program on how to translate one's most difficult memories into memoir.
"I'm thinking a lot about how we can take this experience and try to do the most good with it and create community for other survivors," he shared. "I think there's lot of talk about abuse, and there's not maybe as much talk about recovery."
Which, he knows, is a process of indeterminate length.
"I'd like to believe that I just immediately was like, 'That was horrible. That was abuse. I was in a cult and now I'm not,'" Daniel said. "It took me months to call it a cult. I simultaneously felt this fear where was scared to walk around the corner because I thought Larry might be waiting there and they'd pull me into their car and bring me back. And at the same time I wondered, did I make a mistake?"
His memories of what happened were muddled, he explained, there was no one he felt comfortable talking to about it and there were no media reports yet to corroborate his stories.
"So," he continued, "I thought, You know, this was bad, it feels bad in my gut—but also maybe we were just doing Marine boot camp, and maybe he was making us better, and maybe my friends are gonna become whatever perfect person [Larry] said that they could, and I sort of failed out."
What was happening in his absence, however, was Larry accusing Claudia, Santos and Yalitza of poisoning him, Isabella and Felicia. Larry blamed Yalitza for the visible breakdown Felicia was having—which was more likely being caused by Larry accusing her of cheating on him and other misdeeds (though, Felicia recalls in Stolen Youth, he never stopped sleeping with her on one side and Isabella on the other).
"I felt so guilty, because of the things that he was saying that I had done or had participated in that I hadn't," Felicia testified at Larry's trial. "I was completely overwhelmed and terrified."
And then there was all the property damage he kept accusing them of: Santos testified at Larry's trial that he stole $10,000 from his mother's business to reimburse Larry. And even as their kids were growing increasingly estranged and they had to sell their house, the Rosarios say that they ended up giving Larry more than $200,000, believing their children's lives were in danger.
Their lives were in danger, according to Larry, because New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik was out to get him.
Larry had, in fact, cooperated with prosecutors when they were investigating the former lawman—and he told his flock that Kerik was out for revenge. (Kerik pleaded guilty to federal charges, including tax fraud, in 2009 and served three years of a 48-month prison sentence; then-President Trump pardoned him in 2020.)
Kerik, who was close enough with Larry at one point to have him as best man at his wedding, denied being involved in any plot against him, telling New York in 2019, "Larry Ray is a psychotic con man who has victimized every friend he's ever had. It's been close to 20 years since I last heard from him, yet his reign of terror continues."
In 2014, Claudia started working—with Larry's help—as an escort, advertising services for as much as $8,000 per night. As she later testified in 2022, she worked every day for four years and gave Larry around $2.5 million as penance for the imagined poisonings and property damage.
How did the story of Larry Ray and the "cult at Sarah Lawrence" first surface?
As recounted in Stolen Youth, Max Mamis—one of several Sarah Lawrence alums in the series who reflect on seeing their once-close pals get sucked into Larry's orbit—came across ClaudiaDrury.com in 2018. In a rambling video confession on the site, Claudia claimed she had "never stopped poisoning" Larry, Talia, Isabella and Felicia.
The video was "incredibly disturbing," Max recalls. "My first reaction to this was complete confusion, shock. I didn't know whether to believe it...It was not at all like the Claudia I knew."
Some internet sleuthing by fellow concerned friend Raven Juarez turned up a Twitter account, which linked to an escort page with photos of Claudia (though she was going by an alias on the site).
Max feared she was being coerced into prostitution, but authorities didn't take him seriously, he says. "It's too crazy," adds Raven. "I think that's what Larry had best going for him—it was so crazy that no one would believe it. Anyone who talks about it, you seem insane, you seem like a conspiracy theorist."
So they reached out to another Sarah Lawrence alum, freelance journalist Ezra Marcus.
The truth, as Marcus and New York writer James D. Walsh were first to detail in their 2019 article "The Stolen Kids of Sarah Lawrence," was even more disturbing—and wildly complicated. And it triggered a criminal investigation into Larry's actions.
Claudia declined to participate in the series, which notes she left Larry in 2019 and has since reunited with her family. But Daniel recalls getting a call from her out of the blue after the story was published. Not only did he finally feel validated after living with that trauma on his own for so long, it made him feel "sane again," he says. "This happened. It did happen."
Raven also talked to Claudia around that time, sharing that once Claudia realized the scenario Larry had painted for her was not real, "she acted on it really swiftly. And she just left as soon as she could so she wouldn't have time to change her mind and stay."
Larry, who later pleaded not guilty at trial, acknowledged taking money from Claudia, but denied any wrongdoing, telling New York, "I genuinely always believed that Claudia genuinely felt very guilty. I genuinely believed that Yali felt very guilty. And I genuinely believe that Santos felt genuinely guilty. But they didn't end up doing the right thing. The only one who tried to do something was Claudia."
What happened to Isabella Pollok?
After the New York article came out in April 2019, Isabella and Felicia continued to live with Larry at a house in Piscataway, N.J.
Stolen Youth shows the ledger Isabella kept of Claudia's debts and payments from her escort proceeds. Described by prosecutors as Larry's "trusted lieutenant," Isabella was also indicted on charges of conspiring to engage in sex trafficking and money laundering.
Isabella—who was interviewed for the series but refused to say more once her own dire legal situation came into focus—pleaded not guilty and remained free on bail. But in September she pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to launder money, telling the judge, "I knew what I was doing was wrong and against the law."
She's facing a maximum five years in prison; her sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 22.
Her attorneys have argued that she was Larry's victim and does not deserve to go to jail, writing in a 10-page letter to a federal judge, per Law & Crime, "This prosecution reveals four phases of Isabella Pollok's life: There is the damaged, lonely Sarah Lawrence College freshman. There is the awed protégé. There is the broken automaton. And now there is the Isabella who is before Your Honor prepared to be sentenced. If it were not for Lawrence Ray's presence at Sarah Lawrence, Isabella would not be here."
What happened to Felicia Rosario?
As grippingly captured in Stolen Youth over the course of two-plus years, it took Larry's arrest in 2020 and their subsequent physical separation for the fog to clear around Felicia, who—thanks to her participation in the series and videos made by Larry and the roommates that became evidence at trial—is seen both breaking down and, bit by bit, rebuilding her sense of self.
Eventually, she sets out to reunite her family.
"The happiest moments in what was a pretty dark and heavy experience were seeing [Felicia] take those steps into understanding who she was," director Heinzerling told E! News. "Larry had destroyed her sense of self-worth, she felt unlovable. And of course what I saw was this brilliant, amazing person. She just had no outside perspective."
Asked what it was like to see Felicia's journey unfold in the series, Daniel said it was "pretty incredible to watch that footage and see each of us—the survivors of Larry Ray, my friends—we're all so different and yet we also have things in common that bond us together."
"But each person," he continued, "shows a different way of surviving. You're watching the stages that people have to go through in order to figure out their own abuse in their minds."
And ultimately Daniel hopes the series can help anyone in, or recovering from, an abusive situation—or those who have a loved one in peril.
"I think the first answer is to just let that person know you'll always be there for them," Daniel said. "And that they'll always have a bed to sleep in at your house if they ever need it, and from there just try to find ways to open up conversations and to approach it with understanding and empathy. And then, maybe get to trying to turn the corner."
Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence premieres Thursday, Feb. 9, on Hulu.