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Sarah Lawrence College Dad Who Ran Sex Cult Out Of Daughter’s Dorm Room Charged With Sex Trafficking

Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Marlo Safi Culture Reporter
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The father of a Sarah Lawrence College student was charged with sex trafficking on Tuesday after running a sex cult in his daughter’s college dorm in 2010. 

Lawrence “Larry” Ray was arrested on Tuesday morning and charged with nine counts of sex trafficking, extortion, forced labor, and a series of other crimes. Prosecutors claim that Ray subjected his victims to “sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse” over the course of 10 years. Some of his crimes exposed in a 2019 New York magazine piece describe the abuse of his daughter’s college classmates. 

In 2010, Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm room when she was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He began his reign of psychological torture over his young victims, including sexual grooming and sex trafficking. He is alleged to have forced a young woman to have sex with a male victim as he watched and then he blackmailed her into four years of prostitution. He would also torture the alleged victims through tactics including sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse and physical violence, according to NBC New York.

Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernie Kerik — who made Ray his best man at his wedding — told New York Magazine at the time that “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.” 

Kerik went to prison for four years following Ray’s cooperation with the FBI in a corruption investigation. (RELATED: Former NYC Police Commissioner Explains What Surprises Him About Epstein’s Death)

“Ray ensnared many of his victims when they were teenagers — a time of particular vulnerability for the young people he preyed on,” Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York said. “Ray used physical, sexual, and psychological abuse to make his victims confess to alleged wrongdoing, then agreed to make substantial payments to Ray, payments that these young students did not actually owe and could not actually afford.”

He faces life in prison if he’s convicted.